The Mine Strike: A Plain Statement

I

IT is a commonplace of physical science that the most trifling event in daily experience can be traced through an unbroken series of causes back to the creation of the world, so that every gust of wind and every drifting cloud finds its real origin in the remote beginning of things. In some sense this is true also of life. If, therefore, it be desired to seek explanation of any catastrophe and to avert its recurrence, it is necessary to go much further back than the immediate and apparent cause.

A disaster is at the present moment threatening the whole of the coal industry, on which, in the past, Great Britain has depended, not only for the maintenance of her domestic trade, but chiefly for the support of that export business which alone enables her to obtain the supplies necessary for the sustenance of her people. Work is at a standstill; the mines are shut. The miners regard this fact as due to the hard perversity of the coal owners, and the coal owners retaliate by saying it is due to the refusal of the miners to accept the unanswerable economic conditions by which the industry is bound. Reconciliation and attempts at negotiation have broken down, and those who seek for a right understanding of the position and desire to secure some permanent solution of the problem must look to history in order to understand how it is that this impasse has been reached.

The development of the coal industry in Great Britain is in many ways a great tribute to the enterprise and skill of mine owners, and no less to the astonishing qualities of endurance, courage, and dexterity of the men; but there are dark pages in the industry, and these are not forgotten. A hundred years ago the underground labor in the mines was reënforced by the use of women and children, who would be kept at work for twelve hours at a time; and, to use the words of a writer describing these conditions, ‘the women, unsexed in form, function, and soul, dragged trucks on all fours, half clad, like wild beasts.’ The wages were low, and the people regarded as half savage. Little by little the industry has shaken itself free of this reproach, but the memory of it still remains, and the miners thoroughly believe that every step forward they have taken in the improvement of their lot has been extorted from unwilling owners. It is unnecessary to examine the truth of this statement. The fact that it is generally believed by the miners themselves is one of the most important factors in the tangled problem with which we are confronted. Apart from this mental attitude the exact issue can be readily understood.

In 1908 the miners secured the passage of an act forbidding more than eight hours’ work a day in the pits.

In 1912, following a strike which had lasted for nearly three months, an act was passed called the Minimum Wages Act, which provided that throughout the whole industry a minimum wage should be fixed below which wages should not fall. The Act designedly omitted what that wage should be, and left it to be settled between the masters and the men. In 1914, when war broke out, rest had not been secured in the coal fields, and further efforts to improve their condition were then in contemplation by the men. Throughout the war trouble continually recurred. In one critical moment 250,000 miners came out on strike, and appeared so little to realize the national danger involved in their action that many of them actually crowded the recruiting offices to seek service in the army, without understanding that their refusal to work would in a short time have rendered our fleet impotent, starved our people, and left the army they were seeking to join cut off from our shores. Ultimately the Government took control of the mines, the wages were improved, and large profits were made, until suddenly, in February 1921, control was abandoned, and, with the market falling, the mines were thrown back on private ownership.

Before this final stage, however, another strike had been threatened, the real object being to secure that the whole industry should be taken over by the State and worked like the Post Office, as a national concern. The Commission then appointed to inquire into the conditions reported by a majority in favor of this scheme, but the Government refused to accept it, introducing, however, and carrying through a bill which provided that the time of working in the mines should be only seven hours a day, together with the time necessary for winding up and down. In 1921, consequent upon the depression that followed the inflation of the war, a strike took place that lasted for three months, and this was ended by a National Agreement between the Federation of the Miners on the one hand and the Mining Association, representing all the federated owners, on the other. This agreement divided the whole mining industry into thirteen districts, and provided that wages were to consist of a basic rate then existing, but varying in each district, with the addition of a uniform district percentage to be arrived at by providing that all the profits over and above certain defined expenses up to 83 per cent were to be added to the wages, and the balance retained by the owners. This arrangement was further safeguarded by a provision that in no case should wages be paid at lower than 20 per cent over a standard called the standard wage. It is a long and complicated matter of calculation to explain exactly what the standard wages were and how they were reached, nor for the purpose of the present dispute is it necessary. The important thing is to bear in mind the two agreed provisions as to the minimum of 20 per cent above the standard wages and the ultimate division of the profits.

