ABSTRACT
By 1939 coal operated via a producer-run cartel system enforced by legislation, and compulsory powers had been made available to hasten that most favoured rationalization prescription, amalgamations. The British coal industry had been growing rapidly prior to 1914 on the back of booming demand both at home and abroad. Coal exports roughly halved between 1913 and 1937-38. This occurred partly because world trade in coal was more depressed than world production. By the late 1930s, measured in terms of output per man-shift (OMS), British mining productivity had fallen behind that of its major trading rivals. Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government had hoped to stay out of the coal industry and treat it no differently from any other. The three years after 1926 duly saw little progress on voluntary reorganization. The 1927-29 period thus saw efforts to establish voluntary cartels in all of the main coal producing regions except for the North-East.
