The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-22
THE FUEL PROBLEM.

There's we'll known jugglcr who can stir up more trouble over prices than anything else in the word un- der the system. This is the well known law of supply and demand. Men in various gainful pursuits know by experience that when they have a commodity for sale which is not plentiful in proportion to the demand they get a bigger price for it than when it is very plentiful ill proportion to the demand.
 This lcw has been responsible for the high prices which prevail in all most every line.
 The law enjoys the distinction like every other law of being subject to artificial manipulation. Not that it can itself be changed, but the con ditions arising out of which supply and demand as one to the other re- gulatc price are frequently mani pulated.
 
 duction places one to another in re- gular proportion, the right to own and control certain commodities can withhold them from consumption un- til the dem22d grows very great and with the demand the price also rises.
 Now of late years this manipula- sion has been particularly marked and in no other sphere so particu- larly as in the region of coal end fuel.
 Just forget that the price has anything to do except indirectly with the labor costs of production, and just to show that cs far as coal is concerned it may be mentioned th, while cocl cost in labor in creased about 15 per cent more to produce at the mine mouth, its market price within the same per iod, one short year increased one hundred to four hundred per cent.
 The coal that i3 mined is mined for contract orders or for orders which are filled upon demand at the mine mouth The latter is termed spot coal". The contracts amount to about so per cent of the total output of almcs st all mines the spot coal figures around the balance of 20 per cent. The price of coal shows two specific sat of figures: these are of course that paid under contract and those paid for spot coal. The latter is nor mally the highest and sets the price for the former.
 That may seem strange, but the operators generally are interested in making the spot coal set the price for the rest, because it has of recent years been showing steady increase.
 The former eighty per cent shows ID subjcction to supply and demand .inerent in itself for it is not for sale but for consumption and the Coal is bought by lighting. power, railroad and industrial plants under rentracts for so much every year or part of a year as the case may be. Formerly the spot coal was taken care of by dealers and specu lators. and today to a very much neSser extent it still is. These were accustomed and the custom still prevails. to ship this coal to the markets for consumption and while on the way to change the routing of the cars here. there and every where as the market reports ar rived at the distributors offices. in- Ilicating where the highest demand and the greatest shortage and conse- quently best prices prevailed.
 These were accustomed, and the custom still prevails, to hold coal ears fully laden with black dia- monds on sidings near the cities and keep them there until the coal fa- IHine-that is the shortage-inten- sified the demand and the demand being intensified the price also rose. This continued until the price to be paid represented great increase first to cover the costs of demurrage and secondly handsome profit over and above the amount could have been earned by at once supplying