coal to the surface as he did before, and hence he will have the strongest possible motive to save time from the hours allowed for meals, to use a faster stroke, to idle less, and even to increase if necessary the average number of days he works in the week in order to realize his standard.
It has been said that high prices and the consequent high wages generally result in miners decreasing their output. I have given more than one reason tending to show that any rise in prices owing to a reduction in hours is likely to be very temporary. But the fact, if it be true, that when wages reach a certain point miners reduce their output, would certainly tend to raise prices still higher. Owing to the recent rise in the price of coal the miners in Durham and Northumberland have, it is said, reduced the number of hours they work per week. The only detailed evidence on the point that I have been able to find is that contained in the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1878. It appears that the miners in Durham and Northumberland in 1872 reduced their hours of working. 'In our collieries,' said Sir Isaac Lothian Bell, 'where in 1870 hewers earned 4s. 7½d. per day, and to do that had to work, or rather had to be absent from daylight from the pit head, about ten hours, now the same man can earn 7s. 5d. a day in eight hours. At the same time he has reduced his quantity from four and a half to three and a half tons, and, unless the colliery workings had been extended, that would have represented a falling off in the output, but we have gone on extending as fast as we could to supply our own works and to supply markets.'[1] Similar evidence was given by other witnesses as to Lancashire[2] though the miners' agent refused to admit that there had been any reduction in the output.[3] Unfortunately the statistics furnished to the inspectors of mines previous to the enactment of the Mines Regulation Act as to the output per man are practically useless, inasmuch as it was not compulsory on mine-owners to make returns. The inspectors, who were examined before the Committee, were careful to point out that, though the figures for the year 1872 showed a substantial reduction in the output per man, the figures by themselves were misleading, inasmuch as the compulsory returns for 1872 were much more accurate than the voluntary returns for previous years. The figures given in the Report of the Committee represent that the average output in 1871 was 321 tons; in 1872, 299 tons per worker as compared with 317 tons per worker in the year 1870. 'On the whole the diminution in the yield per man employed in getting
