districts remained; and the aspiration towards uniformity embodied in the Federation was checked at that point.

I have dealt at some length with this past history because it goes far to explain the otherwise unintelligible tenacity of the 1921 demand for a national board and a national pool. These expedients, and particularly the pool, are intended to meet the circumstances of the moment, but they are organically connected with a long-drawn movement; they are expressions of the will towards solidarity among the men engaged in this industry. Its hold on them and its intuitive character seem to me demonstrated by the ballot taken on June 15 after eleven weeks' existence on strike pay and credit. It is what literary fashion now calls an 'urge.' But, before saying anything further about the present issue, it is necessary to review briefly the interval between 1912 and 1921, the effects of the war, and the question of nationalisation.

The war affected the mining industry in many ways. Government control relieved owners of responsibility; the indispensability of coal gave enormous power to the miners, and at the same time converted the industry into a refuge from war service, of which men in other occupations took advantage in large numbers, to fill the places left vacant by the patriotic readiness of miners to join the colours. These facts account for what happened. The number of men increased, but their quality, both physical and mental, deteriorated. Hence a falling output, rising costs, and rising price of coal. Further, the Government taught the miners that they would get nothing unless they struck or threatened to strike, and then they would get anything they asked for. This lesson, which had the effect of encouraging a militant policy and depriving the moderate wing of all authority, was taught in July 1915, before the Government took control, by the strike in South Wales. The agreement of 1910 was coming to an end there and needed renewal; but the owners, doubtless influenced by the uncertain future, dallied with it and put it off until the men, convinced that they were being played with and tricked, became incensed and threatened to strike. The Government, into whose hands the owners had resigned

negotiations, proclaimed the area under the newly passed Munitions Act, which made striking illegal; whereupon all the men immediately came out in flat defiance. The newspapers clamoured for Mr Lloyd George, the Munitions Minister, to go down in the character of a 'great conciliator' and 'settle the strike.' He did so with some colleagues, and the strike was 'settled' by their begging the miners to go back to work on their own terms.

Settlement of that sort is a simple act which any one can practise, and if it had preceded the strike it would have inspired confidence in the justice of the Government among the miners and other trade unionists, for the men were originally in the right. The mischief was that, in striking after the district had been proclaimed, they were in direct rebellion against the law; and surrender then had fatal effects. It destroyed the authority of the Government, taught the miners that they could defy the law with impunity, and get by force what was refused them in justice, and broke up the industrial truce, already shaken on the Clyde in the previous February. Gradually the lesson was assimilated by other trades, and reinforced by repetition of the process of surrendering to force what had been refused to argument. Hence the incessant trouble-demands, refusals, threats to strike, and strikes -throughout the war and afterwards, particularly in the 'indispensable' industries. Mines, as I have said, were always in the picture. Their record after 1915, expressed in numbers of men engaged in disputes and days lost, was:

The figures show that the damping down of disputes from motives of patriotism gradually gave place during the war to the opposite movement, which proceeded with increasing velocity after the armistice. Mr Lloyd George had himself encouraged the trade unions to assert themselves. In May 1917 he advised a deputation from the Labour Party to be 'audacious' in demanding

an after-war settlement. The Miners' Federation have only acted on his advice. Early in January 1919 they came to the Government and demanded an advance of 30 per cent. in wages. It was not granted, and at a special conference of the Federation was expanded into a programme including nationalisation, a six-hours' day, and some other things in addition to the 30 per cent. advance. In February a strike ballot was taken and gave a majority of six to one in favour of striking to secure these demands. Meantime Mr Lloyd George had proposed a Commission of Inquiry, and suggested that strike notices should be postponed until it reported. The Sankey inquiry followed, with results that need not be recalled. The great bone of contention was nationalisation. This is an old demand of Socialist origin, but it had undergone considerable modification. The bulk of the miners are not Socialists; and, if they supported nationalisation, it was not for the sake of the principle, but because it meant unification and lay in line with the general movement explained above. But the old formula of nationalisation, involving State ownership and control, had begun to give way to the Syndicalist idea of the mines for the miners ten years ago; and the war experience of Government control greatly increased the distrust of bureaucracy. So nationalisation assumed a different form. Private ownership was to go and mines and minerals were to be vested in the State, but the industry was to be run by those engaged in it-in brief, the Guild idea. This was embodied in a Bill brought forward in 1919.

