Commonwealth. Now, let us se how that other giant industry of coal-raising is being organised to serve the community of men with the stored up energy of fossilised sunshine and teeming primeval forest life. Not only the metal and machine industries above-mentioned, but those which provide the fuel and motive power by which the means of production are driven and their output distributed, are exemplifying the same tendency towards combination and unified control.
The supply of coal has passed more and more into the hands of huge syndicates of producers, whose personnel is frequently the same as that of the petroleum companies. Many of the great colliery companies are subsidiaries of the iron, steel and engineering concerns that dug coal primarily for their own use, and then began to sell the ever-growing balance of output on the open market. Others are owned and operated by groups of individuals or firms who are engaged simply in the raising of coal, and whose fortunes and whose further industrial developments are built on the foundation of a successful colliery business. All over the country huge amalgamations have taken place in the getting and marketing of coal, and it is a usual thing for interests in Yorkshire to be deeply involved in South Wales, or for Scottish owners to be interested in pits in the Midlands and elsewhere. Coal owners from all the fields are to be found participating in the opening up and development of new areas, such as the Doncaster and Kent coalfields.
The same tendency which displays itself in other industries is to be seen in the increasing size of modern collieries, and in the continuous adoption of machinery, electricity and surface plant. The underground worker become more and more a machine minder, whose heavy work is undertaken and whose output is augmented by the application to his trade of superior technique. With the advancement of applied science, and with the intensification of competition, which results in eliminating waste and which serves to swell the sum of profits, colliery owners have installed washeries, bye-product plants and coke ovens for the better grading of coals, for the recovery of all the latent riches of the mineral, for the manufacture of coke, and for the production of the bases of hundreds of chemicals.
Here has been found the occasion for an immense co-ordination of industries which draw their raw materials
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