Letters and Papers Concerning the Trans-Persian Railway and Other Railways in Persia [‎178r] (355/442)

281
Coal Mines
282
[ 25 May 1914 ]
(Noi thumberland) Bill.
surprised that when such a principle has
been recognised for forty years an attempt
should now be made to upset these good
arrangements between employers and
employed.
I do not believe that this measure has
the general support of the mining com
munity. I know that there are a certain
number of men who are anxious for Parlia
ment to interfere in everything between
employers and employed, but in the main
these are men who would never be satisfied.
They are Socialists, large numbers of them,
who want to render it impossible to carry
on the great industries of the country
under private management. I cannot
think that your Lordships will have any
sympathy with a view of that kind. The
noble Lord alluded to the hours worked
by the boys. The boys used to work a
shift of ten hours. An effort was made
to reduce their hours, and they have been
reduced from time to time. Long before
the Eight Hours Act became law the
owners were approached with a view to
reducing the hours if possible, and the
miners of Northumberland were asked to
present a scheme which would have that
effect. What was that scheme ? It
was practically the three-shift scheme,
which has now been adopted. The noble
Lord alluded to the letter which I wrote
in November last in reply to a corres
pondent who asked whether I could
suggest some way in which the three-shift
system could be abolished, and as the
noble Lord has referred to my letter
perhaps your Lordships will allow me to
read the whole of it. I then wrote—
“ The conditions of pits vary so greatly that
I feel some hesitation at expressing a definite
opinion ; but so far as my general knowledge
enables me to do so, I believe that the best
course for the miners to take, if they wish to
bring about the abolition of the three-shift
system, would be to make the hewers’ shift eight
hours bank to bank instead of seven hours, or
I believe, six hours fifty minutes, as it is at
present, and thereby enable the owners to revert
to the two-shift system. As you doubtless know,
the three-shift system, which is criticised in the
pamphlet which you have been good enough to
send me, is really the result in Durham and
Northumberland of the passing of the Eight
Hours Act, which was opposed for some years
by the miners of these two northern counties,
who afterwards, as I think unfortunately, changed
their attitude towards the Bill. I believe that
in other parts of the British coalfield hew r ers, like
the rest of their underground fellow' workmen,
work an eight hours’ shift, which is the time
permitted by the Eight Hours Mines Act. In
Durham and Northumberland the hewers so far
have been unwilling to work for the same number )
\ of hours as the rest of the underground workmen,
and thus it came to pass that the three-shift
' system was found in many pits to be the only
alternative to reducing the output, which pri
marily depends upon the hewer, and exposing
the owners to the inevitable loss and difficulty
in competing with pits in other parts of the
country. Whether the adoption of my views would
necessitate any alteration in the existing conditions
| of employment of the hewers in your district I
do not know', but I cannot help feeling that,
| provided the principle of the suggestion w r ere
accepted by the hewers, it ought not to be
impossible for the workmen and their employers
to arrive at some mutually satisfactory arrange
ment if the whole subject was approached and
discussed between them in a businesslike spirit
of reciprocal consideration.”
That practically states the whole case.
When the Eight Hours Act was passed
a great many difficulties had to be dealt
with in order to bring things into a satis
factory An East India Company trading post. condition. That Act caused a
complete revolution in our system of
working in the North of England, and it
took scores of meetings between the
employers and the workmen before satis
factory An East India Company trading post. arrangements could be made to
work it for the benefit of both.
You must not forget this fact, that while
there are different interests between
employers and workmen they have so
many interests which are the same that
you cannot injure one without ultimately
injuring the other. The class of men we
have in the North of England in the main
recognise that. We have a splendid class
of workmen in Northumberland and
Durham, and I am satisfied that they
are only anxious to see the industry with
which they are connected carried on in
such a way that while their conditions of
labour are satisfactory the owners shall
have some reasonable recompense for the
1 capital they put into it. At one of these
meetings between the owners and the
men, Mr. Burt said that the crucial question
was the lengthening of the hewers’ hours.
Could this be arranged the parties, he
thought, could get over the difficulties on
the other questions. Then Mr. Fenwick
asked one of the miners’ representatives
to put forward particulars of a scheme of
working without the lengthening of the
hewers’ hours. This scheme included a
third shift for hewers, and so far as the
hewers are concerned it differed very
little from the three-shift system ultimately
agreed with the men. It was understood
that if the seven hours, or the six hours
fifty minutes, shift was discontinued, there
would have to be three shifts such as we
are working at the present time.