New-York tribune., 1918-02-04
Failure of Fuelless Mondays


1t is officially announced as probable
that this is the last Of the Garfield Mon
days" And we believe it is no secret why
The plan Of fuel shutdown has failed
1t has failed to relieve the coal famine; it
has failed to relieve the freight jam.
All that the heatless Mondays, plus the
five days shutdown, appear to have done
was to create discomfort, distress and
dismay.
The blame for the tiasco should not, it
appears, rest wholly, or perhaps even
largely, upon the shoulders Of the un-
fortunate man who SO rashly undertook in
a great national crisis to engineer vast
enterprise which he knew simply nothing
about. The idea of the fuel shutdown, it
is said, did not originate in his depart
ment, but was due to Secretary McAdoo
and his aids. DR.. Garfield was the goat"
Nevertheless, the Fuel Administrator
stated to the editor Of "The Coal Age"
apparently for publication, that he had
proposed such a step to the President as
carly as last November and that the
President had vetoed the plan. Whatever
merit the proposal might have had, it is
evident that it could have been really
effective only at the beginning of the
crisis If, as DR.. Garfield and his depart
ment contend, the famine was precipitated
solely by lack of transportation, and that
there was plenty of coal, then it is evident
that the embargo ought to have been laid
before the rail systems were practically
put out of business by snowstorms and
cold
But it is not clear that here was the
order. The real reason for the coal fam
inc we have already endeavorcd to make
clear. 1t lay in the disorganization of the
whole industry which followed vicious
attack upon a prcc-iXing agreement
which committee of the government and
q member of President Wilson's own Cab
met had regarded as fair. The summer
was wasted in a disgraceful wrangle be-
tween the angry coal operators on the one
hand and visionary refQrmers on the
other, who believe that you can shake up
a great industry by an arbitrary lower
ing Of the price below that which the in
dustry believes is fair and still maintain
production at high pitch. And on top of
this came the Presidents price-fixing
order and the appointment of DR.. Garfield.
Then, at time when the industrial
life of the nation was straining every
nerve to maintain the tremendous output
Of supplies which were required for our
allies in Europe and to meet the extrava-
CANT needs of nation fed up with in
flated wages and inflated prices, and it
was clearly seen that we should need
every ton Of coal we could possibly store
to get through and avoid the famine
that we had SO narrowly escaped the
previous winter the Fuel Administrator
put forth repeated assurances that there
would be plenty of coal and that this
coal would be cheap. Those assurances
continued up to within a month of the
time DR.. Garfield states that he advocated
fuel shutdown order.
All over the country there are plants
and factories and railways which have
now an adequate supply of coal. They
obtained it very largely last summer and
they pa1u Joe IL at d Ilgn prlce. IncSe
industries were directed by men wise
enough to know, what DR.. Garfield and
the Administration apparently could not
see, that in war time and under the
stress of high industrial pressure cheap
coal and plenty of coal was fantastic
impossibility.
For the folly of rash men the whole
nation has paid.