Association were at work. With coal prices falling from the mid-1890s, D.A. Thomas campaigned for a cooperative organization that would treat the South Wales coalfield as a single enterprise and would regulate production and prices. Although owners who controlled 79.3% of output were willing to adopt Thomas's plan, as chairman of the Coal Owners Association Lewis ensured that it was rejected in 1896. The Welsh coal strike of 1898 began as an attempt by the colliers to remove the sliding scale. The strike quickly turned into a disastrous lockout which lasted for six months. In the end, the sliding scale stayed in place. After the strike, the South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF) was founded in October 1898, with William Abraham (Mabon) as the first president. In 1889 the SWFM joined the newly formed Miners' Federation of Great Britain based in Newport, Wales. In 1907 the Association represented 80% of the output of the South Wales Coal Field, which then had 588 mines in operation and employed about 174,000 workmen. The Eight Hours Day Act of 1908 limited working hours to eight hours, but since it excluding winding times the average bank-to-bank hours in the UK were in fact eight hours and thirty-nine minutes. The Coal Owners' Association published figures for many of the South Wales collieries that showed that bank-to-bank hours had been reduced from nine and a half to eight and a half hours. To partially offset the reduction, meal times had been cut by ten minutes. The 1908 Act allowed for an additional 60 hours to be worked annually over and above the eight hours daily, and the owners insisted on these hours being worked. There was a strike in 1912 where the Coal Owners Association wanted troops sent into the Rhondda valley to suppress the disturbances. Sir Charles Edward Troup (1857–1941) of the Home Office was reluctant to comply. World War I During World War I (1914–18) the Admiralty requisitioned coal throughout the war at the price that it chose. Coal for domestic use was regulated from July 1915 by the Coal Prices Limitation Act. During labour negotiations in 1916, the owners found themselves forced to retreat from selling prices as the key factor in setting wages towards one in which profit became the main consideration. In May 1919 the former chairman of the Association, Hugh Bramwell, told a Coal Industry Commission hearing, The State took control