NEWS OF THE WEEK
rpm coal dispute is in a worse state than ever. On -I, Tuesday the owners met the miners for an " infor- mal conference" and the meeting ended with increased bitterness. The miners proposed that coal should be sold at prices high enough to maintain the 1924 standard of wages by means of selling agencies on which they would be represented. They also stipulated for no increase of hours. The proposal is open to two obvious objections, first that coal cannot be sold abroad at the suggested price and secondly that artificially high prices at home would cripple every industry that uses coal. All that the miners could say in answer to these difficulties was first that if the Government considered the foreign markets worth saving they ought to keep them by subsidizing exported coal and secondly that the crippling of other industries was no concern" of theirs.
