26 NOVEMBER 1937, Page 3

The colliery owners have few friends. It is a long

time since a speaker from the Treasury Bench has made a more outspoken attack upon the management of a great industry than that which Captain Crookshank, Secretary for Mines, delivered on Tuesday night. He recalled the unprecedented occasion in the autumn of 1935 when the owners, faced with a demand for increased wages, went round inviting subscrip- tions to their own wage fund from people who were under contract to receive coal at a certain price. " Please put a penny in the old man's hat." That did not sound like efficiency. * *