ABSTRACT
In reading the evidence on Mining, given under Group A before the present Labour Commission, nothing has struck the author more than the almost unanimous approval, on the part of both masters and men, of that system of regulating wages known as the Sliding Scale. The experience of the last few months, culminating in the intervention of the Government, has forced the reader to recognise that the coal question is a national one. A sliding scale is an arrangement by which wages move up and down from a certain standard with the price of coal. To prevent misunderstanding, it should be made clear at the outset that the standard wage is a days wage, and that the sliding scale is not a cast-iron system by which one unvarying tonnage rate is paid. It is argued that, when a trade gets into a habit of long contracts, it is very difficult to get prices up.
