The Cambria Daily Leader

TO-MORROW'S COUNCIL The agenda of the Swansea 1 Borough Council for to-morrow ô meeting is filled with many matters that are likely to arouse a strong division of opinion. We will not J say anything more at this stage with regard to the salaries question, br we understand that in all proba- j bility action is likely to be taken by preponderating influences on the Council. The officials are victims of circumstances. The sovereign has depreciated just as much for them as for the workman whose wage has been doubled and, theo- retically, upon the fall in money values, they are as much entitled to be considered as any other branch of the public service. But their applications come upon us at a time when we are facing a 25 per cent, addition to the rates, which mak^j a very serious position for the borough, so serious that we can quite understand the indignation of the ratepayers when they see Coun- cil Committees budgeting salaries on a large scale for years ahead. We trust also that some atten- tion will be paid by councillors o the minutes of the Estates Com- mittee. which deal with the future of the St. Helen's field. The (Com- mittee proposed that the club be granted an extended term from 1020-1922 at a rent of £ 300, that the Mayoi and two other Cor- poration representatives, and the Borough Treasurer, be electd members of the Club Committee. and that the Corporation be at liberty wrhonever they require to do so, to use the field free of charge for I any purpose. The minutes are be- I fore the Council on Wednesday f-r confirmation, and we trust that, on the part of councillors who realise what St. Helen's means to the voting life of the town, there will I be an nttempt to lessen the rental j asked for to some nominal figure. We suggest this for more than I one reason. The first is that the Swansea Football and Cricket Club I has done more than any other I agency to create values in the St. Helen's and Brynmill district. H.elen's an d Br When possession was /obtained if the ground, which consisted of sand dunes running down from the end of Gorse-lane. it was a wild i spot, and the club had to spend very large sums of money in laying it out and bringing it to what it is to-day—one of the finest playing pitches in the country. All tlÙ; I expenditure should be considered by the Council, and the tenant should not be called upon to pay II through the nose because of im- i provpments h<? himself has effected, We denounce the landlords who do this sort of thing, and the council- lore must keep themselves frf'e trom reproach. But there is a wider ground of appeal, and a far mrre forcible j ground we think. We are veiy lad to see that representatives yf 1 the Corporation are henceforth tn be members of the Club Commit tee, and we hope that this fore shadows a time when the club win be more definifelv a town institu I tioh working in close alliance I the municipality. These are davs I when we emphasise the important lof sturdy physical frames, and I Swansea, which is so badly pro- vided with level ground which can be utilised for playing purposes, we must make the most of these sites for the purpose of bringing out the jbest in our boys. St. Helen's, pi")- perly considered, is a fine physical asset to the town. I And there is yet another reason for the appeal. If we think of the de,bt we owe to those who have been running the Swansea Football Ground for so many years, we will recognise that the club deserves the utmost consideration at our hands. Swansea football has not only carried the fame of the town over I many countries—it has provided open-air recreation and amusement for generations of Swansea men. who otherwise would be hard hit, not knowing what to do with their Saturday afternoons. Let us hope that the councillors will realise the II point of view we have tried to l ornpha-sis-o and that they will lend a more effective helping hand to the club than the Estates Committee is [willing to give,

 tlr"T'f\O"?,1' THROUGH A COTTAGE WINDOW. "'7 I 1\ L 1\ fl- XI.'— A Lay Sermon to Miners. By GEORGE W. GOUCH The chief cause of the present crisis is the coal shortage. Soon a complete suspension, net only of these works, but of all the works dependent on fuel ü j threatening. Every industry would in j that citse have to close down. This crisis j menaces every district with disastrous: oonsoqucnccs. The slrfts extract astonishingly little coal, and the whole economic life is faced by the inevitable prospect of closing down." | The first duty of a writer who has the privilege of addressing through the prct-s a large audience of his fellow citizens is to examine the faets of life as he them. On the keenness of his vision, on the closeness with which his account of tilings as he sees them tallies with things as they are, his whole usefulness depends. Whether successfully or not others must decide, but that first duty is one which I have in the nine preceding papers dili- gently endeavoured to discharge, in view of the important issues that are at stake. The facts of human life are not like the .specimens in a museum or the chemicals in a