Nov. 1
Tue most obvious comment upon the coal strike agreement reported to-day is: Why might not this have been arrived at without a fight which will have held up the production of coal for three weeks and dealt a most damaging blow to all British industries? Whether this fight may yet prove to have compensated for itself on the conventional principle of ''clearing the air' depends upon the spirit in which the bargain between owners and miners is observed in time to come. The great feature of the agreement is that by means of these joint committees, these recurrent adjustments of wages and profits, and the dependence of both these on the amount of output, it may serve to bring owners and miners into closer touch, to make both realize, and to understand that the other party realizes, their obligations and thus to undercut the evil influence of those who agitate for agitation's sake. It has been @ perpetual complaint of the miners that the owners could have increased output by new machinery. We have no means of knowing how far this is true, but at any rate the new agreement is a safeguard against dereliction of this kind, if such there be. Meanwhile the miners get their two shillings, but may lose it again if they do not work.
This will be the real difficulty in the future working of the agreement: to make the miners realize that the profits and the wages rise and fall together. And to this end something more is wanted than the joint committees. Half the trouble between Capital and Labour today is due to the intervention of the vast soul-less organization of the limited liability company, which has reduced the workman to a mere figure on a payroll and has destroyed the old personal intimacy between employer and employed. This, perhaps, more than anything else has opened the door to Bolshevist intrigue, of the existence of which there is no shadow of doubt. Sinn Fein is possibly not Bolshevism (though some hold another view) but its aims as regards the unity of the Empire are very similar; and its progress is closely watched not only by the executive
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.