The minerals or royalties being acquired by the State, what then?  For the first time the State would be placed in a strategic position for the control and development of this great national asset.  Having acquired the minerals and issued bonds to compensate the former owners, the State enters into the receipt of the royalty payments, and these payments will be kept alive.  We must now decide between at least two courses:  (a) Is the State to do nothing more and merely wait for existing leases to expire and fall in, and then attach any new conditions it may consider necessary upon receiving applications for renewals?  Or (b) is the State to be empowered by Parliament to determine the existing leases at any time and so accelerate the time when it can attach new conditions, make certain re-grouping of mines, etc.?  My answer is that the latter course (b) must be adopted.  The same Act of Parliament which vests the coal and the royalties in the State, or another Act passed at the same time, should give the State power to determine the then existing leases if and when it chooses, subject to just compensation for disturbance in the event of the existing lessees refusing to take a fresh lease.

Why is course (b) recommended? (i) Most leases are granted for terms varying from thirty to sixty years.  They are falling in year by year, but we cannot afford to wait until they have all fallen in if we are effectively to deal with a pressing problem. (ii) The second objection to merely waiting is that some colliery-owners (not many) might make up their minds not to apply for a renewal of their leases, and might consequently be tempted to neglect the necessary development and maintenance work, over-concentrating on output, and thus allowing the colliery to get into a backward state from which it would cost much time and money to recover it—­a state of affairs which could and would be provided against in future leases, but which the framers of existing leases may not have visualised.  I do not suggest that upon the acquisition by the State of the minerals all the existing leases should automatically determine.  But the State should have power to determine them on payment of compensation for disturbance.

A NATIONAL MINING BOARD

At the same time a National Mining Board consisting of representatives of all the interested elements, colliery-owners, managerial and technical staffs, miners, and other grades of workers, and coal consumers would be formed (the Mines Department already has a National Advisory Committee); the mining engineering element must be strongly represented, and provision must be made for first-class technical advice being always available.  It would then be the business of the National Mining Board to work out its policy and decide upon the broad principles which it wishes to weave into the existing structure of the coal-mining industry by means of its power of granting leases.  The following principles will readily occur to most people, and are supported by evidence which is, in my humble judgment, convincing, given before the various commissions and committees which have inquired into this industry during recent years.