* * * The experiment which a few weeks ago
saved the Vauxhall Coal Mine near Wrexham from being closed down has been watched with great sympathy. The miners undertook to work the colliery themselves, having raised with no difficulty a voluntary guarantee fund against loss to the owners: There has been no need to call on that fund, and by giving better value for their wages they have been able to produce coal and sell it without loss to anybody. If the Trade Union leaders had welcomed this as an experiment in syndicalism or encouraged it as tentatively supporting their cry of " the mines for the miners," we should have had a proof that they believed in their theories. But they have consistently discouraged it and by Monday had driven the Vauxhall miners to withdraw from the guar- antee bond, to apologize to their association and promise " to recover the old price-list rates after the termination of the temporary period of three months " ; that is, to abandon certain small modifications with which they were quite content and which just made it possible to sell the coal.
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