Industrially, their situation to-day is not unlike their political situation a hundred years ago. Such influence as they have got is exerted almost entirely outside the constitution of industry, and very often in opposition to it. Their trade unions, workers’ committees, councils of action, triple alliances, and so forth, are not part of the regular industrial machine, and too often are found athwart its path. They are members of an industry with substantially no constitutional control over it, just as a hundred years ago they were members of a State whose destinies they had no constitutional power to direct.
This does not mean that a hundred years ago every working man wanted the political vote, nor that now he wants to sit on a committee and control his industry. It meant that a substantial number of the more enlightened and ambitious did—a large enough number to be a source of permanent discontent until they got it. The same is true to-day in the case of many industries. Many men in all classes of society are content to do their job, take their money, go home and work in their gardens, or course dogs or fly pigeons. They are very good citizens. Many others, equally good citizens, take a more mental and active interest in their job, and want to have some share in the direction of it. This class is increasing and should not be discouraged. They constitute our problem. The Liberal solution of a gradually extended franchise has cured the political ferment. Political controversy is still acute, and long may it remain so, as it is the sign of a healthy political society. But the ugly, ominous, revolutionary features of a hundred years ago in the sphere of politics have substantially gone or been transferred to the industrial sphere.
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.
The Question of Royalties
Coming back to the royalty-owner, you will see his functions are not very onerous. He signs receipts for his royalties and occasionally negotiates the terms of a lease. But as regards the coal-mining industry, he “toils not, neither does he spin.” I do not say that reproachfully, for he (and his number has been estimated at 4000) is doubtless a good husband, a kind father, a busy man, and a good citizen. But as regards this industry he performs no essential function beyond allowing the colliery-owners to mine his coal.
What is the total amount annually paid in coal royalties? We can arrive at an approximate estimate in this way: Average output of coal for five years before the war, roughly, 270,000,000 tons; average royalty, 5½d. per ton, which means, after deducting coal for colliery consumption and the mineral rights duty paid to the State by the royalty-owner, roughly £5,500,000 per annum paid in coal royalties. Regarding this as an annuity, the capital value is 70 millions sterling if we allow a purchaser 8 per cent. on his money (12.5 years’ purchase), or 55½ millions sterling if we allow him 10 per cent. (10 years’ purchase). For all practical purposes the annuity may be regarded as perpetual.
Now the State must acquire these royalties. That is the only practicable solution, and a condition precedent to any modification in the structure of the coal-mining industry so long as the participants in that industry continue unwilling or unable to agree upon those modifications themselves. Why and how? (1) First and foremost because until then the State is not master in its own house, and cannot make those experiments in modifying conditions in the industry which I believe to be essential to bring it into a healthy condition instead of being a standing menace to the equilibrium of the State—as it was before the war, and during the war, and has been since the war; (2) the technical difficulties and obstacles resulting from the ownership of the minerals being in the hands of several thousand private landowners and preventing the economic working of coal are enormous. You will find abundant evidence of this second statement in the testimony given by Sir Richard Redmayne and the late Mr. James Gemmell and others before the Sankey Commission in 1919.