The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1853-11-17
4 Meditation On Coal.


We have just been laying IN our winters
stock of Coal, and paying S65 per tun tor 1t,
an operation which many Of our readers have
doubtless paralleled, and which has probably
melted in their minds as in ours, some serI-
Gus and we trust practical cOgitatlon. We
can remember paying higher prices than
this-$I0 to 5l1 in 1867; and we have an
indstnct recollection of winter having set IN
early, suddenly and severely at the close OF
1881, and Coal thereupon rising suddenly to
SIG per ton ; but these were extreme cases;
and we are confident that, for several years
past, Coal was not SO high in October by sew
eral per cent, as it now is. We paid So last
year. and thought that rather high and now
we find it marked up another dollar.
For what reason ? Labor, we hear, is some
what higher than last year but We don't be-
iieve the men in shirt-slcegcs who removed
and loaded and transported ard carted our
coal have received twenty-five cents more III
the average per tun than they did last year.
On the other hand, more coal-mlnes have
been opened, more railroads constructed or
completed, more cars and canal-boats built,
and more experience as to the most economl-
cal and efficient methods of digging and trans
porting Coal We doubt that the Coal which
our citizens will burn the ensuing winter, has
actually cost more than did the like quantity
which they burned last winter.
OF course, we are not grumbilDg at the
coal dealers. The worth of thing is the
money it will bring''-not that there is not
higher law than this, but that Society is not
now in a condition to act upon it. If Coal
70 10 hoI boro E,r 60 I'm HpIp nl1-
ny ofus buyers would insist on paying 81 or
50, because it was demonstrated that the ar
ticle had actually cost SO much, and could
not he sold lower without running the sellers!
And they have exactly the same right to ask
So that we have to buy at 80 If we could
find sellers at that price.
But why mast we pay SO 50 for Coal In
this City! Philadelphia and Baltimore pay
less, yet their tuns are Il ninth larger than
ours. 80, because they are nearer the coal
mines," is the ready reply. No, Sir! just
there is your mistake. They are scarcely if
at all nearer the Coal formation than we are;
bu, they have railroads leading directly intora,
while We have none--and there in is our dis
We bring our Coal from the Le-
high and Susquehanna valleys by way oil
Philadelphia, a hundred miles South, and
Roundout, as far, North, and so pay double
transportation and in winter are shut out from
our sources Of supply, SO that our coal-dealers
have only to lay in a short or moderate sup
ply in summer and autumn, and, when tool
late tor others to obtain more, they may COM
bine and charge US about as much as their
will allow.
Up at the Crystal Palace, they have some
specimens of Coal, showing that
the veins whence it was taken are twenty or
thirty feet thick, while the quality could hard
ly be better Those specimens come from
the vicinity of Wilkesbarre, on the Susque-
hanna, in the midst of that bounteous and
beautiful Wyoming Valley where the noble
river approaches nearest to our City, before
turning away south westward to find an out
let in Chesapeake Bay. There-we DO not
say especially at WiIkesbarre, but at some
point in or near that valey-is our best point
Of access to the Coal Region, with which we |
ought to have had direct intercourse years ago.
4 wide, double track railroad, stretching d.
rectly from our City to the cOal-beds at the
most eligible point, should have been con-
;tructed long since. Such a road, if now in
operation would save almost every family in
our City from so to $40 on this winters
Coal, while thousands of manufactures, hotels
&C., would be benefited from ten to hun
lred times that extent. Our establishment
Ises but small amount of steam power, yet
We could pay tax of 500 per annum for the
support of great coal-road to the Susqanna,
'et make money by it.
There was some stir early last summer on
his subject and the friends of two or three
val routes raised a considerable din as TO
heir feasibility and advantages respectively /;
until at length we were informed that the
tock Of one of them had been actually taken,
nd the road would be promptly built. But
We have not yet heard of this or any rival
roject being actually and vigorously pressed
onward toward completion, and we fear that
ur citizens will have to burn dear Coal next
! inter rs well 2 s this ~ Y T'r;bU,1e