Birmingham age-herald., 1895-09-29
WORST IN MANY YEARS.
Long Period of Low Water Has Caused Great Loss-Coal Operations at ..
 StandStIlI.

StandstlL.
 Pittsburg Dispatch.
 | Not in twenty years has there been | such a long period of low water in | the rivers as this year. The rainfall for | this month has been only 1.72 inches. i Even 1893, the lowest on the official rec | ord showed 1.s6 inches for September. The drouth is causing considerabl un- easiness among the coal operators. AL | ready it is asserted the loss to operators | and rivermen generally amounts to hun l dreds of thousands of dollars. There are over SC, ,000, GOO bushels of coal in and about 1 the Pittsburg harbor, the largest amount | ever known. The Walton and Brown | companies each have about 4,000 900 bush l els ready for shipping. Capt. l. N. Bun l ton of the former company said yester- | day that this had been the most disas- | trous river season for nearly quarter of | a century
 "There have been seasons when ship ments stopped in June and the river was | closed until January, but there has been | no time that it shut off as early and run | this late without navigable stage, he | said. "The run of ice was so heavy last l winter that little coal could be shipped, | then in April there was only short pc | riod of coaling stage. The last coal left | between April 15 and 20, over five months ago.
 .'Coal in the south has not advanced much, because there was no cut in the l Alabama product, but a cold spell would likely cause a famine.
 Only enough river miners are kept at | work to supply local trade, all large craft | having been loaded months ago. For the l first time has the Walton company oper-
 ated railroad mine. They began early | in the summer and have mine on the | Monongahela, just above the city. | Railroad mine operators are held back 1 by lack of cars and most of them are | running less than half time.
 Silver Theories Refuted by Facts. | Iron Age, September 26.
 | The admission of Representative New | lands of Nevada that eff business con | tinues to improve and it turns out that l the improvement is permanent the silver l issue is dead" is a piece of frankness
 that few silver men seem capable of, but | the force of the admission cannot be lost l on any of them if they will give it a mo- | ments thought. A system which has l extensive popular support only when | business is extremely bad is suspicious; | intelligent men are not likely to regard l it with much respect and business men l will be reluctant to take their chances | on it. Bad crops are likely in England | and America to cost a political party it's | control of the government. Yet no man
 contends for a moment that the politics | of the administration can blight the | crops or a change in administration can | confer fertility on the soil. The political l influence of a. bad crop Is due to the pro- | penSity of a small fraction of the cleo | torate to change the first thing that | comes to hand when matters are unSat- | isfactory. So in bad times a financial or 1 other scheme of the most worthless char | acter may secure the support of people l who are dscontented and wish to change | something, it makes no difference what. | financial scheme that cannot stand | prosperity stands convicted of being a | humbug.
 But there is more in MT. Newland's | admission than this. The silver men at | tributed to gold monometallism the dis
 asters of 1893. which their own legisla-
 ton and their own threats had caused. | The slow recovery of business after the | repeal of the Sherman law they cited as | evidence that silver purchases had not | caused the panic, though the expulsion of | gold from the country by the sherman | law can be demonstrated on black
 board. They declared that business could | not recover till the currency was inflated | by more silver and free coinage was Se- | cured. Yet a deep and wide revival of | business Is in process. It is, perhaps, the | most sudden revival that we have ever | had There are apprehenSions that it
 has moved too fast and that reverses
 may occur. But the revival of business | is not only divertng the attention of the l puDilC lIOln pdieul IleulCiueS lOI DIDliC
 woes-it is refuting the predictions of
 the quacks who proffer the patent med l-icines.
 Business is not only recovering without | free silver. but its recovery dates from | the taking of efficient steps to maintain
 the dollar at it's present va lue. Just the | disaster itself came when there was inn | minent danger that the value of the dol | lar would be reduced one-half So also
 the greensbacks collapsed under the
 prosperity which the country began to
 enjoy soon as it got the dollar back to its gold value.
 | Prices are advancing and trade is in-
 creasing without materially increasing | the volume of the currency and this de- | stroys the cornerstone of free silverism. | Prices are advancing in gold, which com | plete1y refutes the dogma that prices in | gold have been declining on account of | the scarcity of the metal and must con l tinue to decline The south has seen cot | ton go up 60 per cent in a few mont hs | without free silver, and knows that free | silver is not essential to an advance in the | prices.
 | The present improvement will not, in | a certain literal sense, be permanent. | Business will have it's vicissitudes in the | future as it has had in the past But if
 the free silver men will abandon their | efforts to reduce the value of the dollar
 the revival of business will be permanent
 in the ordinary sense of the term, and so | many silver men will be convinced by the l logic of events that the remainder will be
 too few to be dangerous.
 BOARD OF EQUALIZATION MAKES A GOOD