The miner is a class apart. No miner is happy in a pit. His work is hard, dirty, dangerous and uncomfortable. It is practically black-leg proof because of its danger and unpleasantness.
The Miners' Federation is able to enforce relatively high wages for the members because it includes in its ranks all the labour in England that will consent to work at mining. They are habituated to the life and the sons follow their fathers. Break the habit and it may difficult to restart it. It is broken in England now, and as long as the miner can get bread he will stop out, unless he gets what he is fighting for.
"Tt's a fine life up here, lad," a miner told the writer yesterday. "Up here" was a scrubby-looking field within sight of the _pithead. Young miners. were playing football in the bright spring sunshine; and the older men were. lounging! round looking on. "I'll not go; down as long as there's a bite to eat for the kids," and We'll be damned if we do," said his mates.
The writer was down that pit two' years ago. A 2,000-ft.. shalt and then a_walk of a mile to the coal; face. Remembering the roar of the coal cutters, the choking air full of coal dust, the grimed and sweating miners crouching against the three-foot seam, and comparing; that with tHe blue sky and the clean spring breezes it was difficult to blame the miners for their choice.
No attempt to evict the miner from his home for non-payment. of rent is likely. It is assumed that; he will ultimately return and then pay up what he owes.
HELP FROM ALL Quarters, A "Save the Miners' Children" fund has been opened and is largely The whole dispute is now asserted by the Government to be over the Profit Pool. Tha Government have so widened the term "'politics" that this is alleged to be a "political issue" and the refusal of the miners to work under the new wage scales is "direct action." So the lock-out of miners who will not, in many instances, work for a wage that has a purchasing power of 16 shillings by pre-war standards, has been distorted into "direct action to enforce a political issue."
The "pool" advocated by the miners enforces the payment to the workers in the bad pits of a portion of the earnings of miners in good pits and demands that profits should be treated in the same way to equalize the burden. The miners are prepared to endure substantial wage reductions if a scheme of this kind is adopted.
The' mine-owners will not listen to this or argue the matter, and the Government under a pretence of impartiality supports them. How one-sided the Government is even the "Times" bears witness. In an editorial article on Saturday, May 17, it points out that the jovernment is obviously anti-Labour and asserts that there is evidence that it resented the interference of Parliament in the proposed strike of the Triple Alliance, as the Government wished to smash Labour and had laid its plans to that end. The various conversations that have taken place between the miners and the Government and the owners and the Government provide. another instance. A report of the proceedings is always published in the one instance, but there is never any report of the' proceedings when the owners confer with the Government. The more reputable capitalist newspapers have strongly commented on this, and the miners cannot be blamed in looking upon these conferences
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.