II

The agreement promised well. The miners were given a direct interest in the profits of the industry, and the principle of payment was intended to have regard to all the facts as they affected the prosperity of the trade. The occupation of the Ruhr materially assisted the working of this scheme, and in 1923 the export of coal rose to 79,500,000 million tons and the profit per ton to about 1s. ll½d. The previous profits in 1913 were stated to have been ll½d. a ton, and the sharp contrast between these two figures, together with the failure of the National Agreement to lift the wages in the poorer districts to an adequate level, caused the miners to claim an amendment of the agreement. As the terms of this amendment could not be agreed upon, the miners gave notice terminating the whole agreement, and in the spring of 1924 another strike was threatened. An inquiry followed, and in the resuit further negotiations took place, ending in an agreement to alter the division of the profits from 83 per cent to 87 per cent and to increase the 20 per cent over the standard wages to 33½ per cent. The withdrawal of the occupation of the Ruhr, the restoration of the output of the German mines, the increasing competition in neutral markets of the Silesian and the French coal, proceeded once more to depress the Eritish industry, and in July 1925 attempts were again made by the owners to reduce the percentage of the minimum wage. This produced a threatened strike, only averted at the last moment by a government subsidy of one third per ton to last until April of this year, in the hope that during that period further examination might disclose a pathway through the difficulties. To discover that road a further commission was set up, which reported on March 6, 1926, and made recommendations the chief of which were these: that the royalties in the coal mines should be nationalized; that research should be subsidized and extended; that there should be established an amalgamation of the mines and a combination of the industries with electrical, gas, coke, oil, and chemical industries, power to be given to local authorities to deal in coal, with the retention of the existing seven-hour day and reduction of wages during the period necessary for the reorganization of the industry. These terms the mine owners somewhat grudgingly, and with certain qualifications, accepted, but the miners unhesitatingly refused. They declined to consider any terms whatever that involved either a lengthening of the hours of labor or any reduction of their wages. Meanwhile the mine owners in the poorer districts had posted notices saying that the minimum wages would be reduced from the 33⅓ per cent above the standard agreed upon in 1924 to the 20 per cent fixed in 1921. As the miners refused to accept work on these conditions the mines were shut, and no work has proceeded up to the present time.

It must be admitted that the report was a difficult one for the men to accept. It involved an immediate lowering of the standard of life, to improve which they had struggled for so many years; nor could they see any approaching period during which that depression would cease. The amalgamation, the reorganization, and the scientific research would all take an indefinite time to accomplish; and, though the final result might be satisfactory, this was highly hypothetical, and the decrease in wages was a definite and an immediate fact. Justice will not be done to the miners unless the magnitude of the sacrifice they were called upon to make can be properly appreciated. Although the mining industry is frequently spoken of as if it were one concern, for infinite diversity of circumstances and of labor there can be no industry that affords a parallel. The mines themselves stretch from Somerset in the southwest to Lanarkshire and Fife in the far north. Some of the mines are new, well equipped, and supplied with the very latest devices for winning coal and enabling the men to do their work as securely and with as little discomfort as the nature of the industry permits. In these districts excellent houses are provided for the men, as well as meeting rooms, reading rooms, baths, allotments, and everything which enlightened and philanthropic management can devise. But in other and poorer districts access to the scam is difficult. In many places men cannot even walk upright to reach it. The seams are thin, the equipment poor. The mine owners have little or no capital to expend upon improvements, and with the utmost labor the miner cannot obtain from a full day’s work more than a seventh or eighth of the amount that can be won under usual conditions in the better field. The housing conditions and the amenities of life sulfer in the same way. Instead of living in pleasant modern houses the men have to live in hovels in a district that is blackened and soiled by coal dust and smoke. Nor is it possible to equalize conditions in any way by attempted division into districts. The result of the effort made in 1924 was that there were poor districts and rich ones. And to speak of average wages or average conditions of life not only misleads the public but causes intense aggravation among men who, when the average wage is quoted, find that the amount is far above the maximum which they could possibly receive. Further, some of the pits cannot always be kept open; the men can be employed only for broken periods of time and cannot get work in the interval, the result being that the wages actually earned are too low to admit of any reduction that will not make impossible the maintenance of the decent standard of life for which the miners have fought so long.

The working of the agreement of 1921 — to which, it must be remembered, the present proposed reductions are intended to return — can be seen from the following extract from the report of the Commission that sat in 1924: —

‘In the district of Lancashire, North Staffordshire, and Cheshire, for example, it is shown that, of the daywage men who worked the full number of days that the pits were open, 20 per cent received between 355. and 40s. for the week and that 67 per cent of the total earned between 305. and 505. In the case of the pieceworkers, 14 per cent earned less than 40s. and 37 per cent received between 30s. and 50s. In South Staffordshire the limits of 30s. to 50s. covered 64 per cent of the day-wage men and 39 per cent of the pieceworkers. In the Eastern Federated Area, which is one of the most prosperous districts, wages were better. Only 8 per cent of the pieceworkers and 29 per cent of the day-wage men earned between 30s. and 50s., while 10 per cent of the pieceworkers earned between 90s. and 110s. Here again, as in the case of the wages rates put in by the miners, we do not reproduce these lists in full. Of the larger districts, Lancashire, Cheshire, and North Staffordshire may be regarded as a typically poor one and the Eastern Federated Area a typically good one, and the figures from these districts show how men on more or less the same work and engaged in the same industry received widely different wages.’