laboratory. These we can look at without passion or prejudice. If any man declared that a stuffed rabbit was a liv- ing lion, or that when hydrochloric ac-d was poured on chalk the result was whisky, we should promptly call him a fool. wnethr he was a royalty-owner, a mine-manager, a checkwtighman. or a trade-union leader. We have a body of acquired knowledge, a sense of argument, an ins'ght into cause and effect, which enable us to see at once that he is not only wrong but madly wrong in his views as to what constitutes a living lion and, drinkable wh".s>ky. When we get into our I peculiar field, however, all these men oouid make a different statement, and all of them wrong, and yet find people to believe it and act on their belief. This week, however, I propose to preach rather than to analyse, to talk of duties rather than arguments. I think that the seriousness of the subject demands it, and so I have set at the head of th's paper by way of a text an extract to which I invite your closest attention. It is, on the fnce of it, a text which you should very seriously cbnsidor, for it deals plainly and truthfully with the very subject in which you are mo&t interested. It draws a vivid picture of the calamttics which obviously confront a country in which the miners do not do their wcr k. It does not mince matters. There is a coal shortage, because the shifts extract astonishingly little coal," and dis-aster stares everybody in the face. THE SOURCE OF THE TEXT. I My text ie taken from an official announcement made by the German Government in Yorwaerte," the famous Socialist dai ly which, by an astonishing turn in the wheel of fortune, is now to all intents and purposes the official organ of the German Government. Further light is thrown on the matter by an article in another German paper by Ilerr Earth, the Edi-tor of Vorwaerts," in which he says that workers in Germany must be compelled to work. The whole country, according to him, is suffering from a plagfuo of idleness. lie says that the Ber- iin Tramway Company advertised in vain for a thousand men. They did not conif forward, and no wonder, since they <irav a good sum each in paper money for being unemployed, and twice as much for Deing a Spartacist soldier." At the bottom of the industrial situation, accord- ing to my text, is the coal question- The j German miners are not turning out the coal that is needed, and industry is coming to a, stand. It is idle to say that this is in Ger- many, not in Britain. Like cause pro- duce like effects, there as here. Water runs downhill there, as it does here. The national reservoir of goods and services must be filled, there as here, before the separate streams can flow out of it into the people's homes. What you propose lo do is to start to empty the reservoir. You will not have been on strike, should you strike, for twenty-lour hours lieiore the aiflereiice- will be noticeable; in a few days it would become painful; in a few weeks, dieastious; and if continued lon, fatal. And fatal to whom? To your fellow workers, their wives and children, in every cottage iu the country. Two million soldiers have been demobi- lised. Nearly a million workers, men an*, women, soldiers and civilians, are draw- I ing unemployed pay. They need it, they j ought to have it, and they have a iegu right to it, but clearly every such man and woman is a burden on thoae of us who do produce; a burden which we art- prepared to bear cheerfully as long as it is necessary but of which we want to be relieved at the earliest possible moment. That relief can only corne from grim work, a.nd work can only come from coal. THE RIGHT TO STRIKE. In this country the worker has the legal right to strike, and public opinion recog- nises not only the legal i,,ght to stri-t, under any circumstances, but the moral obligation on the worker to strike when he is unfairly paid or improperly treated. Now, as I understa-nd, you do not makf any specific complaints on either head. No man thinks he gets all he deserves, and not many are absolutely satisfied with every detail of the conditions under which they work. With your general desire for a higher standard of life, there is full sympathy, but it seems to me that you do not, and cannot, say that, as com- pared with other grades of labour, yfcu 11 have, been unfairly treated during the war. And it is these other grades of lubour that you should now consider. Your work is in its nature in keen and constant demand at the present tira(1. Theirs is not, and that is where the did- culty comes in. If all industries were set full of orders that they had the utmost difficulty in filling them. your present de. J mands would look very different. But tli,c,v are ri-ot. Oi> the whole it is womler- ful how well we are settling down to tu- neiv, conditions of peace, but the presence of nearly a million unemployed shoulo give you pause before you consent to any action which will at once increase their numbers wholesale. Notices to othei workers, to become legally due should yox strike, have already been issued by souij- iirms. They will become general as so<)D as it is seen that your notices are nor withdrawn. And precisely what is it you propose to .strike for? Your leaders told us at first that you wanted 30 per cent. on wages and 25 per cent. off hours. l'hose terms must be granted at once, said Mr. Smillie at Downing Street, or the notioos will not be withdrawn. Now Mr. William Shakl tells the Coal Commission that they wiL not be withdrawn unless the Government neecpts the principle of nationalisation oi the m:nes. 