THE COAL INDUSTRY Snt,—Most of those who are wrangling about
the coal industry miss the -main point. After fourteen monthi as a " Bevin boy," I can see, of course, that mechanisation is needed—as Sir Miles Thomas, of the Nuffield organisation said the other day, less attention has been paid to making machines for getting coal than to penny-in-the-slot machines for fun fairs. But however many coal-cutting machines And conveyor belts are put underground all the raw material will still come from the man with the pick. Suppose you get back every one of the st,000 miners who left the pits in 1940 and the thousands of them, serving before that, who is going to carry on after them? Their sons know, better, and no Bevin boy I have met would work at the face unless he had got to. Are men in peace time to be forced, either by unemployment elsewhere
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