THE COAL POSITION.
[To in Eamon or ac " Sescrszoz."1
&a,—The extraordinary seriousness of the (soul position may be seen by comparing the position in this country with that in the United States. The United States have at least twenty times as much coal as this country. More probably they have thirty or forty times as much. At any rate the known coal deposits of the United States are, according to conservative estimates, at least twenty times as large as those of this country. Moreover, the American miners, who are mostly unskilled men from all countries, produce, incredible as it may sound, as much coal per day per man as the skilled British coal-miners produce per week per man! The miners, when told of high individual production in the United States, maintain that this tremendous difference is due to natural conditions, to thick layers of coal, lying at a low depth in the United States, which can easily be worked by machinery. That explanation, which at first sight seems very plausible, is utterly misleading. It is true that in the bituminous mines America is greatly favoured compared with this country. However, in the American anthracite mines conditions are more or less as they are in the older and poorer coalfields of this country. The United States have only a little anthracite coaL It occurs in thin, irregular, and faulty seams. Many of the mines have been exhausted. The position is so bad that in the anthracite mines of the United States no coal-cutting machinery at all is used. Yet, exclusively by hand work, the American anthracite miner produces per day three times as much coal as does the British coal-miner with the assistance of coal-cutting machinery. Between 1880 and 1918 production per man in this country has shrunk from 1.33 tons to 16 cwts., while during the same period production per man has been rapidly increasing in the American coalfields, and the result is that, notwith- standing lower wages, British coal costs at present twice as much as American coal.
The miners are strangulating this country and their own industry, and are giving an invaluable help to the American coal industry. The American coal-miners complain bitterly about their mines being frequently shut down with a view to avoiding over-production. By allowing the miners to work full time, as they desire, the American mine-owners can pro- duce with their present outfit 200,000,000 tons of coal for export. They can, therefore, not only seize the entire coal export trade of this country, but dump millions and millions of tons of coal into Liverpool, Cardiff, London, and Newcastle, and cause the shutting down of half the English mines. The English miners threaten to ruin their country and themselves.
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