'YOUR MINES OR YOUR LIFE." 1 Surely this is bad citizenship. Most of the oocid problem is due to t I.,o fact that in years gone by one set or rank of men exercised the power their posi tion hap- pened, in the then existing eocial condi tions, to give them without much or indeed any regard to others. And, to be quite frank, you propose to do precisely the same sort of thing to-day, if Mr. Straker truthfully represents you. Nationalisation, whether of mines 01 pawnshops, might turn out to be a good thing economically, though there are very weighty reasons for doubting whether it would; but it ought not to want saying that politically It would be very bad if such a tremendous change was made, not after careful inquiry and with the public consent ascertained in the right way, but merely because you held a pistol at the heart of society and cried, Your minef or your life." I know, of course, that you aare of opinion that the change wil: be for the good of the community, but I am quite certain that your chief aim is as it ought to be, your own good and not that of the community, or rather the g()Ü(1, to the community is to be fair result of a change made to ,uit yourselves. But to threaten society with disaster in order to extort what you want is to act just like Dick Turpin and Sixteen String Jack. The miner is to be the highwayman of modern society! The economic objection* to nationalising the mines and putting them under the control of the miners— which is what you ask—may be overstated and might quite easily, in practice, prove unfounded. On that I say nothing now. What 1 am sure of is that nothing but harm can under any circumstances come of a change brought about in the way you propose. It is the very negation of industrial democracy, and it will take you all your time to prevent it from look- ing like class profiteering. It would, of couree, be a very difficult thing to demanci that the nation should be asked, in the usual constitutional way, to decide whether the mines shall be nationalised. That is democracy. THE SPiRIT OF THE NATION. I I Finally, you should consider very care- fully the result of your actions in the immediate future, on the spirit of the time. Th?rp is a naiion-wido desire that the workers of this country should have art inconceivably better time than they have ever had. It is economically pos- sible, provided that it ho based on in- creased production and a changed and fairer distribution. We must keep that fpirit alive. It is too precious to kill off. And it will be killed off if any group, acting merely in its own intere-ts, forces changes which arc likely to be harmful. To go back to Germany where we began. There even the Socialist leaders are charg- ing their followers with industrial mad- ness." We have got to keep elear of that, or its results will be here jnst what they I are therd. There are men mad enough to think that the workers should smash society, as a preliminary to putting it to- gether Rg-ain on a new plan to suit themselves. When I wa& 8.1 baby, my sieter brought me a toy watch from the fair, and its ticking please d me immensely. Unfortunately, my brother came ih, and he had bought me a litt-e j wooien mallet. I used the mallet on the watch to find out where the ticking came | from. It was my first lesson in economics, and I have never foigotten its teaching, j

-== ROW AT PORT TALBOT DOCKS i At Aberavon on Monday Raymond I Tillet eecoud steward of the i'rench j steamer. La Fontaine, in the Port Talbot | Docks, was charged with maliciously wounding Charles Jacquery, steward en the same boat, at Port Talbot Docks, on ij Saturday night. Prosecutor said defendant wanted to tight the cook, but lie intervened. lie was st; uck by a sharp instrument. P.C. Osbornp said that when charged r he prisoner said: I did it with this knife." The Bench reduced the charge to a common assa'nlt, and imposed a fine of c5. 11

CARDS IN WAIT'ING ROOM. At Abcravon on Monday, twelve Blaen- gwynfi and Cymmer youths. Wm. George Williams, Thomas Ramsay, Albert James, Aneurin Davies, Rees Jones, Alfred Sum. Wm. Morgan, Henry Hafiford, William Mort. David Morgan. Ernest Williams, and Richard Ford were summoned for playing "hanker" in Cymmer waiting- room at 11.15 p.m. on Saturday night, j P.Si. Idris Evans and Sergt. Davies watched the proceedings through the win- I dow. Sergt. Evans the boys were playing in two groups, David Morgan and W. G. W;!li<vnis being bankers. Ho picked np a pack of cards and 0. 6d. Sergt. Davie* got the other pack aud 6d. Three of the defendant had been in court before, and fined for a like offence. Ramsay, Henry Hanford, and Ernest Williams were find £ 2. pud the remain- der £1 each.

