East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1907-08-21

council and the board of trade of
that place is taken the following in
teresting addition TO the almost un-
ending discussion of the fuel prob
J lem:
There is some anxiety among a
4 great many people as to what the ef-
feet of the new scale, and new hours
of time, will be upon the present sup
ply of coal, but we ourselves taking
everything into consideration. believe
that the eight hour day scale as to
\ time and the new scale as to pay will
not diminish the present output of
coal, in fact, We ourselves, and a
4 great many other people that we have
visited and talked to, believe it IS
! likely to improve conditions in place
of making them any worse, and when
] this new scale is once fully estab-
lshed, which will likely be in the next
4 few weeks, we have reason to believe
that the output of coal may be in
creased 10 per cent.
In this question of coal supply and
I demand, there is another large fac
tor entering into the same, and that
\ Is transportation. The transporta-
ton is furnished exclusively to this
\ country by the oregon Short Line and
the Union Pacific railroads. Both
companies claim to be independent
j of one another, but work harmonious
ly so far as traffic arrangements are
4 concerned, and we believe that the
transportation question is as much in,
! terwoven with the coal proposition as
If it were a part and parcel thereof
| While II ig bot ha VafI de 40
not mine the coal, nor do the rail-
roads own any of the coal mines so
far as we know, and while the rail-
roads claim to be simply a common
carrier for the coal mines, as for all
other commodities, we are led to be-
lieve that the Oregon Short Line Rail-
way company exercises a moral in
q fluence over these mines that is para
mount above all others.
= The best way to illustrate this
question is that, with the present
short supply of coal that is being
mined in Kemmerer and in Diamond
a vile, the railway company has made
demand upon these two mines for
1000 tons of coal a week Tor railroad
purposes. and while, in our opinion,
they pay less than commercial GUS
toners. and the commercial supply of
coal is already short, still, the mines
y do not refuse the railroads demand,
and the week of our investigation
\ tehse mines furnished the railway
company, each one, nearly 1000 tons
of coal, or 1000 tons a week from
A these mines out of the market for
y domestic supply and diverting it to
railroad use. This coal, the railroad
a company claims is used for their coal
Y bins and their engines. on the hill
\ that exists near Kemmerer, Wyo, and
q close to these mines.
We did not investigate this partic-
8 ular question, but simply took the
railroad company's version of it, but
" we do know that IL the railway COM
pany had not taken this 1000 tons of
coal a week and are likely to take
this 1000 tons of coal a week still
further, that there would have been a
much better supply Of coal for private
consumption than there is.
We also learned that last year dur
! ing the months of September and Oc-
tober, during the sugar beet season,
these very same mines that produced
q then an adequate supply of coal were
Oiily dDlt " run llItt-llllnS OI lne
time on account of a shortage of cars,
4 and in that length of time that they
y were lying idle, waiting for cars, they
could have produced in the various
4 mines, nearly $4,000 tons of coal,
\ which, II properly distributed for do
mestic purposes, would have relieved
all the want and suffering that was
occasioned last year. And we be-
lieve, ourselves, that unless extraor-
dinary measures are taken, and the
railway companies use all the energy
and force at their command, there
will be an additional shortage of cars
in 1907, and the coal supply still les
sened because of having no means of
transporting the same. In other
words, the country has grown, but as
' far as we can see, neither the facili-
ties for mining, nor the facilities for
\ transportation has kept pace anything
near to this growth.
I Coal can be shipped from the mines
to the various districts in which 1t Is
Is used In steel cars, in box cars, in
fact in most any kind OF a car or
course, large steel cars are preferred
on account Of being more easily
loaded, and while some Of the mines
do not use box cars for shipping coal,
II is,. according to our observations, as
much the fault of not having adequate
machinery to load box cars, or else
on the part of the railroad company,
as when there Is q shortage OF large
steel cars at some mines there is
supply Of box cars, which cannot be
loaded readily on account of not hav-
Ing the necessary machinery for load
ing box cars.
We also noticed that, with all this
demand for coal, and this great in
crease OF population, there have not
been any new mines opened up in the
! Wyoming coal fields and while we
admit that there is now under con-
temptation the opening of come other
good mines by the Kemmerer and
Quealy people, they are not yet pro-
ducing coal for want OF proper rail-
road facilities which ought to have
been furnished year ago, and which,
In our opinion, will not be ready for
operation in 1907.
on the Union Pacific railroad, one
mile from Rock Springs, Wyo., there
, exists mine called the Wyoming