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is hostile to improved machinery, and is determinedly bent upon limiting output. It is ominous that, whereas British coal production per man has steadily been decreasing during the last thirty years, American, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian coal production per man has been steadily increasing. The British miner has unfortunately succeeded in more than nullifying the technical improvements made in coal production which in other countries have greatly increased production per man.

While an increasing coal production per man in America, Australia, and New Zealand has brought about the cheapening of coal, or has at least prevented it becoming dearer, greatly increased wages notwithstanding, the reduction in the British output per man, combined with increased wages, has fatally increased the price of British coal. This will appear from the figures given in the table on page 241.

The figures given show that the British coal-miners have succeeded in reducing the output of coal per man and creating an artificial scarcity. In former years British coal was approximately as cheap as American coal, and in some years it was cheaper. Of that advantage the manufacturing industries have now been deprived. Of late years, owing to increased wages and reduced output, English coal prices have been 50 per cent. higher than American coal prices. Hence the British manufacturing industries suffer not only from insufficient output due to inefficient machinery and insufficient power to drive it, but also from unnecessarily high coal prices. McCulloch wrote in his Account of the British Empire':

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Our coal mines have been sometimes called the Black Indies, and it is certain that they have conferred a thousand times more real advantage on us than we have derived from the conquest of the Mogul Empire, or than we should have reaped from the Dominion of Mexico and Peru. . . . Our coal mines may be regarded as vast magazines of hoarded or warehoused power; and unless some such radical change should be made on the steam engine as should very decidedly

lessen the quantity of fuel required to keep it in motion, or some equally serviceable machine, but moved by different means, be introduced, it is not at all likely that any nation should come into successful competition with us in those departments in which steam engines, or machinery moved by steam, may be advantageously employed.

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Average Value of Coal per Ton at the Pit's Mouth.

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McCulloch, as his contemporary Mr. Cobden, believed that England was, and always would remain, the workshop of the world because this country had then virtually a monopoly in the production of coal. It has been shown on another page that this country produced in 1845 twice as much coal as did all the other countries of the world combined. By making coal artificially scarce and dear,

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the British miners, who in their fatal policy have been supported by short-sighted Governments of either party, have taken away from the British industries one of the greatest advantages which they possessed and threaten to ruin them altogether.

The masters, the men, and the politicians have probably been equally responsible for the inefficiency of the British manufacturing industries and of British mining. British employers have come to consider business to be a bore, if not a nuisance. During the last few decades they were quite satisfied with the condition of their business as long as they made an income with little exertion, and they were ready to leave the supervision and direction of their affairs to a manager. They took little note of the scientific and technical progress made in other countries. They looked upon new methods, upon improved organisation, upon scientific processes of production, and upon improved machinery with indifference, if not with dislike. That indifference to progress was particularly noticeable in the case of limited liability companies, especially when they were controlled by amateur directors, or by men who had only a very small stake in the business. Compared with the United States, British transport by railway also is lamentably behindhand and inefficient, and the result is that American railway freights are far lower than British, although American railway wages are three times as high as are British wages.

While British masters were opposed to industrial progress and to all innovations from conservatism, from indifference, or from sheer laziness, their men looked upon improved organisation and machinery with positive and undisguised hostility, for they had been taught by their leaders that their greatest interest lay in a high wage and in a low output, that every increase in output injured the other workers and themselves. It seems incredible that such a foolish fallacy should have been allowed to restrict and stifle the development of the British industries. Unfor

tunately the British workers as a whole have been almost as hostile to the introduction of modern methods and improved machinery as they were in the machine-smashing era a century ago. The world is a great co-operative society. Men are paid money wages, but as they spend them in purchasing goods they are in reality paid in goods, in food, clothes, &c. A man who produces food is paid in clothes, and a man who makes clothes has to buy food. If both produce scientifically' as little as possible they will lack food and clothes, whatever their money wages may be. If, on the other hand, both produce much there will be abundance and prosperity. Production determines wages. Small production and high wages are incompatible. High production and high wages go hand in hand. In the United States wages are from two to three times as high as in this country because production per man is from two to three times as great; and as production is from two to three times as great, goods are very little dearer in the United States than in England, high wages notwithstanding. The result is that the very highly paid American workmen can purchase with their large wages an abundance of food, clothes, &c., and can save large amounts in addition.

In the lengthy table summarising British and American production per worker per year printed on pages 236-237, the gross value of the goods produced is given. Of course, a worker who converts in a day a piece of leather into a pair of boots worth fifteen shillings does not really produce fifteen shillings' worth of goods. To arrive at the real value of his day's work we must deduct from the value of the goods made by him the cost of the raw material and the general factory expenses. By deducting these we arrive at the net production per worker per week. Details will be found in the table on page 244. The figures given are based on the Censuses of Production.

It will be noticed that in the trades enumerated the American workers produce per week as a rule from two to three times as much, net, as their British colleagues. As

no worker can possibly obtain for his work more than the entire value of his work, it is clear that the British worker in cardboard boxes, for instance, cannot obtain more than £1 per week unless he produces more. This table explains why wages were high in America and relatively low

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in this country, up to the outbreak of the present War, in the course of which British wages have materially increased.

Unfortunately, the politicians of both parties have very largely contributed to the backwardness and stagnation which is noticeable in British business. Desiring to obtain votes, they have unceasingly flattered both masters and men. They have told the employers that Great Britain

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