dangerous and unpleasant as the public are sometimes asked to believe,
the workers in this industry are exposed to an unusually high risk of
injury and loss of life, and thus have a very direct interest in
devising and adopting measures for increased safety. These measures
nearly always mean expenditure, and thus an increased cost of working,
and so long as their adoption (except in so far as made compulsory by
the Mines Department) rests solely with bodies on which capital alone is
represented and labour not at all, there will be fruitful cause for
suspicion and discontent. The miners are apt to argue that dividends and
safety precautions are mutually antipathetic, and will continue to do so
as long as they have no part or lot in the reconciliation of these
competing obligations. The question is not whether this argument of the
miners is well-founded or not: the point is that their suspicion is
natural, and any excuse for it should be removed. (v) The exceptionally
large items which wages form in the total cost of coal production
indicates the important contribution made by the miners to the welfare
of the industry and justifies some share in the direction of that
industry.

Upon the basis of typical pre-war years, the value of the labour put
into the coal mining industry is 70 per cent. of the capital employed,
and 70 per cent. of the annual saleable value of the coal, and yet this
large labour interest has no share in the management of the industry.

THE MYSTERY AS TO PROFITS

Thirdly, More Financial Publicity. Secrecy as to profits, which always
suggests that they are as large as to make one ashamed of them, has been
the bane of the coal-mining industry. For nearly half a century wages
have borne some relation to _selling prices_, and there have been
quarterly audits of typical selected mines in each district by joint
auditors appointed by the owners and the miners. But over _profits_ a
curtain was drawn, except in so far as the compulsory filing at Somerset
House by public companies of a document called a Statement in the form
of a balance sheet, enabled the curious to draw not very accurate
conclusions. It is not easy for the plain man to read a balance sheet or
estimate profits, especially when shares are being subdivided, or when
bonus shares are being issued, or large sums carried to reserve. The
result has been continual and natural suspicion on the part of the
miners, who doubtless imagined the colliery