THE COAL QUARREL. T HE worst feature in this coal quarrel
is that if the combatants are bah speaking the truth, even war will not bring about any permanent settlement. The deadlock, on the hypothesis, is of the kind which cannot end, can only appear to end, and that for very short periods.. The coal-owners say that at normal prices they cannot get sufficient profit to go on working, and that, as two-thirds of the cost of getting coal consists in miners' wages, the miners must take less. The coal-owners may be lying ; but the violent presumption, apart from char- acter, is that they believe they are telling the truth, for half of them are Companies, bound to furnish their share- holders or partners with a dividend. That being the case, the obance that they are stopping work out of spite or even to raise profits above their normal level is, at least, remote. It is infinitely more probable that they are stopping rather than work at a loss, and that for them as a body the reduc- tion is actually a necessity. It is said that profits could be increased by increasing the price, but owners reply to that, that increased price kills the market, the great consumers, who are not the people with kitchen fires, being unable to go on. That also may be false, but it is presumably true ; first, because that is the regular course of things, every increase of price diminishing sales, even of necessaries like bread ; and secondly, because, if the coal-owners could get out of their difficulties by plundering their customers, they would begin plundering at once. It is all very well talking of public spirit, but there is not a trade in the country which, when its supplies get dear, does not raise its prices. Bakers do it incessantly, although from the nature of the article they sell, they are, or may be, risking human lives much more directly than the coal-dealers. The presumption therefore is that the coal-owners' case is a solid case, and they cannot give way. On the other hand, the miners' else may be a solid case, too. They say that their present pay is just a living-wage, and that if they accept a reduction they will be so badly off that they may just as well go into the workhouse at once. They, in their turn, may be telling lies, and the masters say they are, but the presumption is strongly on their side. Why should they waste all their strike-funds, and pawn all their furniture, and run into debt with tradesmen, and reduce their women and children nearly to starvation, if the wages offered are reasonably sufficient ? It is easy to say they are fools, or too proud to hear reason, but lower men than they understand their own business ; or to affirm that they gra led away by their leaders, but when they are so inclined, they dismiss, and sometimes desert, leaders with extra- ordinary rapidity. Moreover, at the present moment, whenever the old rates are offered, they are going in to work in thousands, which seems at least to show that their case, so far as they put it, is a genuine one. There is, therefore, a. deadlock ; and the .means of breaking it do not as yet appear. The masters will not yield tempo- rarily, because they say that if they do, wages will always be rising. The men will not yield, because they say if they do, every fall in prices produced by over-compe- tition will be " taken out " of them ; and neither masters nor men will, " for principle's . sake," accept half the suggested reduction. The owners object to conferences, which, as they all say, end in talk ; and the miners object to arbitration, which, as they all say with some truth, if only because they are the less articulate of the two parties, always goes against them. There remains battle, with all its multiplicity of miseries,—misery to the miners, misery to the trades dependent on coal, misery to the community, which needs cheap fuel ; and battle settles nothing. Owners, and especially owning Companies, however much defeated, will not go on digging up coal at a loss ; and the miners, however much defeated, will not go on digging up coal at, less than a living-wage. There is, on the hypothesis that the statements are true, no prospect except the suspension of many mines and a constant recurrence of strikes against the remainder. There is no prospect, on such terms, of peace even for ten years, and it will take twenty to recoup all the losses which the war, before it is suspended, even by a nominal truce, will admittedly have caused. But then, are the statements at the root of the contest true ? Writing as outsiders deeply interested in the struggle, but unfamiliar with mines, it appears to us they are true in one way and are false in another. It is quite true, as the owners say, that the reduced wage would be a living-wage, if the miner got it ; but then, does he get it ? He can make stl 9s. a week, or whatever it is, if he is employed all the week ; but then, is he ? As we understand the matter, he is not ; and that is the root of the bewildering conflict of testimony on the subject. The miner says the new wage is not a