The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-23
.HE National Educational asso-


 -HE National Educational asso
 citation now holding it's annua neeting in New York city has vel arranged programme, which combines business, inspection of newspaper nlants. visits to notable institutions and sightseeing generally.
 The editors who visited the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia unl' versity listened to practical addresses by prominent newspaper men. Brad ford Merrill of the New York Amerl- can. in paying tribute to the et- ficiency of the school, said that with in the last three years the journal which he represented "had engaged four of it's graduates who today are receiving larger salaries than Horace Greely earned as editor of the Trlb- une."
 When the late Joseph Pulitzer who, to a large extent, was self-educated, but who was one of the greatest edi- tors and publishers this country has known, was planning school of Journalism, many editors seemed to think his ideas chimerical. Even after the school was opened the general scheme and the needs of such an in- stitution were challenged by some of the older journalists" who contended that the newspaper office was the only training school worth consider ing.
 But practical results have more than justified MT. Pulitzer's mental vision and his beneficent purpose. The school of journalism at Columbia has well passed the experimental stage. It has not only made good but simi- lar schools have since been estab- lished in many colleges and universi- ties, including Howard, here in Bir- mingham.
 " HE coal mining industry, long
 one of Birmingham's mair stays, has been at low ebb in this dis. trict for two years and the situation is now acute but not hopeless.
 In this age of scientific economics aarnessed water power has sup. slanted steam in many directions and aere in Alabama hydro-electric com petition has already cut into the coal trade at the rate of more than one million tons a year, and this new factor in our industrial progress is yet in it's infancy.
 Small industries operated by hydro, electric power are multiplying and will multiply faster. During the transition period between the use of electricity and steam, the coal operators will have to exert themselves all the more to reach new markets; and right here they have encountered their greatest difficulity. Representatives of large Alabama mining interests, in setting forth the causes which have brought about the depression in the commer- cial coal business, have pointed tc several in addition to hydro electric development, and what they declare tc be the most serious of all is 'the ex- orbitant freight rates" that keer them out of territory logically tribu tary to the Birmingham district. Ever before cheap electric power was being sold here on an extensive scale, tht market for Alabama coal was re stricted to comparatively smal area. The operators complained o1 what they felt was railroad rate dis crimination against them, but they did not make the fight for relief that present conditions now compel then to make.
 The operators have been contendine particularly for lower rates to the Mississippi valley east of the river which includes Louisville and western Tennessee, now supplied from dis tant coal fields. The interstate com merce commission, which has hae hearings on the Alabama cases, is ex pected to make it's decision shortly and there is ground for hope that i will be favorable to our operators. i SO the commission will be invoked tt