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Show A TEMPORARY REMEDY The coal crisis, which has hung like a dark cloud over Great Britian for the past several weeks, has been averted temporarily, but by a plan which is. far wide of British tradition. tradi-tion. The coal operators declared that because of European competition competi-tion they could no longer sell coal unless un-less wages were reduced. The miners countered with . the statement that they were barely subsisting and that a reduction in their pay meant slow starvation. The threatened strike would have tied up industry in great Britian as the other labor unions had decided to support the miners and to refuse to transport or handle any coal after the strike was declared. ' At the darkest hour Premier Baldwin intervened with an offer by the government to make up the differences dif-ferences to the operators in cash, if the men would continue work. In other words the government agreed to subsidize the coal mines. The agreement is to last until May, 1926, and in the meantime a fact-finding commission is to try to find the remedy rem-edy for the mining trouble. The settlement, which is temporary tempor-ary at best, seems unsatisfactory. The miners are going back to work s"ullenly and rioting and raids on "the pits in the anthracite mines, continued after the peace pact was signed. The communists there are said to be using shot guns, and one of the miners, bitterly disappointed when the order to stike was cancelled said to a newspaper news-paper correspondent that the miners would rather starve while not working work-ing and at the same time make a fight for it, than to nearly starve while working, with no hope of relief. The secretary of the Miners' Federation Fed-eration stated: "An armistice has been declared, but the issues of the next nine months will be far greater than the mere wage issue. Last Friday was Good Friday not the crucifixion of the workers but the crucifixion of those who have been exploiting them." On the other hands the business interests of the country are dissatisfied dissatis-fied too. They object to the promise to extend financial aid to the mine owners and wonder what it is going to cost the already heavily burdened taxpayers. The next few months will be perilous peri-lous ones for the British commonwealth, common-wealth, but the nation has travelled perilous roads before and will probably probab-ly come safely through this one. With the government, however, paying out millions in the way of pensions to the unemployed, and preparing pre-paring to pay millions more to subsidize sub-sidize the coal industry, the outlook is not an encouraging one. |
