Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/542

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA THE LABOUR COMMISSION THE Labour Commission has already examined more than fifty witnesses in only three branches of industry Durham mining, Lan- cashire cotton manufacture, and London dock and riverside labour. The first two have few complaints, and make little demand for legislation. Mr. W. H. Patterson and Mr. John Wilson, M.P., who gave evidence as representatives of the Durham coal miners, had nothing to ask for except an amendment of the Employers' Liability Act to prohibit the practice of contracting out of its requirements, and some measure for the protection of trade union leaders from dismissal by their masters for their participation in trade agitations, although they admitted that such dismissals occurred very rarely now. On the eight hours they said their trade was overwhelmingly opposed to a legislative enactment, but they maintained a scrupulous reserve about the reasons for the opposition, Mr. Wilson, however, expressing his own private opinion that the effect of an eight hours' law would be to compel the Durham miners to remain an hour longer below than they do now. The boys who were still ten hours under ground were, they said, a very small percentage of the underground hands, and their hours would be easiest shortened by negotiation, because the owners had no objection to it, and the men had already last year got the boys' hours reduced from eleven to ten. The most interesting part of their evidence was about the settlement of differences by their joint com- mittees and sliding scales. From 1877 to 1889 wages were regulated in the Durham coal trade by a sliding scale, fixed usually for two years, according to which they rose and fell in a certain proportion with the price of coal; but in 1889 the system was given up, because the miners, while still thinking the principle good, believed the proportion fixed upon for its basis was disadvantageous to them, and because they refused to submit so important a matter to arbitration. Since then local differences about wages were settled by a joint committee com- posed of delegates in equal numbers of the Coal Owners' Association and the Miners' Association, with the County Court judge for paid chairman, general or county questions being referred to a special comnittee. There were three joint committees one for miners, one