ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with three contemporary coal questions: (a) relatively low labour productivity, (b) problems of railway transportation and (c) its marketing bottlenecks in the inter-war period. The chapter also seeks to estimate the industry’s returns to scale, technical progress and total factor productivity (TFP). To these ends, time series of production, employment and physical capital are constructed from archival sources. In addition, it examines whether the Great Depression caused financial distress among expatriate firms so that they were to quit the industry. The final judgement on this issue is, however, based on the scrutiny of the changes in European board members in corporate houses.
