THE HUMAN MINER.
IN the South Wales Daily News of March 23rd there is an article,by Mr. Rhys Bevan John,on " The 'Selfish' Welsh Miner "—ably commented on in the Economist of last Saturday—which we strongly commend to the atten- tion of our readers. Unlike so many other disquisitions on the mining crisis this article is written primarily from the human point of view. The reasoning it contains is drawn from the mind of an old Welsh minor, who argues that the Welsh miners, so far from being selfish in the matter of the present strike, as the English newspapers have alleged, are in reality unselfishly sacrificing themselves for the benefit of the English greenhorns who have been swarming into the Welsh pits. The trouble is due, according to this old Welshman, to the increased demand for Welsh coal com- bined with the falling-off in the number of experienced miners owing to the prohibition of child labour in the pits. He does not complain of this prohibition, but points out that the necessary result has been to diminish the supply of really skilled miners, so that the employers have been compelled to take inexperienced. men, who are incap- able of doing efficient work. It is these men who demand a minimum wage, because, work as hard as they can, they are incapable of earning anything like the standard attained by the older or better-trained men. To quote the Welsh miner in his own language :- " Why, near my own stall there's an Etalian working who has never, by his own showing, picked anything harder than grapes before ; a broken-down doctor what finds the dust very trying to that throat of his ; and a bobby what had grown too big for his boots ; and the mess them fellers make of the fine big coal is a sight to make you weep. For coal getting is a skilled man's business, as I am tolling you, and not a job for prentice hands to learn in a week. But there's the big demand for coal tempting the masters to take on anything as can shift a shovel, and the big wages tempting of these green hands to come and blow them- selves up. And it's that what is at the bottom of all this trouble: that's the reason why there is such a shout for a minimum wage. For these fellers can't earn anything like the money l'in getting—it ain't in reason that they could—and they are dis- contented in consequence, and that, too, is only natural. For they works quite as hard if not harder than we old ones do ; but ye can't make up for lack of experience with brute force and ignorance. They've never learnt the job and they don't know how to cut coal. But they are in the majority, and, of course, what the majority thinks fair the rest is bound to agree to."
He goes on further to show how these green hands are also the cause of the trouble with regard to abnormal places, for constantly they complain that the places assigned to them in a pit are abnormally difficult, whereas in reality all that they aro suffering from is their own in- capacity. In such cases it is the common practice of the mine manager to get the man who is complaining to change places with a more experienced man, so that the abnormality of the places may be fairly tested. The old Welsh miner who is made to speak so vividly in the South Wales Daily News tells the story of how he was called. upon to change places with a young greengrocer from Bristol. He himself was a newcomer at the colliery, and had some difficulty on account of his ago in getting employment at all, but as soon as ho set to work he quickly showed that he was able to earn very much better wages than many of the meu working beside him, and particularly than the Bristol greengrocer. The result is thus described :— " At the end of a month he happened to see the money I was drawing. In two minutes he had a crowd round him and ho was talking. 'It's a disgrace,' says he, 'it's a blooming shame. Hors am I what have been working here for close on a twelvemonth drawing .22 15s. for my fortnight's wages, and hero's this now bloke a-drawing his five quid like a lord. It ain't fair. Don't I work as hard as he do P Don't I stick at it like a blooming lump of cobbler's wax ? But I don't blame him neither. I blame my
blooming place—and them what gives good places to newcomers and rotten holes to their old hands.' "
The result of this complaint was that the manager asked the old Welshman to change places with the young green- grocer :— " Well, we done the swop and I almost doubled my wages. The coal came away like cheese out of a mould, and I was working not near so hard as before. ' What about the greengrocer P' asks you. Well, would ye have thought it P At the end of the fort- night ho took out his tools, and he wasn't going to work in a pit whore there was a dead set against him."
The truth of this picturesque account can be verified by any one who will examine the pay-sheet of any important colliery. He will find that men working side by side in places practically identical in character are earning widely different wages. In the Daily Graphic of March 21st there appears a very interesting photograph of the coal workings in a Welsh mine, with the average daily earnings appended to each working place. Hero are some of the figures of consecutive working places : lls. 9d., 7s. 5d., 12s. 4d. A little further on we find men working side by side earning at the following average rates per day : 14s. 9d., 7s. ld., 12s. ld., 8s. 8d., 10s. 9d. These figures can only be explained by a difference in the human element. They show conclusively that in mining as in other occupations the better men when placed on piece- work earn more money than the relatively incompetent men. Why, then, it may be asked, do the better men join with their incompetent fellows in demanding a minimum wage, which is considerably below their own average earnings ? The answer appears to be twofold. First, that there is among the wage-earners in this country a very great feeling of class solidarity, which undoubtedly leads men to sacrifice temporarily their own pecuniary interest for the sake of their class. In addition there is real sound sense underlying the action of the better men, because they foresee that if they can force up the rate of pay for the inferior men this will give them a leverage for demanding a still higher rate for themselves. This was one of the reasons why the coalowners so strenuously fought against the minimum rates of 5s. and 2s. In every mine there is a hierarchy of labour, and though the men may be inspired by the democratic feeling of solidarity they never allow it to overcome the deeper aristocratic sense of the differences due to men of various grades of efficiency. If the coalowners had consented to pay 5s. a day to the unskilled labourers who shove trucks about in the underground passages of the mines the men doing better work than this would instantly have de- manded an increase in their wages in order to keep their relative station. When this fact is grasped it will be seen that there is from their own point of view sound sense in the miners' demand for a minimum wage, provided always that it does not have the effect of rendering the working of the mine unprofitable, and thus depriving a considerable section of the miners of any wage at all.
But, needless to say, these considerations alone do not solve the problem. To concentrate attention again for a moment on the present crisis, it is clear that if mine- owners are compelled to pay a minimum rate of wages they will at once try to got rid of their relatively inefficient men, and these will become a burden on the community. To the credit of the Government this disability has been recognized in the Coal Mines (Minimum Wage) Act, and a very wise provision is made for exempting from the operation of the minimum wage rule aged and infirm workmen, and workmen who do not maintain the requisite standard of regularity and efficiency. The duty of deciding which men come under these categories is left to the district boards, and it may be that the boards will discharge the duty as well as, and, perhaps on the whole, more fairly than, it would be discharged by the mine manager acting alone. At any rate, there is no objection in principle to the introduction of a. form of arbitration for this purpose. It is, indeed, the necessary consequence of the laying-down by Act of Parliament of the principle of a minimum wage. Provided this clause is reasonably worked, it will still be possible for the old and relatively inefficient men to find room for themselves in the coal- mining industry. The importance of their doing so cannot be exaggerated. Unless provision is made for the employ- ment of the relatively inefficient workmen it is clear that these must become a burden upon the whole community. They cannot be allowed to starve, and therefore if they are not permitted to work the whole of their cost of mainten- ance will fall upon the workers, who thus will find their net earnings or profits appreciably reduced. The ideal to be aimed at in every healthy community is that every person should do what he or she can to add to the total product of the world, or do some service in return for his or her keep. The problem to be solved is the raising of the general standard of wages—judged, of course, by pur- chasing power and not merely by the nominal amount— throughout the community, so that the manual worker may obtain a larger share of the wealth he helps to produce. But in attempting to solve this problem we must take care to preserve at the upper end of the scale the opportunity to the skilled man of earning a higher wage in proportion to his skill, and at the lower end of the scale the opportunity to every one of earning something, however unskilled he or she may be.
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