THE COAL-MINING INDUSTRY.
WE promised a postscript to our article in last week's Spectator on Nationalization. In the first place, though we are opposed to the Nationalization of the industry, we agree with the great majority of the Commission in thinking that the time has come when the royalty-owners should be bought out, and when coal and, as we should like to say, other underground minerals and products of every kind., including oil, should become the property of the State, not of course to be worked by it directly, but to be sold or let under reasonable conditions. Compensation must be paid in the case of coal and iron and other minerals, for the land has passed from hand to hand and been taxed on the assumption that the minerals were as rightful a subject of private property as the clothes on a man's back or the watch in his pocket. That of course has not been so in the case of mineral oil, and therefore we hold, and have held since the subject came under discussion, that the State has a perfect right to recognize this natural product, especially as it is a fluid product, as belonging to the nation.
Another point which we believe has made a great impression on the mind of the public, although they have found it very difficult to discover a remedy, is that, as the miners get coal for their own consumption free, they and their wives and families are perfectly indifferent as to the price of coal. As far as they are concerned it might go to £5 a ton at the pit's mouth without their feeling any personal inconvenience. While the result might be utter misery, not only for the poor but for all classes except the few millionaires throughout the country, they would not turn a hair. The situation is not unlike that with which Peel had to deal when it was proposed that Government officials, including of course Cabinet Ministers, should not be subject to Income Tax. It was urged that the pay of these persons had been settled at a time when the Income Tax was not in existence, and that therefore to apply the tax to them would merely mean a reduction of pay on the part of the Government and not a real tax. Peel, if we remember rightly, would have nothing to do with this argument on the perfectly sound ground that it would be exceedingly dangerous if those who in effect imposed the Income Tax on the country did not feel its weight. Human nature being what it is, we cannot trust men to impose burdens -upon us when they do not themselves bear, and therefore feel, their just proportion of those burdens. For that reason Peel insisted on the Income Tax being absolutely universal. There must be no exemptions for any persons in the economic categories to which the Income Tax applied. In the present case we hold that it would be in the interests of the nation as a whole, though perhaps not of the mine-owners, to bring the supplying of free coal within the Truck Acts, and by law forbid the paying of part of men's wages in coal. Obviously no one would propose to reduce the present wages of the miners. They should be given an addition to their wages equivalent to what was being paid in coal at the time when the legislation we contemplate took place. And of course the owners might subsequently raise their rate of wages in any way they liked. All that the law would insist on is that the miners .should buy their coal and pay for it like other people, and not be quite indifferent as to what the kitchen or the parlour fire cost.
We shall no doubt be asked whether we hold that the experiment of Nationalization should not be tried in any industry. We do not intend any such absolute statement. We are very anxious as to the effects of Nationalization, but we realize that an experiment may have to be tried before the public is satisfied. In that case it appears to us that the safest industity in which to try it is an industry engaged with a servict and not with production. In other words, if the ckperiment must be made, let it be made first in the matt* of transport, and in the case of railways. There is, we believe, no big example of the State being able to produce a material. There are cases in which the State has run with success a service like transportation, a matter which is much more nearly analogous to State administration than production. Let us try State railways before we try State boots or State coal, State toques or State jumpers.
Finally, we shall perhaps have put to us the question : Do you really mean to say that you contemplate leaving the Coal Industry alone and making no effort to improve it after what was heard in evidence at the Coal Commission? We have no desire to adopt such a non possum us attitude. We think there are a great many things which might be reformed in the Coal Industry. Especially are we anxious, not only to give the miners a place on the Boards of the Coal Companies wherever possible, but also to see a great expansion of profit-sharing in the mining industry. Indeed, we should like to see profitsharing established, and then so greatly developed that in time the workers would become the owners, or at any rate the controlling owners, of the industry, but owners of course not in their capacity of workers but in their capacity of shareholders and possessors of capital. The best and most practical and hopeful plan that we have ever seen for arriving at such admirable conditions was set forth before the Commission by one of the witnesses, Mr. Frederick Mills, of the Ebbw Vale Collieries. It is characteristic of the outrageous follies and poisonous perversities of this ill-fated inquiry that, as far as we know, this evidence was not reported in the newspapers. It was apparently too wise and too humane to constitute good "copy." A silly gibe at a Duke, or some piece of Wardour Street feudalism about Royal grants and the origin of property in land, was given at as great length in the papers as if it had been a divorce ease or the description of a peceant lady's hat, but Mr. Mills's Memorandum and evidence were taken as read. Unfortunately we cannot on the present occasion do more than put up a signpost to his excellent scheme for profit-sharing which shall end in ownership. We hope, however, to give a full account of it in a subsequent issue.
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