A letter from Mr. Baldwin to the Unionist candidate for
York was published in the papers of Monday accom- panied by a long diary of the attempts of the Government to bring about an agreement between the owners and the miners. The sense of the letter was that everything the Government had done had been for the one purpose of securing an agreement within the industry. No other sort of agreement would have been of any use, since the coal industry, like all other industries, " must stand on its own feet." The diary shows that all the suggestions made by the Government had been rejected by one side or the other, and the Government had therefore felt that intervention was merely tending to prolong the dispute. Mr. Baldwin, however, added, " We have always been ready—and we are still ready—to listen to reasonable suggestions from either the owners or the miners."
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