[Diskussionsbeitrag zum Kohlenbergbau, Bd. I, S. 127–128, Nr. 8]

Emil Lederer: Discussion contribution on coal mining (1920)

This official commission speaking turn consists of two supplementary questions addressed to Hugo Stinnes. Lederer examines the anticipated disruption to iron and steel production if collieries are removed from their existing arrangements and transferred to a coal trust. His intervention tests both the economic conditions under which disruption would occur and the institutional means of reducing it.

The first question makes the business cycle central to assessing Stinnes’s prediction:

Wären diese Störungen, welche Herr Hugo Stinnes erwartet, dieselben beim Wechsel der Konjunktur?

English translation: Would these disruptions, which Mr Hugo Stinnes expects, be the same as business conditions change?

Lederer asks whether disruption would be greater during a boom or when coal demand is lower, and requests reasons if it would remain unchanged. This distinguishes an objection to reorganization in principle from difficulties contingent on demand.

The second question shifts from diagnosis to institutional design:

Wäre es nicht denkbar, diese schädlichen Folgen der Abhängigkeit der Eisenindustrie von der Kohle und der Arbeitsart auf den Zechen bei Bildung eines Kohlentrusts dadurch zu beheben oder wesentlich zu vermindern, daß eine Verknüpfung, sei es in Form einer Interessengemeinschaft oder gegenseitiger Kapitalbeteiligung oder durch gegenseitige Entsendung von Delegierten in die Verwaltungen vorgenommen würde?

English translation: Would it not be conceivable, upon the formation of a coal trust, to eliminate or substantially reduce these harmful consequences of the iron industry’s dependence on coal and on the manner of working at the collieries by establishing a connection, whether through a community of interests, reciprocal equity participation, or the reciprocal appointment of delegates to the governing bodies?

These alternatives suggest that coordination might survive organizational separation. Lederer closes by asking whether bodies continuously active in coal production could represent iron and steel interests. The contribution’s significance lies in treating industrial interdependence as a problem open to institutional mediation, without claiming that any proposed arrangement has already proved effective. The supplied turn contains questions, not Stinnes’s answers or a developed policy recommendation.