Mr. Boner Law summed up the questions at issue as,
first, whether the hours of miners were so excessive as to call for the immediate intervention of Parliament ; and, second, what the effect on the rest of the community would be. Rules, he said, could not be stereotyped for a whole trade, particularly for a trade so diverse in its conditions as mining. The Labour Party regarded the Bill as a first step towards a general restraint on production. Mr. Churchill, who wound up the debate for the Government, laid stress on the safe- guards in the Bill, and, for the rest, drew a rhetorical picture of the hardness of a miner's life. We admit heartily that no worker should be content with a mere "alternation between bed and factory, factory and bed." But nothing whatever was said to prove that in the case of mining the State can intervene without danger between employers and workmen, who have at their disposal all the ordinary methods of bargaining. The Bill was read a second time.
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