living, wage, not because it is insufficient in itself, but because it is insufficient for the number of days on which he will get work. In Nottinghamshire, for instance, we are told that there are thousands of families which, even at the old rates and at prices which the men admit to be fair, have to live on fourteen shillings a week, which, for a strong man whose work takes strength to perform, is, at all events, the narrowest conceivable sufficiency, we should say indeed an insufficiency, for civilised life. Mr. T. Mann, who knows his case, makes just the statement of our informants. A reduction on 14s., even of 10 per cent., is a reduction on life. " It is very difficult,' as a Bishop is reported to have said once, " to be a Christian on less than a pound a week ;" and certainly it is very difficult to keep on less a miner and his family in the health and comfort which, if the man works hard and continuously, is their fair right. The owner replies that he agrees, and that with his prices the miner can get the pound. But then, does he ? It is just as heart-breaking to be paid at the rate of 30s. a week for three days a week, as to be paid 15s. a week for six days ; for the free time, whatever its value in other ways, pro- duces no cash, and it is out of cash, actual silver coin, and not out of cash plus holidays, that the wife has to keep the house going and see the wage-winner fed. This is the point, and, as it seems to us, the only point where the conflicting statements can be reconciled, and where, perhaps under better management, there is some gleam of hope for the future. If wages cannot be made higher, cannot they be made more regular, as they are in almost every other trade in the country ? CannoN in fact, the number of miners be reduced by a much larger proportion of them being paid regularly, and the rest sent away ? We by no means say that the change is easily possible ; we quite understand that output must correspond with orders, but still we cannot help the suspicion that the trade is over- loaded with men, and that it is at this point, and this point only, that a remedy can be found. We remember the dockers' strike, and how that really arose. Everybody in the Docks seemed reasonably paid, and nobody had enough, just because nobody was ever reasonably certain that he would be always at work. The same thing is beginning to be the curse of agricultural labour, and is, we believe, in many departments the most pressing, as it is the least noticed, of all the labour problems. Nothing can over be adjusted to a, wage which may come, or may not, on Saturday night ; and there is no discontent so bitter as that of the man who one week has twenty shillings for his wife, and the next week only ten. As for the wilder remedies suggested, they need as yet little discussion. If Sir G. Elliot can establish his Coal Trust, let him. Nobody is stopping him ; but he will very soon find that the monopoly of a necessary means State regulation, that the " State " is the consumer, with his majority of votes, and that the consumer will very soon bring profits down to a very low figure. So will the miner find, if he is really stupid enough to vote for State proprietorship. He should live in London a week, and hear the poor people's opinion about dear coal, and their opinion about the masters and men alike. He would very soon leave off asking for the London voter as his sole em- ployer ; and the London voter is nothing but the ordinary consumer made visible by his excessive numbers. As to the idea of taxing the public ad libitum to keep up wages, the only and final objection is that it cannot be done. As the masters say, the purchasers fail, and behind that there is another danger which one day will be very visible and formidable indeed. Nobody can organise a great transport-service in three months, and strikes rarely last longer ; but if coal rose permanently beyond a certain price, there would be a competition of which the miners as yet have never thought. They have heard of Belgiaii coal and French coal, and think they can keep off those supplies, but they know nothing of the deadly competition to which they might be exposed from Asia. At a price by no means much in excess of English prices, if they were only steady, they might find themselves in competition with Chinese labour working mines to which there is no known limit, and discover, like the Lancashire textile hands, that prices must be kept down and hours kept up, or trade will depart to the world where millions are ready to work for ten h ours a day for ten shillings a month. " Progress " in inter- national communication is a very grand thing in a variety of ways, but it is preparing for our handicraftsmen, miners included, a competition of which they have not an idea, viz., the competition of Asia,—where the human race resides, and where the over-population of centuries has taught man- kind to live on nothing, and spend every moment of seven days a week not consumed in sleep, in earning it.
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