Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/833

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 811 wanted this Board to be presided over by a chairman with a casting vote, who should practically be umpire between the two sides, but Mr. Weeks said the coal-owners would never agree to submit a general question of wages to arbitration, although he readily admitted that the system had worked satisfactorily to both parties in the settlement of merely local disputes. These local disputes, amounting to fifty-two in the year on an average, were settled at present in Northumberland by a joint committee of equal numbers of masters and men, with the County Coroner for chairman. Among miners' demands for legislation. the most general seems to be for the requirement of certificates of competency to prevent unskilled labour being brought into the mines, and for the prohibition of contracting out of the Employers' Liability Act. On the Eight Hours' Question curious diversities appeared. Mr. Morgan, on the part of the Aberdare and Merthyr Miners' Association, wanted neither eight hours from bank to bank nor eight hours at the face, but eight hours winding of coal, and asked for the express prohibition of the double shift in the Eight Hours Bill. Per- haps the most interesting evidence on the Eight Hours Question was on the proposal of Mr. G. Jaques, a Northumberland miner, to solve the difficulty about shortening boy labour in that county by having three six hour shifts for meh, and two eight hour shifts for boys. Mr. Weeks, as a coal-owner, said this was quite impracticable, because it was im- possible to get boys enough for two shifts in the neighbourhood of mines, and it was impossible for the stone men to do their work in the six hours that would be left them on this system after the three shifts were done. Mr. Jaques replied that boys enough could be got, that there was considerable room for improvements in the drawing of coal, and that the stonemen's work could be done in ways which he described with some detail. In the evidence on the docks and the shippiug trade, we find less appearance of the things that make for peace. Much of it is un- happily taken up with charges or complaints against the tactics used on either side. Colonel Birt, Manager of Millwall Docks, indeed, who gave some very interesting evidence, admitted that the late strike had done much good. It had opened the dirocrs' eyes to the existence of excessive overtime of which they were not aware, and now overtime was very rare except on mail and passenger steamers. He was entirely in fayour of labour urrions, because it was much easier to deal with a responsible and reasonable body, than with an irresponsible mass of men, and he only wished the power of the unions was stronger, because all the difficulties they had were from men who broke the rules of the union, and to get them put right the directors had to appeal to the executive of the union. But he expressed a strong opinion that there was great danger in a union which had no qnarrel of their own with their employers making common cause with other unions out of nere s)nlthy. It was not right to make the docks suffer because other people qnarrelled, and if it came to that, he said,