The Coal Industry Commission presented its interim Report on hours
and wages on Thursday week, the appointed day. As the Commission failed to agree, the three sections reported separately. The miners' representatives and allies simply declared that all their claims were justified ; it is said that lie. Sidney Webb wrote this Report before all the witnesses had been heard, but he might have written it before the Commission met. The coal-owners proposed that eighteenpence a day should ho added to the miner's wages and that his statutory working day should be one of seven instead of eight hours. The Chairman, Mr. Justice Sankey, and the three independent Commissioners, Sir Thomas Royden, Sir Arthur Duckham, and Mr. Arthur Balfour, of Sheffield, recommended still more generous comes- sierra to the miners. They would add two shillings a day to the miner's wages. They would reduce his working day to seven hours from July 16th next, and to six hours from July, 1921, if the industry proved capable of bearing the increased burden. The coat of these concessions, after allowing the coal-owners a profit of Is. 2d. per ton, would amount to f43,000,000 this year, leaving a -deficit of £13,000,000 on the year's working. The neutral Commissioners would tax the industry a penny per ton of coal and devote the million pounds thus raised to improving • miners' houses.
