The Miners' Federation at Southport on Wednesday, after a brief
secret session, rejected the Government's reply to its demands. The miners' demands were put very high. They asked for an advance of 30 per cent. on their present earnings, together with the war allowance of 18s. a week. They asked for &statutory, six-hoursday, instead of an eight-hours day. Demobi- lized miners, they said, should receive full pay if they were unemployed or partly disabled or below the average in efficiency. Any man who became a miner during the war to earn high wages or to escape military service should, if displaced by a returned soldier, be paid full wages for an indefinite period. Lastly, all mines and minerals should bo nationalized. If Great Britain had a monopoly of coal, as South Africa has of diamonds, it might be possible for the coal trade to bear these vast increases in the wages-bill without a murmur, though even then the State could not treat the miners as a privileged caste in respect to demobilization. As in fact our coal export trade is faced with severe competition from America, Germany, and other countries, and as our manufacturing industries depend on cheap coal, the miners' demands call for careful inquiry.
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