The same solution must be applied to that sphere. This does not mean
transferring the machinery of votes and elections to industry. It means
finding channels in industry whereby every person may exercise his
legitimate aspiration, if he should feel one, of being more than a mere
routine worker while still perhaps doing routine work, and of
contributing in an effective manner his ideas, thoughts, suggestions,
experience, to the direction and improvement of the industry. We have
satisfied the desire for self-expression as citizens, and we have now to
find some means of satisfying a similar desire for self-expression as
workers in industry. That is all very vague. Does it mean
co-partnership, profit-sharing, co-operative societies, joint
committees, national wages boards, guild socialism, nationalisation? It
may mean any or all of these things--one in one industry, one in
another, or several different forms in the same industry--whatever
experiment may prove to be best suited to each industry. But it must
mean opportunity of experiment, and experiment by all concerned. It must
mean greater recognition by employers of their trusteeship on behalf of
their work-people as well as their shareholders; greater recognition of
the public as opposed to the purely proprietary view of industry; and
recognition that the man who contributes his manual skill and labour
and risks his life and limb is as much a part of the industry as a man
who contributes skill in finance, management, or salesmanship, or the
man who risks his capital.
Coming to the mines, that is, the coal mining industry (with a few
incidental mines such as stratified ironstone, fireclay, etc., which
need not complicate our argument), the first step to the solution of the
problem of the mines, _i.e._ the collieries, the mining industry, is the
solution of the problem of the minerals. This distinction is not at
first sight obvious to all, but it is fundamental. The ownership and
leasing of the coal is one thing, the business or industry of mining it
is quite another. State ownership of the former does not involve State
ownership of the latter. That is elementary and fundamental. It lies at
the root of what is to follow.
Will you picture to yourself a section of the coal-mining industry in
the common form of the pictures one sees of an Atlantic liner cut neatly
in two so as to expose to view what is taking place on each deck. On top
you have the landowner, under the surface of whose land coal, whether
suspected or not, has been discovered. He may decide to mine the coal
himself, but more frequently--indeed, usually--he grants to some persons
or company a lease to mine that coal on payment of what is called a
royalty of so much for every ton extracted. Thereupon he is called the
mineral-owner or royalty-owner, and the persons or company who actually
engage in the business or industry of coal mining and pay him the
royalties we shall call the colliery-owners. Do not be misled by the
confusing term "coal-owners." Very frequently the colliery-owners are
called the "coal-owners," and their associations "coal-owners'
associations." That is quite a misnomer. The real _coal_-owner is the
landowner, the royalty-owner, though it may well happen that the two
functions of owning the minerals and mining them may be combined in the
same person. Below the colliery-owners we find the managerial staff;
below them what may be called the non-commissioned officers of the mine,
such as firemen or deputies, who have most important duties as to
safety, and below them the miners as a whole, that is, both the actual
coal-getters or hewers or colliers and all the other grades of labour
who are essential to this the primary operation.