These men perform nearly all the work of production and of distribution. They get the coal, and they carry the coal.
Their wages are lower than those of any of the other seven classes engaged in the coal trade.
They work harder, they work longer hours, and they run more risk to life and limb than any other class in the trade; and yet!——
And yet the only means of reducing the price of coal is said to be a reduction in the collier's wage.
Now, I say that in reducing the price of coal the last thing we should touch is the collier's wage.
If we must reduce the price of coal, we should begin with the owners of royalties. As to the "right" of the royalty owner to exact a fine from labour, I will content myself with making two claims—
1. That even if the royalty owner has a "right" to a royalty, yet there is no reason why he, of all the nine classes engaged in the coal trade, should be the only one whose receipts from the sale of coal shall never be lessened, no matter how the price of coal may fall.
2. Since the royalty owner and the landlord are the only persons engaged in the trade who cannot make even a pretence of doing anything for their money, and since the price of coal must be lowered, they should be the first to bear a reduction in the amount they charge on the sale of it.
Next to the landlords and royalty owners I should place the railway companies. The prices charged for the carriage of coal are very high, and if the price of coal must be reduced, the profits made on the carriage should be reduced.
Third in order come the coal owners, with what they call "a fair rate of interest on invested capital."