COAL COMBINES [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I was
sorry to observe in your issue of March 3rd that you consider the Coal Commission has shown patience in waiting for coalowners to combine, and that you also approve of Sir Ernest Gowers' determination to enforce amalgamation. I think the shoe is entirely on the other foot. I am convinced the policy the Government propose to enforce is mistaken in its incidence, while its tendency to raise prices at home and reduce them abroad will not only damage the mining industry, but will also destroy many trades upon which its welfare depends.
The advent of the Diesel engine completely revolutionized the home and foreign bunker trade, which was one of our most valuable assets. As a shipowner, although believing in the superiority of the Diesel, I decided to rely on steamers because of their vital importance to the coal trade. I also saw the possibility of the Diesel owner being at the mercy of the few millionaire oil producers, who could so easily combine and extort their own fuel price. As regards steamers, I felt that that danger did not exist, as this country is specially favoured by its central geographical position. It also possesses coal of unsurpassed quality, with supply stations well distributed throughout the main ocean routes, and therefore could defy competition and at all times provide bunker coal at world lowest productive figures. Sir Ernest Gowers' readiness to sacrifice the freedom of colliery proprie- tors holding such advantages, as well as to suppress the proved trading principles of our forefathers, in order to make tentative agreements with Germany, Poland, &c., is altogether inex- plicable. We live on an island and are dependent upon cheap transportation, so that it is beyond belief that our Government should initiate a scheme that favours oil burners while tending to increase the cost of coal—the life's bkiod of our very existence.
The steamer is unquestionably the most important remaining asset of the coal trade ; in fact it is the stalking-horse through- out the world of our collieries. The coal quota eliminates competition, without which I have always understood efficiency in any trade is utterly unattainable. It standardizes prices irrespective of market movements. These prices being known to our foreign competitors enables them to fix their charges slightly below ours and thereby secure all competitive trade, hence the disappearance of outward coal cargoes and the consequent homeward freights on consumable commodities, to the detriment of the entire community. It further stiffens prices against us at coaling stations owned by foreigners. The whole conception is utterly retrograde and represents the most pernicious form of inane monopoly ever devised : a bull point for oil and Diesels, but a nail in the coffin of coal and steamers. I think those coalowners who are with- standing the amalgamation, conscientiously believing that its principles are contrary to sound immemorial business practice, are acting patriotically. If it is the chief interest of the country that is being aimed at, the arguments against the coal quota
[The salient fact is that the potential output of British coal- mines is 300,000,000 tons a year and the actual demand about 200,000,000. Without some ordered regulation, such as emergencies like the present call for, there could be nothing but cutthroat competition and chaotic ruin for the weaker mines.— ED. The Speetator.1
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