New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1854-09-26
A MEDITATION ON COAL.

The high price of Coal is just now attracting
very general attention, as is natural and proper.
At a time when most kinds of business are fall
ing of, when Manufactures (Which consume in
their prosecution immense quantities of Coal)
are certainly less active and prosperous than last
year, and when threefourths of all the families
in our cities and villages feel obliged to reduce
their expenses to the lowest pOint-makiDg two
fires serve where they formerly had three, and
one where they last year had two-and in the
face of the fact that the Coal brought to tide
water this year will exceed by more than half a
million tuns that Of last year, it seems almost in
credible that Coal, in defiance o stringent
Money Market should range thirty per cent.
above last years prices The fact is so, how
ever, and the advocates Of buying abroad what
can be produced at home are making all manner
of capital out of it. They are circulating petit
titions to Congress praying for the abolition of
all import duties on coal in order 10 gice The Poor
chap fuel.
Now we do MT care one button whether the
duty on Coal shall be RENTED or not. Such
step would at one time have proved disastrous,
not only.to our cosl-miners, but to our cosl-con-
sumers, by breaking down our infant coal-miDing
interest, or at least retarding its development.
And it must not be forgotten that if our coal
consumers as a body were offered, on condition
that coal mining in this country should be given
up, all the Coal they would consume, piled
up on the wharves of Liverpool, given them
for nothing, and admitted into our ports free
of duty, they could not Gin the average) be sup
piled so cheaply as they now are from our own
mines. few thousand tuns might be imported
cheaper than we now obtain it at home; but the
American demand could not be supplied from
Europe SO cheaPy as it low is, even with the
coal freely given us at Liverpool.
But we repeat that we care not button whe
Their the COal-duty be retained OF taken off. In
either case, ninetee n-twentieths Of our supply
will be mined at home. Coal is too bulky in pro-
portion to its value to be extensively imported by
any country which has So much Coal of its own as
we have with its mines so well developed as ours
now are. Our Coal-duties were once essential
and benefcent, now they are not. An increase of
duty on Iron to the extent of three dollars per
tun on Pig and six on Bar, even coupled with the
repeal of the Coal-duty, would be Of more utility
to our Coal-mining interest than duty Of fifty
dollars per tun on imported Coal.
But, while We care nothing for the present or
any duty on Coal, we DO care that false i'm
pressiOns and unsound Political Economy shall
not be disseminated under the pretense of oppo-
sitiOn TO the duty on Coal and anxiety for Cheap
Fuel. The petition assumes that the present
high price of Coal is caused by the duty; and on
that point We desire TO offer few facts:
The Tariff of lo2S recognized Coal-ior the
first time, we are confdent-as an object of Pro-
lection, and imposed on its importation duty of
six cents per bushel equal to about 81 50 per
tun. This duty Was modified by the Compromise
Tariff of 1898, which provided for the annual re-
duetiOn of all duties by one-tenth OF the e1.
cess over twenty per cent. until lsi2, when all
duties were to be and remain twenty per cent.
only. We have before US only 10 years of Coal
prices in this City under that Compromise Tariff,
and they are (for New.York tun of 1000
pounds) as follows:
SEN