Coal : the immediate future a psychologist's view / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
[1936?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Coal : the immediate future a psychologist's view / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    257-9 million tons in x929 and from 287-4 million tons in 1913 ; while the number of employees in coal mines had fallen from 952,000 in 1928 to 798,000 in 1934. (These figures are derived from the recent P.E.P. Broadsheet No. 60.) We may bewail, from the narrow point of view, this reduction in the number of miners employed. But when we remember that nearly 70 per cent, of the cost of coal pro¬ duction is due to the wages of personnel, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that, if that cost is to be diminished in order to induce a greater demand, the high percentage payable to human labour must be reduced ; and in practice it can only be reduced by lessening the number of workers, not by lessen¬ ing their present low wages. Yet if the demand for coal can be increased by reducing its cost, the question arises whether more workers will not ultimately be needed so as to cope with that increased demand. When the linotype was invented, its use threw thousands of hand-compositors out of work ; but the resulting reduction in the price of newspapers has since created such a vast demand for them that there are now far more employees engaged in the production of penny news¬ papers than there were when newspapers were sold at many times their present price. The same has happened in the case of bicycles, clothing, wireless apparatus, etc. But in the case of coal, the chief immediate remedy has been supposed to lie in raising its selling price to the general public. Unfortunately, about 80 per cent, of the reduced output of coal in this country has been due to its lessened demand for export or for steamships plying for foreign trade. Yet, for home consumption, coal has been latterly used in increasing quantities by electrical undertakings, by blast furnaces and by iron and steel works, despite modern improvements in its more economical utilisation. Just over 75 per cent, of our saleable coal is destined for home consumption. Even, however, if the employees working underground at the coal face can never be restored to their former number, the wider point of view raises a doubt as to whether this is to be nationally deplored, provided, of course, that the unem¬ ployed and their offspring can be transferred to other develop¬ ing occupations. We may feel disposed to wonder whether, at least in its present form, coal-mining is a desirable employ¬ ment for civilised man. We may recall the days when, before