jTOWN TJLK" j Th-,? cuckoo has been heard in Neath* Yes3, indeed! — :o Pror)hetic? "The little city called Jcr* sey Price at the Coedii'ranc Parish Aieetinjpj j A bit mixed at the Skewen patrisk meet- ing: And the prcaiisus to-ni^-ig by the successful horses." ^Speech.) 0: Three trees for a Welshman. On the same beard at Aberavon .market were tee following efforts:—Kubkarb, and Ivubarb. Better luck next time. "Doubhul": No, the pnthet'c ballad, Going up. going up, •go'iEg up," is nob dedicated to the Swansea rat payers. Wa don't know whether the Swans directors have purchased the copyright. -:0.- For a long period we have been spart,4 the constant query on Saturdays of B'\j a fliig, please? But the spell is [;Ü:f to be broken, as the Swansea Band Hope Union have decided upon having a Hag day to augment their funds. —: 0: We have pleasure in announcing at matinee performance of the Swan-ea Town Council will positively take pbl' on Wedr.esday next. There will be a number of clasoical individual renditions* I but the star turn will bo the annual b,) ill" phon e chef' d'eeuvre salaries." Two references at the Cocdiiranc Parish Meeting to the Swansea and NN-itiL bi-is for Israelites of nIa. Pharaoh bfhlnd the Red Sea hi front of tiuan." It re- minds mo of two crocodiles—one biting at one elill and one at the other, until there'll be nothing left." —: o: — A New Zealand soldier in High-stroll on Monday remarked that the St. Patrick procession made him more home- sick than anything else had since he came to England. The last celebrations I he witnessed in his native town prior to enlisting in 1915 were in honour of St. Patrick. May he be homo in time for the next. —:<:— We have heard a good Seal lately about eoldiers being demobilised from the Army, but has any one heard of fcwls being do* mobilised. Well. there is such a case locally, where a soldier has eent home & pen of fowls from the place where he w'K quartered, and from which he reaped a good harvest. There is nothing li1.. enterprise in these go-ahead days. — O A rather amusing experience occurred to a. well-known Swansea distniot ra in, c,,gr reeontly. While conducting a service in the country, he had occasion to reprimand one of th,) congregation far slumbering; lurii g the course if the sermon. Th. minister requested his neighbour to wake him, but quick canie the retort from the supposed sleeper: "Go ahead, sir; you will be paid just the came." — O:— Now that the Y.M.C.A. Red Cross TIos- pital has been closed, there are very many people in Swansea whose duties took them past the building in the early mominjt who will miss the cheery, boisterous bov* who crowded the windows and chipped and sang while waiting for the bell which summoned them to breakfast. Degpits their trials and sufferings, there were far more Sunny Jims than Dismal Jimmieg among them. Mr. Herbert Gibbon J.P., one of the Pontarclawe delegates to attend the con- ference in London on the housing qiifo- on, is one of the head officials of the Mond Nickel Company. As this com-, pany is one of the pioneers in the matte* of erecting houses for their workmen, a better choice of a delegate could not be made, and his experience will be very; valuable for the conference. — to Should football" be played on SUDol dFtYs?" asks a Sunday contemporary. Probably most people in Swansea would be against it. but judging by the number playing on the Sands and the bank near the fever hospital yesterday many favour it. There were abourt half-a-dozen matches in progress, and iyr one game on the beach there were about 20 players aside. In fact there was a shortage of footballs l -:0:- If s an ill wind that blows nobody good." The proposed purchase of motcr cyoles (wrpces a correspondent) for four foremen of the Corporation scavenging de- partment w'll be objected to by towns- people on the ground of expense, but will be welcomed by district people, as the now rough roads will be seen to a 1" ti'e oftener, e< that these gentlemen may ride, without fear, on their cycles. *>:— No place nan show a better record a a to the number who have jo'n-cd the Ser- vices than the Mumbles. Quite a large number of these have now been demobi- lised, and they fully expected that, like other places. Mumbles would have givea her sens a hoarty welcome home. Dl't they have been sorely disappointed, nothing having been done in the matter. They really deserve some recognition for their patriotism. Perhaps our local coun- cillors will take the matter up. — o •— A correspondent writoo: We read with interest the speech of the Member '"? Swansea West at the conference of pubVo authorities on Post-War Develop- ments." In opening the discussion m the Housing of the city clerk and other workers," Sir Alfred Mond said he could •?peak with some experience of gardc-a city dwellings. Doubtless this has refer- ence to the enterprise of the Mond Nieicol Co. at- Clydaeh, and as one who has been through these houses, and seen the way in which the streets have been laid out, they are a credit to the firm. Tlies3 houses are rented very cheaply. If a pii- vate firm can do this with success, why not public authorities? A favourite story of the late Mr. Davies, of the Swansea Ragged School: In addressing a group of small children a school inspector tried to impress on their minds the fact that many of the nectaries of lifø were obtained from the animal kingdom. Where did you* get your milk and butter and cheese?" he asked. Cows," answered most of the -• children, although some replied, From the shop." And eggs?" demanded the instructor. Hens," answered those who A did not answer "Shop." "And wool i asked the inspector. There wr.s only one | answer to t'ti i-, question. "The shop. H Yes," paid the inspector, but how does it g2t into the shop? Now think: N You get wool from the back of what?'* Expectantly he awaited the, answer; pro- sently it came from a small girl: Back of the counter!" — :0:— Yo i desen'be the planting of a tree ni Carmarthen Park by the Belgian refugees to commemorate their stay there pro- bably tmique," writes a correspondent. HIt may be," he adds, but there is d 'east as great an element of durability 'n what the>;r fellow-countrymen 8/: Milford Haven are doing. n"rc"a fine obe-lisk Aberdeen ?-r?n'te ;6 aJmc?t ready for r.?. ve: liner. It ?s erected on th? promenade— a really pubst?nti?)! rec??nit?n of ki?d?y tre:1'mnt. It w?H be sa?d by scmp. of course, that that is only a fair recognition of the relative prosperity that has at- tended some of them engaged ;n the fish- v :ng trade But it is at least arguable that in doing well themselves they have done Milford a great service in keeping open market connections that would otherwise he ve ceased to exiat.