• While the mine owners have on the whole, shown
a laud- able willingness to accept the Government proposals, even though they may think them unfair in the abstract and likely to damage the industry, the miners have as yet not yielded an inch, awl seem deaf to the notion that it is their duty to consent to a compromise in order to bring about a national settlement. It must not be supposed, however, that because the Miners show so unyielding a front before the public that there is no difference of opinion in their ranks, and that they are absolutely solid in their determination to have the schedules, the whole schedules, and nothing but the schedules which they themselves proposed. Just as among the owners there has been a considerable party for holding 'out at all
costs—a party which has happily been dominated by a reasonable majority—so among the miners there is a very strong minority willing to compromise on reasonable terms. Unfortunately here, however, the balance inclines not for, but against what Bacon would have called "the benign extreme." The majority, though not a great majority, are against com- promise, and the minority feel that they must accept the will of the majority, and would not, at any rate for the present, be justified in breaking away from it.
