﻿DETAILED ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS SCHEMES.

45

would forfeit all claim to bonus for the future, and must take
their chance of losing the bonus for the past year, since it lay in
the power of the shareholders to settle what bonus was to be given
and to whom; and the men were told in plain terms that they had
to choose between Profit-sharing and Trade Unionism. About
one-third of the men stayed away from work, and were deprived
of bonus until reinstated the following Christmas. During 1873,
a year in which the coal trade was very prosperous, the relations
between Messrs. Briggs and their men, though not so good as
before, were fairly satisfactory; * but in 1874 a dispute arose about
the use of “ riddles ” for sifting the coal in the pits. The use of
riddles underground had, for reasons into which it is unnecessary
to enter here, long been a grievance in the eyes of the Yorkshire
miners; during the fat years, when coal was so much sought after
that even smudge was saleable, the men had been allowed to send
up the coal unsifted, a slight reduction being made in their ton-
nage rate of wages. Now that prices were falling, the employers
wished to revert to the use of the riddle in their pits; but the
Trade Union declared that never again should riddles be intro-
duced ; and Messrs. Briggs’s men for some time declined to use
them. “ The events above described did not, however, lead at
once to the abolition of the industrial partnership system. At the
meeting of shareholders held in August, 1874, it was decided
not entirely to abandon it, but to give it one more chance, modi-
fying, however, the rules regulating the distribution of the bonus,
and making these rules more stringent. ”t Not long after this
Messrs. Briggs, in common with the other employers of the I
district, announced their intention of reducing the men’s wages.
This reduction the miners, including those employed by Messrs.
Briggs, declined to accept, and a strike of four weeks’ duration
ensued. As the direct consequence of this fact, “ the final
step was taken, and a resolution passed at the half-yearly meet-
ing of shareholders, held in February, 1875, that the payment
°f a bonus on the industrial partnership principle should be dis-
continued. Many of the men themselves had expressed a wish
io the same effect, having an idea that we were in some way
merely keeping back a portion of their wages to be probably
(but not certainly) returned to them at the end of the year; and
they said they would prefer to be paid precisely the same wages,
and be put on the same footing as men at other collieries.”%
In connection with this case it is worth noting that the system
adopted did not partake of the nature of a definite, binding agree-
ment between employers and employed, since the shareholders

* At this time “ some of the surrounding colliery proprietors, anxious to attract
men to their pits and secure as large a share as possible of the great prosperity,
and finding the bonus o-iven by our company was a great inducement to men to
remain with us, began to offer something beyond the regular wages of the
district, saying it was 1 instead of Briggs’s bonus,’ thus strengthening the view
already entertained by some discontented men that the bonus was something
kept back out of the weekly wages to be given at the end of the year, and that if
we could pay it then we could give it to them weekly just as well.” (Memoran-
dum by Messrs. Briggs in Sedley Taylor’s Profit-sharing, p. 125).

t Memorandum by Messrs'. Briggs in Sedley Taylor’s Profit-sharing,
PP- 1‘28, 129.

+ Ibid., p. 129.