Connecticut western news., 1918-01-03

A + < * 4 < x < ** x x k **<
 The United States produced in 19l' something like 675,OOO,O00 tons of coal. This is a 10 per cent gain over l9lo and a 25 per cent gain over 1915.
 The coal shortage is a problem or transportation.
 There is always plenty of coai-4oo times as much of it under these Unit ed States right now as we and our ancestors have dug out in the last 100 years.
 And there are coal mines enough 1000 mines and 100000 miners. Even in the unprecedented year of 19lo the productive capacity of the mines was 1OO,OOOOO0 tons above the ac- tual production. In 1915, good year, the $500 soft coal mines of the coun- try worked only 2O3 full days instead of 300 and produced two-thirds as much coai as they might have pro- l duced
 The difficulty is to get the coal to l the right place. The solution of this difficulty is what the consumer is prin- cipally paying for when he buys his
 winter coal. Half of his coal bill goes for railroad transportation and for
 hauling through city streets.
 It is the moving of coal, not the mining of it, that gives the big new fuel administration offices most of their work to do.
 Distribution is the thing. The state { administrators concern themselves di' rectly with nothing else. Production is left for the Washington office tc
 handle. But the Washington office
 too, is mainly occupied with getting
 coal from one point-generally sid . ing in railroad yard-to another } point-say the furnaces of a hospi tai, or the bunkerS of scout cruiser ! or the coal box of one of the hundred needirst cases.
 , If the i'll and the needy should b' made to suffer, or the scout cruiser should make only 9 knots when B knots would mean many lives. saved | or if anything goes wrong anywher with heating plant or engine, sug I gestion is likely to reach the fuel ad ministration that 1t do something in ? mediately-and preferably to the rail { roads.
 I There has been sufficient congestion
 at railroad terminals to lend some co
 or to the frequent charges that tn railroads are responsible for the coa shortage. But the real cause of tn trouble goes beyond the railroads. Our whole system of coal produc tion and distribution Is wasteful. is wasteful, for instance, for the NJ 1 braska farmer to ship coal from Wes Virginia In place of buying the smokie j and dustier coal that Kansas produce I Our national use of fuel is extravi gant. It Is wasteful, not so much ( I resources as of mine labor and esp d cially of ton miles of transportation. But the coal industry Is fundamel H tai. Railroads and manufactures hay M shaped themselves to the existing stat M or the industry. 10 make any TaulC; changes In the coal trade would be l throw the whole machinery out I gear.
 M Hence the fuel administration col N cerns itself not with opening ne
 channels for the coal trade, but wit keeping old channels stretched wit
 open. In most cases when the resul
 1t obtains fall short of perfection "A Is idle to try to pin the blame down
 the fuel administration, or to the raj
 roads, or te any other single eieme1
 in the situation.
 That the fuel administration Is col
 Ing with the problem successfully
 shown by these facts: That the nav
 and the transports have been gettir
 all the coal they need and of the be
 quality, that the eantonments and m
 hilton factories are kept well SUI
 piled and that the railroads in tn
 time of the worlds great need are ca
 rying much the greatest traffic of the
 history.