Mr. Smillie on Thursday week gave the public his own
account of the secret Conference between the miners' loaders and the Prime Minister. With unconscious humour, he said that the Miners' Federation was moved by the spirit of altruism to try to reduce the cost of living—not indeed by asking the miners to work a little harder, but by demanding that the Government should pay a coal subsidy. The Excess Profits Duty on the export coal trade must—if we interpret his speech rightly—go to reduce the price of industrial coal, instead of being applied to reduce the heavy deficit on the Budget. Mr. Smillie, who delights in hypothetical figures, asserted that the coal trade would show a " surplus " of fifty millions this year, after paying the coalowners their small fixed " profit " of fourteenpence a ton. The Prime Minister had, Mr. Smillie said, disputed the estimate of the " surplus," as he well might, and had asked an accountant to state the facts. The public can agree with Mr. Smillie in one thing—namely, that coal is exceedingly scarce. But we do not know whether this is the fault of the Coal Controller, or of the Ministry of Transport, or of the " unselfish " miner. The coalowners and traders are paralysed by official mismanagement and can do nothing.
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