III

These figures, of course, overlook the fact that in some of the districts men get coal free and that in many there are provisions enabling them to get houses at less than their economic rent. The value of these privileges cannot be estimated; but the figures quoted make plain the fact that, although in certain places and under certain conditions good and substantial wages are received, yet in other places the men receive wages that could not be regarded as high even if they were gained in an industry free from the hazards and the discomforts that are the inseparable attendants of work underground. It was in favor of reducing wages once more to this level rather than increasing the hours that the Commission reported, and this has given a bias to all subsequent action. The Government had, of course, no power to secure reduction of wages. Nor would nationalization of the royalties which they were prepared to accept relieve the burden on the mines to any appreciable extent, since the royalties would have to be acquired at their full market value and would be received by the Government instead of by the owners. This change might to some extent remove the strong sentimental grievance felt by the men against the royalty owner, a grievance which is more easily understood by those who do not possess royalties than by those who do. It is, of course, plain that the ownership of land originally designed to give free use of its surface has become strangely extended when it is taken to include the absolute possession of everything underneath, and this is more striking when it is remembered that the rights of mining gold (which does not exist) are excepted from the rule and belong to the Crown; nor can there be any doubt that the reason why coal was not included in this exception was because in earlier days it was regarded as of no value, but as a noxious thing which ought not to be consumed. But the law is quite plain. The legal ownership is incapable of dispute. Properties have passed from hand to hand and been taxed on the footing that this ownership would be protected by the law, and it is therefore clear that acquisition by the State can be justly carried out only by payment of a fair compensation. This, therefore, will provide no relief. Proposals also for amalgamation and unification of the industries are difficult for any government to undertake that shrinks from the ultimate conclusion of complete nationalization.

Meddling and muddling differ only in one vowel, and in the result they often do not differ at all. If, therefore, interference with management was to be avoided, government action could only be made immediate by altering the hours of labor and rendering it permissible to work for eight hours instead of seven. This proposal has been made and has been received with such an outcry that the authors of the bill have been denounced as murderers. It may well be asked in these circumstances whether any solution is possible, and none can be found unless the actual facts of the case be carefully borne in mind. With the present system of management, the present rate of wages, the present hours of work, the present output, and the present price, the coal industry of this country is an insolvent concern. In the last quarter of 1925, if the subsidy were disregarded, 73 per cent of the coal was produced at a loss. The miners have made no proposal to meet this situation except nationalization, which means throwing the loss on to the State, and this they justify by the not unreasonable argument that if the State as a whole requires that coal should be got from the mines it ought to see that the men who get it have a decent wage for the work they do. Apart from this piece of limited logic they have declined to consider anything whatever to meet the situation. Nationalization could not obtain sufficient support in the present Parliament. It may be doubtful if, within a reasonable period of time, it ever could. It must therefore be disregarded. Even if the remedy were the right one, the only avenue by which it could be reached is barred. Nor can the price of the commodity be raised. It already presses with great severity upon the domestic consumer and is a source of handicap to our most important iron and sleel industries. To raise the price would be to diminish the market, and salvation cannot be reached in that direction.

Reorganization could undoubtedly, if properly taken in hand, effect great economies and secure considerable relief, but it would take a long time for this to occur. There remain the wages and the hours. Whether the miners will accept reduction of the one or extension of the other no one can tell. The real root difficulty of the whole situation lies in the fact that a number of mines cannot be profitably worked except under conditions of labor which ought not to exist. The miners’ representatives claim that these mines should be shut, and the claim seems just. But to shut these mines immediately and forever would throw out of work 250,000 people at least, with those dependent upon them, at a time when our industries are already saturated with labor and the unemployment figures amount to 1,500,000. On the other hand is this fact, that there are rich coal seams stretching through Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire and believed to extend for a considerable distance hitherto unexplored. If the industry were given confidence and security, these mines would be rapidly developed. Powers, therefore, might well be given to big undertakings similar to the powers given to railways and water companies, to enable the acquisition of land for the purpose of mining, so that areas could be mapped out irrespective of individual ownership and plans prepared for housing and for the sinking and equipment of the mines.

Encouragement must be given in this direction, for the real problem lies in seeing how to concentrate all the industrial energy and the capital that now runs to waste in worthless areas upon the spots where it might be productive of the largest and most profitable return. This scheme cannot be carried out in a day. It would take five to ten years for its proper development, and during this period the Government might properly subsidize the poorer pits by providing the difference between the existing wages and the sum to which the mine owners seek reduction — that is, between the 33½ per cent and the 20 per cent. The mines to which this bounty should be extended would have to be scheduled, and it should be provided that year by year, in respect of certain specified mines, these bounties would cease. By this means it ought to be possible to provide that the men would know in advance the coal fields that must fail, and they would be able to seek occupation in the new ones that were being developed. There are, of course, many difficulties in the way of realizing this scheme and many obstacles to its adoption. The rooted dislike of men to leave the place where they were born and where they and their families have worked is strong everywhere, and probably more strong in the mining industry than in any other; but even that may be overcome by the realized necessity of the case. Objection also would undoubtedly be advanced, on the other hand, against the compulsory acquisition of lands and minerals, but the ownership by the State of the minerals would remove one part of that objection. Whether this scheme can be adopted or no, some larger and more far-reaching plan than any hitherto suggested must be conceived and carried out or irretrievable disaster will overtake the whole trade, and all the other British industries dependent upon it will be involved in its overthrow.