Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/832

 10 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL a less degree, in the second division; in the third alone can anything be hoped from a change of merely external circumstances. The evidence for the above statistics rests upon careful inquiry into the history of each family; the information has been obtained from those most likely to know the real facts, such as relations, landlords, and employers, and when the statements of these have conflicted inquiry has been continued until satisfactory proof has been arrived at. H. DENDY THE LABOUR COMMISSION. Tm Labour Commission, which resumed its sittings in October, has continued its investigations into the mining industry and the London docks, and begun to hear evidence about seafaring work and the woolien manufacture. The new mining evidence relates entirely to coal-nining in Northumberland, Lancashire, Fifeshire and South Wales, and is remarkable for the testimony it unanimously furnishes to the great improvement which has taken place in all these different districts in the relations between master and nen, during the last thirty years, by virtue of more or less organised conferences between representatives of the parties. Even in Fife, where there is no permanent joint committee, Mr. Weir said they had been able to settle their county disputes by referring them to a committee composed of an equal number of representatives of each side, and their local disputes by a deputation to the nanager of the mine and the intervention of the secretary of the Miners' Union, and both there and in Lancashire they are feeling their way at present to a permanent board and a sliding scale, though they could not yet agree on a basis. In Wales, according to the representatives of four different mining associations, Messrs. Morgan, Rees, Onions and Richards, things have gone on much more smoothly since they adopted the sliding-scale system in 1882; eleven advances in wages, and one reduction had taken place since the end of 1888 without a single day's loss of work; but they complained, as the Durham miners had already done, of the delays that occurred in the application of the scale, and they com- plained even more of the impossibility of settling disputes in the interpretation of the scale for want of an umpire with a casting vote, In Northumberland, on the other hand, where the sliding-scale system was in operation from 1879 to 1887, and then terminated at the instance of the men, Mr. J. D. Weeks, mining engineer, said that the men had never recovered confidence in it, because they conld not see their way to a satisfactory basis, and that negotiations were now going on for the establishment of a new Wages Board, which, he said, wodd be virtually a living sliding scale, because it would decide wages ques- tions according to certain general principles, with reference mainly to prices, but looking concurrently to other elements of cost. The men