Britain for the British

by Robert Blatchford

Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of the Press against the colliers.

But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the royalty on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord for getting the iron from his land.

Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be as just and as possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?

The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty owner does nothing.

The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a ton in the cost of coal.

Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in Cumberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this—

In 1885 a firm in West Cumberland had half their furnaces idle, not because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high royalties demanded by the landowner. This company had to import iron from Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian Government. With a furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron per week the royalties amounted to £202, while the wages to everyone, from the manager downwards, amounted to only £95. This very company is now amongst our foreign competitors.

The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the wages.

The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian competitors.

Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the analysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the poor workers' wages.