Pit by Pit
The central operation in the new campaign to improve coal production is to be a systematic examination, pit by pit, of the reasons for the present failure to reach either a healthy output per man-shift or a tolerable level of total production. Presumably the speeches at the great joint meetings held on Sunday at Cardiff and Wrexham between representatives of the Coal Board and the collisries were considered an essential send-off to the campaign, tholigh experience of a long series of " production drives " has shown, if it has shown anything, that exhortation is little better than a waste of time. But since more machinery, higher wages, better conditions, various special privileges and the presumed psychological stimulus of nationalisation as such have not brought coal production up to a satisfactory level, a few more explanatory speeches before the new campaign begins may do no harm. The most experi- enced engineers and managers, as well as the best representa- tives of the miners themselves, have always known and argued that more genuine organisation and co-operation below grown' in the mines themselves could greatly increase the output o coal. Too many shifts do not produce the best results becau of failures—for which miners or officials or both may be to blame—to fit together smoothly the efforts of the various elements in the increasingly complex production teams. There is certainly no point in crying out for more men—as Mr. Arthur Horner, in particular, did for so long. It is a matter of getting more output per man. That is about as far as outside generalisation can go.' The rest is a vast and heterogeneous mass of special problems. But the miners know the urgency of the need. for coal; they know that the extension of their annual holiday and the Coronation holiday make extra effort this year particularly necessary; they know that the recent tendency for output per man-shift to fall while wages rise would, if continued, be disastrous. And they know that they can put all this right if they want to.
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