MINERS’ STRIKE.

Taranaki Daily News, 9 July 1921, Page 10

MINERS’ STRIKE.

INDUSTRIES LANGUISHING.

THOUSANDS OUT OF WORK.

MANY CASES OE HARDSHIP.

London, May 13

I In Lanarkshire, Northumberland and [Durham, and in Notts and Derby there [is a weariness of the coal strike. We are now in the sixth week of the stoppage, and the list of new restrictions serve os a reminder that the country is coming to a standstill. The train ser- . vices have now been cut down by half. Coal may not be procured by a householder who owns a g|ts stove, unless by a doctor’s certificate. Strictest limitation of fuel has 'been placed even on essential industries. Unemployment due directly to the coal stoppage is increasing by leaps and bounds. It is estimated that during last month 400,000 workpeople were thrown out of employment as a dhrect result of the strike, while a quarter of a million were put on short notice. In nearly every district depletion of coal stocks has meant a further restriction in hours or suspension of work. Utter stagnation prevails in practically every industry in South Wales, and it can even be said that the spectre of famine is abroad. Thousands of people have not the money to buy enough food, and school teachers tell painful tales of underfed children who grow thinner and paler week by week, and when questioned they admit they had come to school without breakfast, because there was no money in the home. In Cardiff there are many cases of men who have not worked since the end of last year. Seventeen hundred coal trimmers, who during the war earned anything between £lO and £2O per week, drew in a recent week only 3s each. Shiprepairing firms on the East Coast are paying their workmen off. As coalmining and ship-repairing are the staple industries of the Tyne the outlook is grave. The river is choked with idle ships, and the supply of coal, even for i bunkering purposes, is practically nil. A number of ships have managed to

get away to the Continental ports, in the hope of getting supplies there, but the majority of vessels have no alternative but to lie up. There are now between 2000 and 2500 firms in Leeds which have had to dose dawn owing to being without electricity for power, and, a«s a result, thousanda of people are out of work. The supplies of coal for domestic purposes have now ceased. Coal is being extracted from the bed of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leeds, which is being Many men waded waist deep in mud and slime in order to get the coal.

USE OF OIL FUEL. The coal stoppage has given a great impetus to the use of oil instead of coal for industrial purposes, particularly in the neighborhood of London, where oil *rom Mexico can be bought as cheaply as the equivalent quantity of coal from South Wales. One of the biggest electric power stations in London—that at Lott’s Road, which supplies the current for the underground railways—is being converted, and will soon be practically independent of coal. Five of the great railway companies have been experimenting with oil engines, and three of them have now given definite orders for engines driven by oil instead of coal, one company ordering a hundred. Another company is experimenting with a system by which a coal-burning locomotive can be converted into an oilburning engine in 20 hours. “Within 12 montlis, according to an authority on the oil trade, “it is probable that the bulk of the London and district industries will be carried on without coal. There is not an oil concern in the country which is not laying itself out for great developments—hastened forward by the coal strike. Last year 1,000,000 tons of oil fuel were brought into the country; this year there will be at least 2,000,000 tons,‘and that extra million will displace at least 2,500,000 tons of coal. England was never so well stocked with oil as it is to-day, and London is particularly well favored, being the biggest oil port in Western Europe.”

FURTHER RESTRICTIONS. An expert committee, under the direction of the Food Department, is investigating the possibility of extended use of oil as a fuel, not only in engines and on railways, as it is being increasingly used at present, but also to the extent of supplying heat for bakers’ ovens. An instruction has been issued from the Mines Department to local authorities that breweries and distilleries are not to be entitled to further supplies of coal, and that no further permits for supplies are to be issued to this industry. The Government has power to advance summer time by another hour, and to institute curfew, but it is not proposed to put such drastic remedies into operation for the time being. Mr. Robert ‘Smißie, the veteran miners’ leader, emerged from his retirement to address a miners' meeting at Larkhall. Lanark. His main contentions were that the miners are fighting a purely defensive battle, and that their demand for a national pool is not a political move.

“If thia general stoppage of the miners is a political move,” said Mr. Smillie, it is a political move on the part of the employers and not the workers. It is not right that the miners’ wages should be reduced in order that iron, steel and coal merchants should be able to compete at Home and abroad. This is a struggle for greed of gold against the right to Jive. It is a glorious fight, and if we suffer we shall triumph in the end. If my health permits it, the remainder of my life will be spent in the movement.”

Opinion seems somewhat divided, however, as to whether the fight is a political one or not, for Mr. Frank Hall, the Derbyshire miners’ leader, speaking at South Normanton, said: “I am proud that the miners are not making this a mere wage question. It is a political question, and if the Government had offered us a reduction of only Cd a day we should not have accepted.’”

found it impossible to continue to pay the Government wages in the changed condition cf the industry, they issued notices to terminate all contracts with the employees which existed under State control. The owners offered to pay wages in future on a district basis, reverting to the rates current before the war, with additional percentages according to the ability of the districts to pay them. To this the miners replied with a demand for a. standard wage throughout the country and a national pool of profits to help the poorer districts.

The miners’ demand for a national wages pool gained scant support even from their Labor allies, and early in the strike it was virtually abandoned. The principal differences between the miners and the coalowners were then reduced to the following four points:—

1. The miners demanded a standard wage equal to their present wages, whereas the owners offered a minimum wage equal to the total earnings in July, 1914, and an actual wage as from April 1 of from 50 per cent, to 160 per cent, above the 1914 figures. 2. The miners demanded that the periodical additions to, or deductions from, the standard wage should be by flat rates, whereas the owners proposed that these periodical revisions should take the form of percentages of their standard wages.

3. The owners asked for a standard profit of 17 per cent, of the amount payable in wages at the standard basis, and 20 per cent, of the surplus available after meeting standard -wages and standard profits; while the workmen offered as profits only one-tenth of the amount paid in wages.

4. During the continuance of the existii_g abnormal conditions the owners offered to waive their claim to any share of the surplus, and to allow the whole of the profits above the minimum standard of 17 per cent, to be paid out in wages, and they also offered to forego, for a time, their standard profits on the condition that the deficiency should be carried forward as a prior charge against any surplus available for the payment of wages in excess of the basis wage. At the beginning of June the miners and coalowners met in conference, and the owners then submitted new proposals for a settlement, which amounted to an immediate flat rate reduction of wages by not more than 2s a shift in the case of workers of 16 years of age and upwards and a shilling a shift in the case of workers below 16 years of age, and tfie setting up of a national wages board to fix principles, for the guidance of district boards in' adjusting wages in future, the principle being accepted by both parties that profits should be fixed on a percentage of the wages paid. This plan of settlement, which was dependent upon the grant of £10,000.000 then offered by the Government to subsidise wages during the transition period, was submitted to a ballot of the miners, and rejected by a majority of 70 per cent.