29 NOVEMBER 1935, Page 19

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sirt,—i have read with

great gratitude the forcible letter of Mr. Thomas Burns in reply to the hopeless summary of the situation by Mr. Geoffrey Crowther. Mr. Burns writes as an industrialist, and therefore with very, real authority. May I add to his letter a further expression of deep concern ? I believe I represent a still larger section of society—namely, the people who have no controlling power whatever in industry or commerce or polities, who do not claim to be economists, but who can put two and two together and who are very deeply 'unhappy and ashamed because life in Britain for a million men (with two and a half million .dependants) has become a long endurance or flagrant injustice. We get our dotal too cheap. But we do not want to get it so cheap: 'The very warmth of our fires is spoilt for us bedause we know that the Men in the most dangerous and arduous trade inthe 'country are being shockingly Underpaid. Instead of getting specially high wages in view of the riaks they face, they get specially loW Wages, and have to face specially great hardships. We are told that the coal trade is the basic trade in Britain, and we are ashamed that the facts should be as they are concerning the basis of our national life. I believe I Speak for the great mass of the ordinary people of the country in. this matter. We would eagerly pay an extra twenty-five per cent. for our coal if this scandal could be removed from our national life. If manufacturers had to pay more for their coal then the goods they produce would cost us more.' We are quite willing to face that extra cost. Mr. Burns tells us that an extra thirty millions sterling per year would be needed to pay the miners a really living wage. That works out at much less than £1 per head of the population. I believe the very poorest would gladly pay that. And if it were paid indirectly in the form of a small increase in the Cost of coal and of manufactured goods we would scarcely feel it. But we would feel intensely the joy of knowing that our miners were no longer suffering injustice. . I believe the national impatience at the obstructive policies of the COal-oWners has nearly reached • breaking-point. I believe that no Government which does not handle this mutter resolutely deserves the confidence of the country or can long retain it. I believe that Mr. Burns is right when he says.that this act of justice to our miners would " pay the rest of us." Justice always pays in the long run ; 'and if we should lose in the financial sense for awhile, still this justice Must be done if therciemains in the nation any effective and true humanity.-=-