Evening star., 1924-06-08


output by nearly ten.
Cost Will BE HaIved.
The halving of the cost OF min
ing within five years appears defn-
itely and conservatively in prospect
why only three ton O. coal to-
day, Joe?" one of my buddies called
to a husky Polish miner as we
huddled low in a mine car and yelled
or banged our dinner pals for mora
speedsout of our gaIloping mule.
IF take all damfoo1 coal out to-
day." Joe answered with a jolly
gleam of his white teeth in the
darkness, mo can find job tomor- {
row."
Today the chances are that Joe
is up in the nearby city scanning
the biackboards outside the labor
agencies for one of those old "min-
ers wanted signs-in vain. Tho
fear of another strike last April
made many buyers stock up and
so kept him and his chums fairly
busy last winter. That stock pile
means of itself a dull market to-
day. Worse than that, there arc
those new machine-iron men that
don't know enough to save work for
tomorrow!
Some of these are merely troughs
steel troughs which move the coal
away from the face" of the seam
out into the daylight. The shovel
lift into it is shorter than into the
old car, and so the cost is less-as
o1 ho af =
ders. Other machines are small steam
or electric shovels which fill the car
in twinkling after the coal has
been brought down in the usual way
by drill and powder. Then there are
others which pick up the black
diamonds from the floor with sinuous
and unceasing arms of steel. Still
others mine the coal as we'll as
load it.
All of these mean less sweat and
less cost-and more Joes who mo
can find job tomorrow"
.In Between, Periods
Undoubtedly the economists are
right who say that cheaper fuel will
so increase the jobs in our factories
that Joe will find job in one of
them. Oddly enough, it will take Joe
a long time to consider this new job
as good as his old one-and for more
| reasons than are in the pay envelope.
"Oop outside, one-a day sweat
onesa day freeze, No like-em,"
foreign miner explained to me one
day. Here no hot. no cold. ALA
time goo-o-d"'
'Idke-em" or no like-em," Joe's
family is pretty sure to be happier
outside the average mine town. in
any event, they are sure to bring
to the factory town or city a reg
ular brood of amazing changes in
the work and life of the rest of us
along with the cutting of industrys
fuel costs in two.
Thus, for instance, the moment coal
is minde at half its present figure
the transportation of it may easily
be more expensive than its mining.
That demands the shipping of coal
by wire-after turning it into power
at the mines mouth. That spells
history-perhaps tragedy-for our
railroads; for today one-third OF
their traffic is coal.
"New Deal" All Around
with soft coal costing only a
dollar at the mine so an engineer
mentioned another of that brood o.
changes, "the white coaP of water
power becomes much less profitable
than now-and Muscle Shoals MAY
become nothing worth quarreling
overw
Altogether such cut in indus
trial fuel costs may we'll bring such
a reduction in the selling prices of
manufactured articles as could easily
be equivalent to, say, a per cent
increase in the buying power of the
wage or salary of everybody in the
land-in addition to making factory
jobs everywhere easier to get.
Still further, such cheap fuel can
be expected to give America such
position in international trade and
politics as she has never before
known.
From here" a coal operator ex-
planned to me one day in West Vir-
ginia, this level five-foot seam of
precious fuel scarcely varies eighteen
inches in thickness for a hundred
miles until it reaches the Ohio
River
Conditions In France.
AS he spoke 1 recalled the mar
row three-foot vein in which / once
worked in northern France. Stand
ing as the seam did, on end, my coal
fell from my pick down into the
darkness seventy-five feet below,
while that of my fellow workers
higher up struck upon the planks
just above my head-or trickleo
through the cracks and down H.
neck.
That difference of thickness and
Of regularity has already given to
the American coal miner twice and
three times as much tonnage per
day as to his fellow miner abroad.
With this old disparity further multi
piled by even as much as two, our
old disadvantage of distance from
market is wiped out and markets
hitherto closed to US throughout the
seven seas are opened.
So those great black, blind mon
sters. grinding and growing down
below ground in the darkness as they
fill their cars with unheard-of speed,
may be pushing us faster than all our
seagoing turbines and whirling twin
screws into the center not only of
commercial pre-eminience but of
moral and political responsibility and
obligation among the nations.
Our coal-town "Joes"-and perhaps
some of our statesmen-may not like
all this. But one who has seen the