Less for Coal

Because Premier Poincare has given France a strong Cabinet at last and has stabilized the franc (TIME, Jan. 3) the prestige of his ministers is increasing to a pitch which would have been deemed unattainable when the cabinet was formed (TIME, Aug. 2).

For example, Minister of Public Works Andre Pierre Gabriel Amedee Tardieu, 50, averted a coal strike last week in quite the slashing style of his lifelong friend and editorial collaborator Georges Eugene Adrien Clemenceau, 86.*

The northern French coal miners and operators were deadlocked in conference at St. Etienne last week, when M. Tardieu communicated to them his resolve not to tolerate a strike. The operators, he declared, were right when they proposed to cut the price of coal to meet foreign competition/- but were wrong in attempting to cut the men's wages low enough to leave the operators' profits unimpaired by the new low price of coal. Similarly, rapped M. Tardieu, the men were wrong in demanding that their wages remain the same while the price of coal was cut. The Government, declared M. Tardieu, must and would here and now insist that the men take a cut in wages of 2.50 francs (9-c-) a day, while the operators should reduce the price of coal 15% to 18% depending on the grade.

Both sides would have laughed at such imperative mediation by the Government a few months ago. Last week they pondered well M. Tardieu's plan, to which he added the bait of a promise that the Government would raise the tariff on coal. Soon the compromise was indited, the bargain between miners and owners sealed, the strike averted. Frenchmen began, last week, to pay less for coal-- about $2.50 less per ton.

*They founded jointly L'Echo National.

/-Especially British, for, with the termination of the British coal strike, coal has begun once more to pass eastward across the Channel.