The chief effect of the Sankey Commission was to harden antagonism between the miners and mine-owners, or at least between their representative bodies. Beyond securing an immediate advance of wages it was barren of practical results. The Government have been bitterly reproached and charged with breach of faith for not giving effect to the Chairman's scheme of nationalisation; but no promise was given on this head, and if it had been Parliament would not have endorsed it. The conduct of the inquiry, which became a theatre for the display of personalities, animosities, and social theories, had made an extremely unfavourable impression on the general public; and the discordant Reports it produced

carried no weight. This was reflected in the failure of the campaign subsequently undertaken by the miners' leaders to win popular support for nationalisation, which met with a very chilly reception. Nor were they much more successful with the Trades Union Congress, which decisively rejected the policy of striking for this object. They accepted the verdict, for the time being at least, and fell back on the old policy of demanding more wages, but found their power diminished and the Government less squeezable. Hence the strike of last autumn, which secured only a conditional advance. The agreement then entered into provided for a sliding scale to regulate wages up to the end of last March and bound the parties to prepare by that date a scheme for their permanent adjustment.

This led up to the present crisis, which was precipitated by the sudden decision of the Government to ante-date decontrol, which had not been expected before the end of August, and to substitute the end of March. Owners and miners had been trying to prepare a scheme and had made progress towards agreement, but decontrol necessitated an immediate adjustment in the difficult circumstances caused by the economic position of the industry, which had undergone a complete and unforeseen change. The bottom had fallen out of the market; the export trade was gone and the home trade failing. Consumers had at last revolted against the reckless exploitation to which they had been subjected in the pursuit of profits and high wages, and the industry was being carried on at loss. The owners were therefore faced by the problem of reducing the cost of production, as the Government flatly refused to continue subsidising the trade with public money, and they proposed to do so by drastic cuts in wages. This necessitated the termination of the existing contracts by notices to take effect at the end of March. The Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation responded by issuing general instructions to all members to let the notices take effect, which meant to treat them as dismissals and not accept employment on the new terms which had been offered.

So the stoppage began. It would be tedious and serve no useful purpose to follow the tortuous course

of the subsequent abortive negotiations in detail. They resulted in certain modifications of the position at first taken up by all the parties. The Government relented about the subsidy so far as to offer 'assistance, either by loan or otherwise, during a short period, in order to mitigate the rapid reduction in wages in the districts most severely affected,' provided that an arrangement was reached between owners and miners as to the rate of wages, fixed on an economic basis.' This eventually became the offer of a grant of 10,000,000l., open until June 18. The owners, for their part, modified their terms, until the proposed cut in wages was brought down to a uniform reduction of 2s. a shift. The miners, too, yielded ground. They dropped the demand for the prolonged subsidisation of the industry from public funds, admitted the necessity of a reduction of wages, and at one time gave intimations that one of 2s. a week would be accepted. The Executive even began to waver about the national pool, which had all along been the great stumbling-block, and had at first prevented even the discussion of wages. These changes justified expectations of peace, when the Executive decided to take a ballot on June 15, because the public had been repeatedly informed from many quarters, including miners and trade union officials, that what the men really cared about was wages, not the pool, which they did not understand.

The result of the ballot completely negatived these hopes and calculations. The issue was so posed on the papers that there was no evading it. The men were asked to vote either for continuing the fight for the national wages board and the national pool with loss of the Government grant, or for returning to work on the terms offered. They cast 435,614 votes for continuing the fight and 180,724 for accepting the terms, which gives a majority of 254,890 for the former course, or 25,000 in excess of the two-thirds majority declared by the Executive as necessary to continue the fight. Moreover, there was a majority in every district for that alternative. No argument for discounting the value of the ballot can get past this result. The wiser course is to accept and try to understand it.

The pool was once more put right in the heart of the