The 

 Colliers' Strike. 



LONDON, March ist, 1512. 

 All political questions arc over- 

 shadowed at this moment by the 

 colliers' strike. That a million 

 miners should simultaneously lay 

 down their tools and take holiday for an indefinite 

 period in order to induce their employers to concede 

 not merely the principle of the minimum wage, but 

 the precise minimum which the 

 men have fixed themselves, is 

 a signifirant symptom of the 

 progress that has been made of 

 late years towards the realisation 

 of Mazzini's ideal of association. 

 It is the latest illustration of the 

 tendency of mankind to organise 

 itself according to its interests 

 rather than according to geo- 

 graphy. The new units of 

 organisation ignore frontiers, 'i'he 

 miners of I'Vancc and Germany are 

 reported to have declared their 

 intention to join the British miners 

 if the strike continued. The aero- 

 plane will probably expedite the 

 process of reori^'anisation. The 

 relative importance of the terri- 

 torial .State shrinks every day in 

 comparison with the ever-increasing 

 interests of that vast ganglion of in- 

 ternational inlirests which constitute the community. 

 Mankind is but dimly conscious of the transformation 

 which is going on silently in our midst. It will probably 

 be by the outbreak of an international war between 

 two jarring intern.itional interests that the absurdity 

 of the old frontiers will be made manifest. An inter- 

 national coal strike might advertise to the world the 

 anachronism of the old wur system of Europe. 



The 



Dethronement 



of 



King Coal. 



Piiity Chrvmclf. ' 

 The Atlas of the 



It is significant that the great 

 strike of colliers should have coin- 

 cided with the arrival of the first 

 large oil-driven steamer in British 

 watei's. The Selandia — a 5,000-ton steamer of the 

 East Asiatic Company — is a ship of destiny, perhaps 

 in more ways than one a ship of doom. The Trojan 

 horse did not carry in its bowels more fatal freight 

 than the Selandia brought in her 

 bunkers. For she heralds (i) the 

 dethronement of King Coal, the 

 monarch upon whose throne rests 

 British commercial and industrial 

 prosperity ; (2) the scrapping of 

 the Dreadnoughts ; and (3) the 

 destruction of one of the greatest 

 of our assets as rulers of the sea. 

 Lord Fisher told me two years ago 

 that in five years the whole of 

 our mercantile marine would have 

 to be rebuilt owing to the coming 

 of the motor-steamer. What he 

 said as to its cfTect on the Navy I 

 will not repeat. But in the Selan- 

 dia we have the first-fruits of the 

 ( oming revolution. .She was built 

 in Copenhagen for the Far Eastern 

 trade. Her speed is only tweh-e 

 knots, and she only carries two 

 eight-cylinder Diesel engines. l?ut 

 she is the pioneer of swift monsters which will rival the 

 Lion in speed, and exceed it in endurance and in power. 

 The Selandia can fill her bunkers with 900 tons of oil 

 in a very few minutes, and then she is provided with 

 motive power to drive her 20,000 miles without needing 

 to replenish her stor". If oil costs, let us say, 37s. 6d. 

 per ton. this means that twenty pcnn; worth of oil 

 will drive a 5,000-ton steamer across u mile of .salt 



Industrial World. 



