WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 6 March 1920, Page 8

WELLINGTON TOPICS

COAL SETTLEMENT. THE CONSUMER PAIS. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, March 3. Until the new agreement between tha Coalmine Owners' Association and the Miners' Federation has been !n operation for a few months it will be impossible to say exactly now it will affect the consumers. The agreement is admittedly a compromise—a very fair and reasonable compromise—and its interpretation will count tor more than does its text. But already it is tolerably clear the consumers will have to pay <v

asiderably higher price for their coal than they paid in the days before the shortage." The men have obtained higher wages and better conditions, involving a large additional expenditure on the part of their employers, and this expenditure, inevitably and not improperly, will be recovered from the consumers. The price, it may he presumed, will bs w.refully watched by the Government., which, having endorsed the agreement, cannot remain indifferent to its application. REGULATING PRICES. The trouble of the average consumer during the coal shortage, however, has not been so much the high prices, as the inadequacy of the supplies. Hundreds of housewives have Been without other fuel than wood to weeks on end and have paid for half bags of dusty coal, ineludinng the cost of delivery, at the rate of £7 or £8 a ton, and been thankful to get them. The retailers have been making but little profit even at this rate and it will not be surprising if they seek to do better under the new conditions. This is the tendency the Government, and the Board of Trade will have to watch more carefully than they have in the past. The wage-earners, after all the most long-suffering and apathetic section of the community, at last have begun to bestir themselves, and if price.s are allowed to go on soaring without a corresponding great increase in wages there well be a recurrence of very grave labor troubles. THE ATTITUDE OF LABOR. The workers' representatives must share in full measure with the owners' representatives and the Prime Minister in the credit for the Satisfactory conclusion of tfie coal conference. There ' were stages in the negotiations when but for the conciliatory spirit of the miners' delegates the conference might have ended without an agreement. Mr. Massey displayed admirable tact and the owners' considerable forbearance, but it was the reasonableness of the miners' representatives and their evident desire to pnt an end to petty bickering that made a settlement on a broad basis possible. It is to be hoped this is symptomatic of a better spiri' growing up between Capitil and Labor. 'Die danger points now arc the railway service and the water front. Both the railway men and the waterside workers are breathing out threats of direct action if more effective handling of the cost of living problem does not bring them some relief.