Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1907-07-27
Prospects Are for an UnpreCe-
denied Shortage Of Fuel
Next Winter.
IMPOSSIBLE TO GET MINERS.
OIL May Become Substitute for Furnish
ing Motive Power on
Railroads.

The glaring prospects for an unprece-
dented coal shortage the coming Win
ter Is attracting the special attention
and concern of the railroads, for they
sense the situation more clearly than
the average citizen does. and the need
of doing something to relieve the stu
alton is painfully apparent to them.
Railroad men say there is no short
age In coal unmined; but there are no
men TO work the mines. Labor seems
to be short all over the country. Out
in Kansas and Nebraska where mother
earth has brought forth this years
crops with plentiful richness, farmers
and ranchmen are searching high and
low with fine toothed comb" for
hands to harvest the vast crops, and
are not finding them. So women and
children are going to work in the
fields. and what is to be done in this
one Instance is causing much anxiety.
WHERE TO GET MEN.
1t Is noted here in the far west that
of the thousands and thousands of Inn
migrants arriving at Ellis Island, New
York harbor, the greater number OF
the able bodied men are picked up by
labor agents, given railroad tickets, and
naces, shops. fields, etc. though the
country east of the eighty-fifth merid-
ian. Pennsylvania absorbing the great
er number. so that only a few reach
as far west as Chicago. Consequently
the great west is not notlceably bene-
flied by European immigration. At the
same time benefits that might be re-
ceived from even a moderate Asiatic
immigration ore reduced to the lowest
terms by the opposition of the Pacific
coast labor unions. leaving this mar
ket steadily and increasingly short
of laborlng men. The question is there
fore, Where are men TO be found to do
the field and mine work on the Pacific
slope, particularly in the coal mines?
OIL A SUBSTITUTE.
A prominent railroad official remark
ed this morning THE last legislature
appointed a senate committee on coal
mines and the question of coal supplies.
1t strikes me that It would be an OPP
perfume thing for the governor to call
the committee together, and get them
busy, doing something. I can't see that
they have accomplished anything up
to date; and the situation is becoming
decidedly interesting. Mr.. Bancroft has
had to order coal from Australia. AL
though there is an abundance of the
article right here at home, hut no men
age is responsible for the decision OF
the San Pedro road TO extend the run
ming of its oil burning locomotives from
Las Vegas and Caliente through TO
Lynn station, 11s miles from Salt Lake.
and that It may be found necessary to
run through to Salt Lake would not be
surprising. Storage tank of 10000 bar
rels is to be erected at Milford, and
one of $1,000 barrels at Lynn with which
to supply the engines. The Southern
Pacific company has been running it's
oil burning engines through to Sparks.
and now some OF them are running on
the Short Line as far east as Carlin.
$50 miles west of Ogden. In fact II
would not surprise me to see oil burners
running into ogden, in competition with
coal burning engines.
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.
ut may be necessary to inaugurate
some public movement to interest men
sufficiently to induce THEM TO go to
work in the coal mines. pay them spe-
cIally high wages-resort to extra
ordinary means to get out enough coal
to pull the public through the ensuing
winter. Something has got to be
done, and that too, before long"