The Liberalisation of Industry
The same solution must be applied to that sphere. This does not mean transferring the machinery of votes and elections to industry. It means finding channels in industry whereby every person may exercise his legitimate aspiration, if he should feel one, of being more than a mere routine worker while still perhaps doing routine work, and of contributing in an effective manner his ideas, thoughts, suggestions, experience, to the direction and improvement of the industry. We have satisfied the desire for self-expression as citizens, and we have now to find some means of satisfying a similar desire for self-expression as workers in industry. That is all very vague. Does it mean co-partnership, profit-sharing, co-operative societies, joint committees, national wages boards, guild socialism, nationalisation? It may mean any or all of these things—one in one industry, one in another, or several different forms in the same industry—whatever experiment may prove to be best suited to each industry. But it must mean opportunity of experiment, and experiment by all concerned. It must mean greater recognition by employers of their trusteeship on behalf of their work-people as well as their shareholders; greater recognition of the public as opposed to the purely proprietary view of industry; and recognition that the man who contributes his manual skill and labour and risks his life and limb is as much a part of the industry as a man who contributes skill in finance, management, or salesmanship, or the man who risks his capital.
Coming to the mines, that is, the coal mining industry (with a few incidental mines such as stratified ironstone, fireclay, etc., which need not complicate our argument), the first step to the solution of the problem of the mines, i.e. the collieries, the mining industry, is the solution of the problem of the minerals. This distinction is not at first sight obvious to all, but it is fundamental. The ownership and leasing of the coal is one thing, the business or industry of mining it is quite another. State ownership of the former does not involve State ownership of the latter. That is elementary and fundamental. It lies at the root of what is to follow.
Will you picture to yourself a section of the coal-mining industry in the common form of the pictures one sees of an Atlantic liner cut neatly in two so as to expose to view what is taking place on each deck. On top you have the landowner, under the surface of whose land coal, whether suspected or not, has been discovered. He may decide to mine the coal himself, but more frequently—indeed, usually—he grants to some persons or company a lease to mine that coal on payment of what is called a royalty of so much for every ton extracted. Thereupon he is called the mineral-owner or royalty-owner, and the persons or company who actually engage in the business or industry of coal mining and pay him the royalties we shall call the colliery-owners. Do not be misled by the confusing term “coal-owners.” Very frequently the colliery-owners are called the “coal-owners,” and their associations “coal-owners’ associations.” That is quite a misnomer. The real coal-owner is the landowner, the royalty-owner, though it may well happen that the two functions of owning the minerals and mining them may be combined in the same person. Below the colliery-owners we find the managerial staff; below them what may be called the non-commissioned officers of the mine, such as firemen or deputies, who have most important duties as to safety, and below them the miners as a whole, that is, both the actual coal-getters or hewers or colliers and all the other grades of labour who are essential to this the primary operation.