The Committee prepared for the struggle which they saw was inevitable if the employers did not move from the position they had taken up. Knowing this they set themselves to ascertain the true state of affairs in the county. They took the actual average of the hewers and reductions which at each colliery had been suffered at Joint Committee, or had been forced upon them since March 1877, with the hewing prices. It was found that while there was a nominal minimum wage of 4s. 8½d. where the drawing hours were ten, 4s. 10½d. where the hours were ten and a half, and 5s. 0½d. where the eleven hours prevailed, the actual average of the hewers throughout the entire county was only 4s. 6¾d. It was therefore about 5d. per day or seven per cent. below the theoretical minimum. This is worth considering when we are desirous of establishing it again. It may work in the summer of trade, but not in the winter of depression. This state of things was brought about as the result of local reductions. There were well-known instances where whole collieries of men petitioned the Executive Committee to be allowed to work at twenty per cent. below the minimum wage. In the final arbitration of 1879, before Lord Derby, the employers admitted the actual average was only 4s. 6¾d. This they had taken just prior to the strike. They likewise stated in their case that many and considerable reductions were privately agreed to, and particularly where the owners possessed little capital or worked inferior or costly seams. The average taken by the Committee harmonised with the 4s. 6¾d. _Quotation from Owners' Case_ 34. At 43 separate pits arrangements for abatements of wages were made in the working of 65 different seams, varying from 2½ per cent. to 20 per cent. and upwards, and this state of things continued up to the close of the period to which the sliding scale applied, when negotiations for a general reduction of wages were entered into by the two Associations which eventually ended in the strike. 35. These local arrangements, as we have stated, were private, and between the individual worker owner and his workmen, and without the official knowledge of the Owners' Association. It is believed that, if not in every case, certainly very many of the private agreements had the approval of the Miners' Executive, for some of these negotiations were conducted personally by their staff, who had the strong motive in thus keeping their constituents employed at the best wages they could obtain for them, of saving the Union funds from supporting every man, who, under the rules of the Association, was entitled to support when thrown out of employment. The Committee in their reply before Lord Derby acknowledged that these reductions took place, but to strengthen their case they charged the whole blame on the employers. They said: