In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the food supply.
For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is entitled Our Food Supply in Time of War, and can be ordered through the Clarion. The price is 6d.
CHAPTER XI HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE
The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.
We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the British worker.
We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more or less depend: I mean the coal trade.
At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they were asking for coal.
The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.