Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-28
A SCHwAB OF COAL MINING
NEEDED
Unless He Is Found There Is Grave Danger
Of Coal Famine Next Winter
as Bad as Last Years

/
WHAT is imperatively needed to un-
w tangle the anthracite muddle is a
man big enough for the job.
There is coal enough in the ground.
All that is necessary to get it out is
expert skill to mine it and sufficient
| crude labor to load it in the trucks in
the mine and run it through the breakers.
| Then an intelligent method of distribu-
| tion will send it where it is needed when
it is needed.
The work of building ships was lag.
| ging few months ago in spite of the
fact that we had the steel and the ship
yards and generous supply of skilled
and unskilled labor Nobody seemed to
know what to do. But Mr.. Schwab was
called in and he soon arranged for
system of producing the kind of steel
needed for the ships in sufficient amounts
and for the distribution of the different
kinds and shapes to the shipyards in the
order in which it was needed. The solu-
ton of the problem was so simple that
only a man of Mr.. Schwab's directness
of mind could think of it.
Mr.. Garfield, president of Williams
College, who has been in charge of the
fuel administration for more than a
year, may be very good academic
administrator but he has balled up the
whole coal business from the beginning.
He told US last year that he would re-
duce the price on anthracite to the con-
sumers and provide sufficient coal, but
he neither provided the coal nor reduced
the price. His method of price fixing,
intended to stimulate production, put a
damper on it.
He is doing nothing now, so far as is
known, to prevent the draining of the
mining region of it's supply of crude
labor and skilled miners. A thousand
mine workers left the region yesterday,
drafted into the army. The workers,
many of them, were glad to go. They
were anxious to fight for the cause of
liberty. This is to their credit. 1t is to
the everlasting discredit of whoever is
responsible for the drafting of these men
that they have not been convinced that
they are fighting the Germans just as
effectively working in the mines as they
will be carrying a gun in France.
Every breaker boy, every man who
loads truck in the mines, every engi-
neer at the power stations, every miner
is helping to win the war, for he is doing
necessary work to keep the munition
factories running and to provide heat
for cooking the food for the workers in
all the various industries of the country,
almost every one of which is essential to
the equipment and maintenance of the
fighting army on the other side.
If the mine workers had had the situa-
ton explained to them as it has been
explained to the workers in the shipyards
they would insist that they be allowed to
remain at their work and they would
handle coal in the same spirit as the
trench digger in one of the shipyards,
who said to himself every time he lifted
shovelful of earth that the grave for
the Kaiser was so much nearer dug.
But the essential character of their
work has not been pointed out to the
men in the mines. The provost marshal
general has not even had them exempted
from the draft as essential war workers.
This could be done with a stroke of the
pen, if any one had the nerve to do it.
The district draft boards in this State
have put some of the miners in de-
ferred classification when they have
asked for it. But the initiative has had
to be. taken by those miners themselves,
who realized the Importance of their
work.
This is the season when the coal must
be got out of the earth. but virtually
every mine is short-handed. The Lacka-
wanna Coal Company, for example, re.
ports that it needs more than 600 miners
and more than 1000 laborers. But it
cannot get them. The men it needs have
been sent to France, are in the training
camps or on the way there. And large
number of the coal yards in this city
are empty, with not ton to supply their
customers. More than 100000 tons less
| than the normal demand has been shipped
| to this city in the last three months.
| And much of the coal mined is being
sent to New England and the Middle
West. Coal is needed in those regions,
but their shortage last winter did not
approach the shortage of this city at the
door of the coal region. Mr. Lewis, the
local coal administrator. is exerting him
self to get coal. But he can accomplish
| little so long as the Federal Govern
ment is depicting the labor supply in the
mining region and SO long as Mr.. Gar
field complacently reports that the situa-
tion is well in hand.
There is no need of a fuel shortage
next winter. There are men in the coun-
try big enough to find a way to prevent
| it, but they are not in authority in the
fuel administration. If the President
will make inquiries among the coal