The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-07-12 00:00:00

WHAT ARE WE WITHOUT COAL?

The Timer hoe the following leader on the proceedings of
the Coal Ci mroittee of the House of commons :
"Coal will never again he so cheap as it was two
years ago." Such is the unanimous voice of the wit-
nesses examined before the Coal Committee. .
It Boum'. like a note of warning, and tells
of dear labour, dear iron, dear gas, and dear manu-
facture ; of decadence, difficulty, class movements,
shifting of burdens, and all that well-to-do, peace.
loving men sigh to think of. But everything
conepires to this result, even though over-pro-
duction may lead to comparative and tempo-
rary cheapness. Amid a considerable diversity of
opinion expressed before the Committee. generally
traceable to local experience, the consent is great,
and the conclusions are natural and intelligible.
For several years there h s been a steady increase in
the out-put of Coal, stimulated by an increasing de-
mand. The incresee in the three years 1870, 1871,
1872, was respectively three, seven, and six millions. In
the lost two years the exportation was respectively
12,748,000 tone and 13,212,000. The importance of
three figures appear,' by comparhion with the total
out-put, which was last vear 123,386,758 tons. Here
is a sufficient account of the rise in prices—suffi lent,
that is to say, SO far as regards the predisposing
cause, which is the true cause. A demand and a pro-
duction rising annually five per cent., with the whole
world for a customer, and the supply from a limited
urea, a limited population, and a still more "mite('
else, of workmen, could not but raise the prices. This
was cure to be the result soon or late, and could only ,
be deferred to conic in is heap, so to say. Little WAS
wanted to &art the upward movement. The men,
fiuding pressure put upon them, made new and larger
combinations, with a view to noire wages and lees
work. As prices rose, they asked their share. Then
came Parliament with its humane interference, regu-
lating the employment of boy& the qualification of the
managers, the safety and the ventil +Lion of mines. It
now appears that fourpence or sixpence a ton is the
utmost thet can be set down to this cause. lint the
masters were juatified, they thought, in laving this
tax on the humane public, and, an usual, they did so
with interest All at once prices jawed up three
ehildngs a ton. Then came a panic. Strikes, foreign de-
mand, and the itiereaeing consnmptiou by the iron
legielation, the alarming iitatisticx of the Cal
F vide, awl E/11r prosperity, which Was iii emitybody's
mouth, all cootributtd to the result The public began,
as they are doing now, to lay in stocks, and over-
whelmed the dealers with orders. This was to throw
everything into the hands of the Coal inerchante, the
Coalwastern, the pi, men, and the Railway Companies.
Though the-% did not all quite pall together, yet one
thing they did which atiswered the purpoa3 of all.
They doubled Vie price of Coal.
There are severol aspects of the questio i n—the n-
duAtial, the domestic, tbe commercial sod the nuldic
int,rest, including that of our remote posterity. The
induitrial is that which has been laterly most before '
the public. Including all daises, whether in the pit
or at the pit'e mouth, about four hundred thousand
persons are employed in the production of Coal. We may
thus set down a ton a week day to the work of every
person employed in any capacity whateeer. This is the
population which has managed to double the price of
Its commodity in the open market to the rest of the
public. The truth is Cue entire public depend upon it
more or le-s, and are to that extent at its mercy. The
whole world %aside us in the supply of Corn and in the
demand for Coal. We have depos-d the former from
its supremacy as the standard of values only to find
ourselves bound hand and foot to the latter. It appears,
too, on the evi Wine given to the Committee, that our
new lords and masters, the pitmen, cannot be rapidly or I
much increased. It take@ a whole life for a miner to be-
come a real adept at "holing," which is the most diffi-
cult partof this WOI k. It takes several years for a labourer
to learn hewing, and even them le cannot dolt as well
as if ho had learnt from a boy. Machinery now
economize, but it will not much increase the work done.
and will require great skill. Legal difficulties regard
ing the rights of way above and below stand in the wpy
of drainage, and at this moment are anew-rattle for the
flooding of pita which would otherwise yield a million
and a hail tau a year. It usually takes years to

inks new pit, Throughout England generally the
masters and men have not yet arrived at any plan or
principle for settling their difference., except by tht
ruinous process of "strikes." In the North they can
and do confer to some purpose by means of their re-
siective aseocistions ; but elsewhere the Coal-masters
resent the interference of outsiders too strongly for an
easy settlement of pending questions. Finally, it
appears to be taken for granted that all will come to the
double shift system at teat, and that it will be costly to
the employers by diminishing each man's working
time. The miners themselves do not see it in this light.
What they fear is that more Cool means cheap Coal
and low wages. They have always observed the two
latter go together, and they are slow to believe in an
increasing demand. The witnepes are of °anion that
the demand *id increase so as to sustain the price of
Coal, whatever the system or regulations of the em-
ployment. It will, too, be very long indeed before
double shift means twice the number of men. The
men are not to be got. When they are got they learn
their business slowly, and very few can ever acquire
at all the knnwledge and skill necessary to direct the
mass of the men.

The public has entirely dismissed from its thoughts
the prospect of entire Coal exhaustion at the end of
the present millennium, or earlier, that it now thinks
only of cheapness and plenty. It wants the goose to
go on laying the golden egg, even though the process
cannot last for ever. The last thing it thinks of is the
underground Bank on which our grest.grandchildren
are to draw checks when our acres on the surface are
too few for our population, or are exhausted. So we are
inquiring whether the various classes concerned in
the production and sale of Coal are mot unwise in check.
lug consumption by their extortionate demands. Coal.
masters and pitmen depend on manufacture and trade,
and they are frightening it away. Our Continental
neighbours, and still more those across the Atlantic,
are taking advantage of the increased costs we are at
by our Coal dearth, and are beating us out of their
markets. Just now, indeed, the case cannot be
very hard, for both France and Belgium find
themselves obliged to come to us for Coal. But, no
doubt, many manufacturers must be largely affe AA.;
by the rise of 100 per cent. in the chief and most indie.
pensable element of production. It is Coal that pays
our debt; Coal that sustains our credit; Coal that
speeds our commerce ; Coal that rules the waves; Coal
that holds together all this scattered people and this
divided Empire. What are we without Coal? All the
distant fears that lately haunted us as to the future of
England have given way to the more real and sensible
apprehension affecting the present generation. Next
to no Coal at all, dear Coal is the greatest ill that can
befall us. It is not merely that the British hearth
depends on the pit, and that the Englishman's castle
would be • very oeld and cheerless one without this
'substitute for the log and the fagot; but industry itself
threaten, to flag for want of the genial aid. A little
economy or common-sense may help us out of our
trouble in our own houses, and teach us that to waste
not is to want not; but what is to be done with the
workshop, the forge, and the mill? Here Is all this
forest of tall chimney stalks. Will it ever cease to offer
up its dark and daily incense of honest, though not
always grateful, Industry? We have not yet come to
that. Such changes are, happily, gradual.