Dec. 6.
Our issue of Friday morning] contained a telegram—from London stating that as the miners in, practically, all areas had come agreement with the mine owners, no more notices would be issued of the daily increase of men returned to work. The most prolonged and most disastrous strike recorded in_history is, therefore, at an end and we may congratulate ourselves that the country has weathered the storm so successfully. The men have been beaten in the struggle and are returning to work on conditions less favourable than they could have won by negotiation before the strike was called or at any time during its progress. No one will rejoice that this is the case. The miners' lot is a hard one fand there is a general feeling profound regret that they have been led into a bog by incompetent and foolish leaders whose failure to recognize certain basic and incontrovertible facts is res-
The first of those facts is that mining is a declining industry. Even had the mines worked full time less coal would have been mined this year than last and less. still in succeeding year This is because the electrifica tion of industry on the Co2tinent has proceeded by leaps and bounds in recent times. Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Norway and ithe smaller nations are all utilizing the great power of the waterfalls in their mountain ranges to generate power. They, consequently, need less coal than formerly and our export trade Inas felt, and will continue feel, the effects of this change.
Electricity and gas are rapidly taking the place of the open fire and the cooking range in the homes of England. The Government has a great electrific tion scheme which it proposes, to put into execution and those factors will reduce the consumption of coal at home. It is true that coal must be used to generate electricity but it will not} Ibe used in the wasteful manner we have been accustomed to.
By-products will be preserved instead of being vomited forth in black smoke. The consumption of, coal, being in furnaces of econo-mica! construction, less will be used which, while a benefit to ithe users, will react unfavour-jably on the mining trade.—It has been calculated that even with the pits again in full swing there will be some tens of thousands fewer men employed than before the strike. n these circumstances it can scarcely be Jdoubted that it was the wrong time, psychologically, for the miners' federation to stage the great strike which has just end-so disastrously for them.
A second mistake made was the threatening language used towards the country. A general strike has been a spectre terrifying politicians for years, It was called for the first time thi year with a tremendous oanfa nade of trumpets, but though the ghost walked it was promptly seized and found to be but a scarecrow with a turnip lighted a candle for a head. It may safely be said that no more will be heard of this bugbear. Nothing provokes the spirit of the British people—indeed of any] people—like a threat. The miners' Jeaders continuously used ithe most provocative language. There would be red revolution, Blood would be shed in the streets. The miners would not suffer alone but the nation would be dragged down to _perdition jete, ete, All this high-flown, nonsense merely caused the strong middle classes to rally to the support of the Government. On the question of the rights jand wrongs of the argument between the men and the mine owners their sympathies wer and still are, on the side of the men. But on the question when ther Britain was to be ruled from Whitehall or from Moscow there Iwas not a moment's hesitation.
Men wearing red armlets and raucously bawling "the red flag" were the worst kind of propaganda for the miner's cause, Even the large sums of money, sent from Russia, ostensibly to ai the strikers but really. to [provoke disturbance, probably, lost the men as much financial aid from their own country as they secured from outside soured les. Tens of thousands hastened to enroll as special constables and tens of thousands more put, their vehicles at the government's disposal to carry on with while other means of transport Jwere at a standstill. In spite of the noisy minority of communists there was not a shadow of the threatened revolution and there were fewer arrests for violence during the six months of the strike than in the previous like period. It is only just to state that this was due much to the essential Iaw-abiding sense of the strikers as-to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.