§ Sir A. KNOXasked the Secretary for Mines if he has formed an estimate as to what sum the miners have lost in wages during the present stoppage?
§ Colonel LANE FOXIt is impossible to make any reliable estimate, as the factors governing it must be conjectural. On the basis of the first quarter of this year the amount paid in wages in seven. months would be about £86,000,000. But this is not a safe indication of the amount lost in wages during the stoppage, for it assumes that the same number of men would have been employed as in the first quarter of the year and the same rates of wages paid, and, moreover, it takes no account of the wages paid to the men who worked during the stoppage.