It cannot be denied that the Government's action has done more to discredit the Coal Commission's Report than all the abuse showered on it by the Communists and their supporters. It is pointed out that a conservative estimate of the cost of the coal dispute in 1921. puts the figure at over £500,000,000. Trade unionists say that if the Government had any real faith in the remedies suggested by the Commission, or any hope that they would save the industry, they would have been prepared to pay the subsidy for a months longer during the period of re-organization rather than face the loss and edi great wage they know that under private ownership the industry will not be able to pay anything like a decent subsistence wage for a couple of decades that they will not risk the money.
Nor does any trade unionist now believe that the negotiations beween the Government and the parties in the dispute were anything more than a cunning play staged by the miner's opponents to mislead the workers while preparations were being made to defeat them. It is pointed out that while the executives of the trade unions were kept waiting for days in London until the lock-out was in operation in the expectation that there would be a peaceful settlement, the Government was using the delay to perfect its anti-strike arrangements dist Strike breaking.organi-and move troops into the industrial
zations have now been opener all over the kingdom. It is everywhere proclaimed that the minera and the re levying war upon, the country. Soldiers are moving into the industrial neighbourhoods. Special constables are being enrolled. All the power of the state is being mobilized to force the most miserable, the most ill clothed and ill housed section of the populace down to lower levels of misery and destitution than has been seen in Great Britain for three generations.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.