We are often told in ovr Home press that our coal mining industry in the foundation of our indus eminence, To read that in Lane hire is to realize that our foundations are rotten and built upon sand. A few days ago we walked through the Pendlebury mining di trict on the outskirts of Salford. more depre: ing experience it would be difficult to imagine but it can be paralleled in nearly every other mining district. Street after street of the grimiest, and most squalid hovels that could be imagined; ragged, ill-nurtured children; ragged, hopeless locking women; sullen, stunted, and pallid' men. Every: where else in Lancashire the women-folk with yellow-stone and! whiting put up a brave fight a the omnipresent grime and Everywhere else it is possible. to think that there is hope yet; that grinding poverty cannot' entirely submerge humanity, that life for the worker has its compensations, For a time life shone even for the miner. In a mining neighbourhood not a.balf mile from where we are writing we remember that the squalid cottages. blossomed for a couple of years in a unique pros-Perity. Good curtains decorated the ud the sills were whiten-The stone fags were covered swith "bright Jincleum "and passing glimpses were to be bad of cheap but highly polished furniture.
It was a brief summer and the autumn of 1921 saw the end of it with all the little second-hand furniture and brokers' shops packed; to the ceilings with the treasures the miners wives had collected.
To-day such gauds are the idle st of yesterday's dreams to the harassed miner's wife. It is now no straggle for curtains or crockery. It is. fight for mere soap, potatoes, herrings, and bread.
The Agreement that the coal-owners have given notice to terminate on July 31 was dated June 18, 1924. It was on the samel principle as that which operated during the previous three "years, since the 1921 lock-out, but embodied a very slight improvement in the minimum. Under it the minimum wage per shift was fixed at a third above the 1914 standard rate, As the cost of living is now nearly 80 per cent. above the 1914 [rate itis easy to see how much worse the miners are than they were in 1914. The Agreement provided that any balance after " paying! wages, other costs, and "standard" profits (15 per cent, of cost of standard wages) should be divided in \the proportion of 88 per cent. to woges, and 12 per cent. to profits, The—coalowners give their reason for terminating the Agreement the admitted fact that all the districts but cne are working on the minimum wage ce sequent upon which no profits ara being paid them as there is no Their new proposals demanded the abolition of the 338 minimum and of any minimum wage, repudiated any obligation to secure base rates, and insisted that standard profit should be the first charge on the industry. It is wnerally admitted that the enforcement of these terms would reduce] the position of the lower paid men in the bad districts to something worse than that of agricultural iInbourers at the end of the 18th. century. There would be nothing ike it in British industrial history.
The "Manchester Guardian" and some other reputable non-Labour newspapers referred to these proposals in the most scathing terms, Their immediate effect was to weld the political and industria) Labour movement into a united body in opposition to the mine owners. At present the only evidence of disunity in the ranks of the new alliance of ship-wrights, engineers, sport workers, and railwaymen is confined to Mr. Thomas's section of the latter, the N.U.R. Thomas la the moving spirit in the opposition to sympathetic action by his union and there is every reason to believe that the mineowners are counting on his influence to enable them to beat the miners.
Of the gravity of the position the coal mining industry. in Great Britain there is no question. A White Paper was recently issued on the profits and losses of the various mines and districts in the industry. It revealed that 4 per cent. of the total output was 1 291 collieries showing a credit balance; and that 46 per cent. was!
at 320 collieries showing a loss on their working. Th tion of this disastrous condition is to Joiner wages and inereace the hours of Tak return to an eight hours' shift. 'Bat on Wednesday, July 22, their representative at the Coal' Inquiry ad-{mitted that they could not pay (Sages to equal the 1914 standard of riving even if the man consented to work the extra hour per shift.
The representatives of the miners claim that the redeeed market for British coal is a consequence of the Jeontracted world market for all industrial products and they allege [that an increase of hours here would provoke an immediate in-tease elsewhere and that the same {condition would then recur. Queetioned on this point the owner's
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.