A CIVIC SENSE IN ENGLAND ? THE KENT COALFIELDS.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I regret that my attention has only just been drawn to Professor S. D. Adshead's article in your issue of .June 7th, and I trust that you will permit me to make these somewhat belated comments thereon. It is evident that Professor Adshead is more at home on questions of town-planning than mining, and I find it very difficult to follow the trend of his arguments. This, partly for the reason that the article is brimming over with inaccuracies on matters of fact and of errors in names and place names ; for these latter, presumably, the Professor's handwriting must be held responsible. But my chief difficulty arises from the inextricably confused manner in which the two separate matters with which the Professor deals—i.e., housing and mining—are treated, the result being that the reader is left puzzled as to when the writer's remarks apply to the one or the other of these questions.
It is unfortunate that Professor Adshead should not have made a first-hand acquaintance with what the coal-owners have done in Kent with regard to the housing of their men, for he would have seen evidences that they had already exercised " foresight in building well-designed villages for the miners," within, at any rate, the limits imposed• by War conditions. There is a large miners' village at Stonehall, some two miles out of Dover, and a smaller one attached to Snowdown Colliery, while at Tilmanstone them is a quite modern type of colliery village—well laid out, with wide streets, bordered by trees, and having a substantial institute in which are held dances and other social functions. At Chislet Colliery a number of cottages have already been built, while a well-designed, attractive village has just been started, the houses of which will be completed at the rate of one a week. All these works have been undertaken by the coal-owners on their own• initiative and bear evidence to -their desire that the reproach of bad housing conditions, so frequently heard in relation to the old coal-mining districts, shall not be applic- able to Kent.
As the author of the standard book on the evolution and development of the Kent coalfield,• it was somewhat dis-
* The Kent Coalfield : its Evolution and Development, By A. E. Ritchie. concerting to me to find Professor Adshead ascribing it to " Mrs. A. E. Richie," and certainly not flattering to my amour propre to read that this book is " an abstraction from numerous reports that have appeared in the Coal Trades Review (sic)." The greater part of my book certainly appeared first in serial form in the columns of the Iron and Coal Trades Review, but it is an original work based on more than twenty years' experience of the coalfield, which I regret that Professor Adshead did not read with greater care before quoting therefrom. In each paragraph of his article, purport- ing to give a digest of something I had written, there are culpable inaccuracies, but the following travesty of what I am supposed to have said I look at in amazement :— " We are told how company after company with more faith than foresight and less finance, put down boring after boring, and failed to achieve success at the last strata in the venture." (The italics are mine.) What this means perhaps the Professor may know, although I doubt it ; I have struggled in vain to find some reasonable idea as to what he thought I had written.
Professor Adshead's views on mining matters and upon what coal-owners do and omit to do are peculiar, and invite criticism, though I hesitate to trespass on your space in order to deal with them in detail. Perhaps I may be permitted, however, to join issue with him on his statement that : " Mines are usually sunk, not in positions that are economically the best, where they will do the least destruction to agriculture and residential and surface interests, but where perhaps an impoverished owner can most cheaply be persuaded to part with his mining rights." Nothing could be more remote from actuality than this purely imaginary and unpractical idea of the selection of sites for pits. In starting a colliery every caution is exercised in selecting the best possible economic situation, which implies the avoidance as far as possible of any interference with agricultural, residential and surface interests. Does not Professor Adshead know that colfiery proprietors have to pay for all such disturbances, and particularly for damage to surface buildings due to subsidence arising from theirworkings ? It is really ridiculous to suggest any connection between the selection of a colliery site and the financial embarrassments of an impoverished coal-owner- for the good and sufficient reason that there would be no economy in selecting an indifferent site, that could be had cheaply, if it were to entail additional working costs over the whole life of the mine.
Finally, I would like to add that money may or may not have been squandered in Kent, as Professor Adshead suggests, but as he himself states : " Kent coal is now proved and East Kent is destined to become a great colliery area." The bulk of the money, whether squandered or not, that has gone to the proving of this coalfield, has passed into the pockets of the workmen who, so far, are the only persons who have benefited. To them, and to those who think that nationaliza- tion of the coal industry would be better than the private ownership of the mines, I would suggest that under no such scheme involving any measure of Government control would this now proven coalfield have emerged from the domain of theory in which it lay dormant for nearly a century. The fact that investors have so far received no dividends on their share-holdings in any of the Kent collieries but emphasizes my contention that this new field is a most striking and impressive object-lesson of what can be accomplished by private enterprise. It is quite inconceivable that any Govern- ment department would have had the courage to adventure public funds in putting down one unsuccessful boring after another, as was done by the pioneers of the field. The Kent coalfield, I maintain, is a splendid monument to the courage and pertinacity of the race, and only free citizens—not nationalized Robots—could have brought it into being.
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