Welsh Journals

JIGGING AND SHAKING: TECHNICAL CHOICE IN THE SOUTH WALES COAL INDUSTRY BETWEEN THE WARS SOUTH Wales coal owners have often been condemned for their lack of entrepreneurial drive during the inter-war years. Despite the recent questioning of the 'entrepreneurial failure' thesis for the British coal industry as a whole,2 the doubt still remains that the south Wales coal owners were somehow less aware of the potentialities of new techniques than their counterparts in other coalfields. This doubt rests largely on the statistics, which show a very much lower level of mechanization within the coalfield throughout the inter-war years, a situation which still persisted when the Second World War broke out. Thus, only 26 per cent of the coalfield's output was mechanically cut in 1938, markedly below the industry's national average of 59 per cent; and even though the proportion of mechanically conveyed coal in south Wales, at 45 per cent, exceeded that mechanically cut, this was also below the industry's average of 54 per cent. Many writers4 have suggested that the explanation for the less widespread use of coal-cutting machines in south Wales lies in the geological conditions faced, in particular the ease with which the coal can be obtained by hand. This, together with the fact that the coal tends to fall easily without need for blasting, probably hampered, rather than aided, the introduction of machines, since they ensured that traditional hand-getting methods remained an economic method of producing coal. Even so, some machines did find their way into certain south Wales mines between the wars. Indeed in one respect, that is the introduction of mechanical conveying, south Wales was initially in the forefront of technological advance. Thus, in the early 1920s, despite their laggard use of mechanical cutters, certain colliery owners in the steam-coal sector of the I would like to thank Martin Daunton and Derek Matthews for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. I am solely responsible for any errors that remain. 2 See, for example, D. Greasley, 'The Diffusion of Machine Cutting in the British Coal Industry, 1902-38', Explorations in Economic History, 19 (1982), 246-68; R. A. Church, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol. 3, 1830-1913 (Oxford, 1986); B. Supple, The History of the British Coal Industry, Vol. 4, 1913-46 (Oxford, 1987); M. Dintenfass, 'Entrepreneurial Failure Reconsidered: The Case of the Interwar British Coal Industry', Business History Review, 62 (1988), 1-34; B. Fine, The Coal Question: Political Economy and Industrial Change from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (London, 1990); T. Boyns, 'Strategic Responses to Foreign Competition: The British Coal Industry and the 1930 Coal Mines Act', Business History, 32 (1990), 133-45. ) Unless stated otherwise all figures are taken from Mines Department, Annual Reports of H. M. Chief Inspector of Mines and H. M. Secretary for Mines, 1921-38 (HMSO, annually) for the appropriate year. 4 See for example N. K. Buxton, The Economic Development of the British Coal Industry (London, 1978), pp. 112-15 and 182-84; G. C. Allen, British Industries and their Organization (1951), pp. 65-66; Greasley, loc. cit., p. 253; Supple, op. cit., esp. pp. 315-19 and 377-85.