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.