The Washington herald., 1921-07-01
British Coal Strike Ends.

II NON nearly three months almost 100000 coal
= miners of Great Britain have been idle. They
~AT''- return to work Monday. Their strike has
brought unemployment to a total as great as their
own number. The losses in production outside that
OF coal have been enormous. British foreign trade
has suffered and the men have had to surrender
their main contention that all coal mines should
pool profits and that wages should be a common
charge against the pool
The men have made wonderful fight of stub
bornHendurance. They have yielded as choice be-
tween that and starvation. How they and their
families have lived through the long strike period
is. mystery. But it shows how little people
can subsist under the strain of necessity. 1t is
probable the strike would have been lost in any
event, but this was practically assured from the
start when the pump men called out leaving
the mines to food. The supreme folly of this in
that it would have destroyed the source Of their
own employment, and the will to do this, turned
the public at the start, against the men.
They now accept the wage scale which Of
fered, and against which they struck The govern
1nent supplies temporary bonus to even
this, during the period of readjustment. In addi-
ton profit sharing plan is agreed upon which
would seem to exactly what the first demands
were intended to prevent. That IS inequality of
wages in the different fields. Indeed this surely
will be the result unless the pool whatever
profits they get and prorate them equally among
themselves regardless Of their source
Under the profit sharing scheme, the first
charge against each mine is labor and it is agreed
that the wage scale shall not fall below a 20 per
cent increase over the prewar scale. Next will be
paid all operating charges Invested capital will
then receive Ely for each EIoo that has been paid
for labor, ~ per cent of the labor cost. Right
here would seem to be an inducement not to cut,
but rather to support wages the greater wage
charge the greater this initial on investment.
All above this return capital if there is any such
surplus, is to be divided this same basis of So
parts to labor and II parts to capital.
The mines that are lean and expensive to oper-
ate, probably will have such surplus. Some GER
tainly will not. The richer and easily worked
the mine is, the greater will be the surplus.
Wherever there proves to be this excess in profits
or=wt1ere increase in production bring it, the
natural tendency of the men will be to speed up,
increase the tonnage per and get their So per
cect- of the result from this extra effort Also, if
tAEss-excesses pooled and divided with the
workers in the poorer mines, those who work to
gain and to add to them, will probably insist that
the benefited fellow workers, labor just hard
they do. The result of the combination may be
very material increase in the national production of
coal
1t will at least be very interesting experiment.
So much of Great Britains industrial life is based
upon coal; it is important factor in her whole
economic structure, that anything affecting it is of
vital importance. Whether the same plan or prin-
ciple would apply as to other mining industries or
in other countries may may not be settled by this
British experiment