The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-23

with such members of their honor able boards on the Council of Ma tional Defense. urging and support ing the high rates above referred to, we can understand that profits and patriotism. however some may re- gard them as incompatible. have been mixing in the pleasantest kind of emulsion a profit-loving man can swallow.
 President Wilson has set the price of coal at the mine mouth at one dollar and ninety cents. The average price paid by the Pullman Railroad last year including trans portation to Chicago was one dollar and ninety eight cents a ton, so that we can understand the new rate is not intended to interfere generally speaking with the profits of the bus mess. but merely to prevent soar ing price interfering with the ac- tiyities in industry which might | hamper the war operations. In other words the mine mouth price under the regulation can be con sidcred nothing else but more than generous It is quite evident that reasonable profits" are still to be forthcoming.
 Now we make guess that tue employers will not take kindly to this regulation and that labor is to be the fall guy of the regulation.
 We venture to state that pretty soon the press dispatches will be mentioning that the Illinois coal operators are discovering that they cannot concede the increase asked for by the coal diggers and that 1 they will insist upon reductions and say that inasmuch as they patriou- cally bow to the government reduc- tion. so also must labor do the l same.
 We will venture to predict, ana base our prediction upon the ex- porience of the past, that the coal operators will make the most of the opportunity to pass the reduced rate upon the coal diggers. They cannot hold the consumers up for more and and they will make the workers en- | joy the privilege of periodically ac- 1 cepting the reduction themselves. IL is quite clear that if they can do this on every ton, still higher than it was last year even under the pre- sent regulation by at least 75c., their profits will still be a dollar a 1 ton more than they were in 1916. The man who owns the mine, has surely the whip hand.
 And now turning from these pa- i triOtc considerations to our own little burg in our own little land of Alaska, we ask how the newly re- gulated price of three dollars and twenty-five cents a ton in Washing
 After all the considerations re- garding the conditions of things in Illinois are mostly in the nature of speculative philosophy. Those who live in Nome will not be com forted by the fact that they are burning four dollar coal in Chicago while twenty-five dollars ton goes up in smoke in this neck of the woods.
 Let's figure this thing out as 1t should work out if the reason able profit" system were not so much actually in evidence.
 Coal costs for transportation from from Seattle to the docks in Nome the sum of $12.50. That Includes l the cost of lightering but not the wharfage which costs in the neigh borhood of fifty cents ton.
 Here we have some tangible f. gures, three dollars and quarter, plus thirteen dollars equal to six teen dollars a ton. Allowing five dollars a ton for the cost of rail- road haul and for company profits. sacks and sacking costs to land coal | in Nome for c maximum of $21. But that's not what we pay now for coal, and it is unlikely that we will pay that for it under present sche- dulod indications.
 The Alaska Lighterage and Com mercial Co.,. intimates difficulty in buying coal. The coal shortage that