The Coal Commission has .sat daily and has heard evidence
ranging over a wide field. The miners representatives have set themselves to confuse the issue by irrelevant appeals to political passion and sentiment. Whenever an employer or exporter has given evidence tending to show that a large and sudden increase in the price of coal would imperil our industries and our export trade, Mr. Smillie has drawn an affecting picture of the poor, half-starved miner living in a hovel or has referred to the remote past when children worked in the pits. Mr. Smillie's insistence on the evils of bad housing is comprehensible to those who know Lanarkshire, where he lives. Bata correspondent, whose authority is beyond dispute, confirms in a letter printed elsewhere our sug- gestion that the Scottish miner is badly housed because he will not pay a fair rent for his cottage. A Lancashire or Durham miner, who has a higher standard of living, or, in other words, more self- respect, would not inhaffit the cottages to which Mr. Smillie is always ./wring. This is a question not of wages but of habit.
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