The Progress of the World. 



227 



Great Britain stands to-day 



On the Brink (March ist) on the very edge of 



of Hell. Hell. One million coal-miners, 



representing the whole body of 

 workmen engaged in coal-mining, have struck work : 

 — Yorks and N'. .Midlands, 235,000; South Walts, 

 220,000; Scotland, 130,000: Northumberland, 

 120,000; Durham, 110,000; Midlands and South, 

 105,000; North Wales, 70,000; N. and E. Lanes., 

 45,000. If they refuse to go back to work until their 

 demands are conceded, and if those demands are not 

 conceded, the country will be plunged into civil war. 

 Not civil war of the ordinary kind, in which two armed 

 forces appeal to the arbitrament of arms as to which 

 shall rule, but civil wdr of a far more terrible kind — 

 civil war in which the sole arbiter will be stars'ation 

 — starvation endured not by the combatants alone or 

 even in chief, but the starvation of a nation. Starvation 

 is a far more cruel arbiter than War. War has its 

 laws ; starvation knows no law. War confines the 

 combat as far as possible'to the armed forces of discip- 

 lined combatants. Starvation wreaks its worst 

 tortures upon non-combatants, upon women, and most 

 of all on infants. There is a certain chivalry in war. 

 There are many noble qualities evoked on the battle- 

 field. In the arena in which Famine sits as judge there 

 are no such compensating advantages, for if man be 

 deprived of food for a certain number of days he is 

 converted first into a savage, then into a wild beast. 

 .Vnd it is now being realised for the first time that 

 in our highly complex hand-to-mouth civilisation, in 

 this modern society of ours, which is as delicate as the 

 works of a watch, it is in the power of a single deter- 

 mined trade union to convert a whole nation of 

 civilised men into an anarchic multitude of wild beasts 

 ravenin;,' fi>r prey. 



Since the world began there has 



Our Hnnd-to-Mouth "^'^cr been a nation of forty 



Civilisation. millions that lived so absolutely; 



from hand to mouth as the British 

 nation. Down to the middle of last century the 

 country was to a large extent self-supporting. The 

 nation also was organi.sed, .so to speak, in water-tight 

 compartments. Railwaj's were still in their infancy. 

 Each district was compelled to rely more or less on its 

 own resources. A hundred years ago each household 

 laid in stores of food to supply its needs till the grass 

 grew again in the fields. To-day all this is changed. 

 The country cannot feed itself. Two-thirds of its food 

 come from o^■ersea. No one lays in stores of food. 

 Everyone lives from hand to mouth, relying with 

 implicit faith upon the continuous smooth working of 



the vast system of railways, steamships and banks. 

 And the power which kept the whole system going 

 with the regularity of the planets was coal. Without 

 coal it is impossible to do anything. In old times 

 the villagers drew their water from the village well. 

 To-day there are at least twenty millions of persons in 

 Great Britain who would die of thirst if th(; pumping- 

 engines at the city waterworks could not be kept 

 going. Our cities would be in darkness without coal. 

 The sewage of London could not be disposed of with- 

 out coal. Our manufacturing industries would be 

 paralysed. Outside the purely agricultural districts 

 everyone would be reduced, without coal, to absolute 

 luck of food and drink, light and warmth. And to-dav, 

 because a million miners refuse to go to work excepting 

 on their own terms, this immeasurable disaster is 

 threatening the whole nation. 



Sixty-five per cent, of the mine- 

 The Questions owners are willing to agree to the 

 at Issue. principle of a minimum wage by 



their own free will. The remainder 

 are willing to give in if compelled to do so by Act of 

 Parliament. For : Over sixty-five per cent. — English 

 Federated area, comprising Lancashire, Yorkshire, 

 Midlands, and North Wales, Durham, Cumberland, 

 Northumberland. Against : Under thirty-five per cent. 

 — Scotland, South Wales, Forest of Dean, Somerset, 

 and Bristol. But in both cases it is stipulated that 

 the question of what the minimum rate of wages should 

 be in each district should be the subject of negotiation. 

 The men's demand insists upon the following individual 

 miner's minimum wage rates per day for piece-workers 

 at the coal face : — 



s. il. s. .1, 



YorksliifL' 7 6 Bristol 411 



Lancashire 7 o Cumberland 6 6 



Miilland Federation Scotland 6 o 



6i. lo 7 o South Wales 



Derliy 7s. ij lo 7 6 7s. ij<l. In 7 6 



Nollini;hamshire 7 6 Northumberland 



.\oith Wales 6 o 6s. to 7 2 



Leicestershire 7 2 Durham 6 ij 



South Derby 6 6 Forest of Dean 5 10 



Somerset 4 II Cleveland 5 10 



Some security should be given that the payment of 

 the minimum wage should not be made to cover 

 malingering. Further, it is asked that the men should 

 give some guarantee that bargains deliberately entered 

 into should not be cynically set aside the moment the 

 miners think there is a good opportunity for a new 

 deal. To these limitations the miners object. If the\ 

 [H'rsist ill their objections we shall no longer stand on 

 the brink of Hell ; we shall be plunged into the abyss. 



