The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-27
COAL As A spuBLIC uTILITY


 COAL AS AsPUBLIC UTILITY
 Inasmuch as it is claimed by those who have given careful study to the coal question that there is an over-production of coal and that half the coal used as fuel is wasted, the conclusion is that our boasted American bust ness sagacity is challenged to apply certain rules of commonsense to coal. It has also been stated without successful rebuttal that it is cheaper to send current over wires than coal over rails to furnish power for indus tries. It is on this principle that, for ex- ample. the Gorgas steam plant was located near the mines whence it derived its current rather than near water-power plants supple mentary to which its current was designed to be utilized. The same is true with respect to all steamplants constructed to act as sup plements to water power in periods when reduced river flow diminishes the current generated by the water-power plants.
 If power companies find it economical to ship current instead of the coal whence such current is derived. the question at once arises how other industries remote from mines can afford to keep paying the double cost of transporting coal and of inefficient use of coal as fuel. It has also been said that the railroads themselves use in their own enginesaa very large percentage of the coal they haul. That means that the freight rate on the rest of the coal must be much higher than otherwise to compensate. There is also to be considered the unemployment problem that confronts those who must face the ne- cessity of reducing the mine output. The double burden on railroads of transporting coal and of industries in getting only half by the one process of developing the power at the mines for both industries and loco motives. The Identification of the railroads is the one outstanding economic step that the railroads have resisted taking, yet there is cogent argument on the side of those who depose that the net result would be profitable to the railroads as well as to industry.
 The labor problem would also be modified by the erection of by-product plants at GOT near the mines. These by-product plants could absorb much of the labor released through reduction in the coal output In addition to the other by-products of coal there would be the gas to be converted into cleo tric current, and the coke to be distributed as household fuel. Over large portions of the country today the household fuel is anthra- cite. But anthracite is becoming yearly scarcer and more expensive. The recent an- thracite shortage, according to the April Century Magazine, proved conclusively that people who were driven to the use of coke came to like coke better, so that the anthra- cite market has been curtailed in the city of New York alone by as much as four hun dred thousand tons a year. In the South, where anthracite has not been greatly used, coke is coming to replace soft coal, with con- sequeut reduced annoyance in ashes, sootl and inefficient result.
 There is no doubt that our pressnt-day methods of wasting our fuel resources are paving the way for: future disaster. unless there is early reform. Inasmuch as the American has reputation for regard for the dollar, it should be added that there is far more profit in efficiency than in inef- ficiency, while the actual cost of fuel, whether coal-gas or coke, should cost the householder much less than 1t does today. There is an increasing tendency to regard the coal business as a public utility, and, as the Century remarks, when coal is conceived in terms of gas and electric current, this ten- dency is very logical. The nations coal in- dustry needs revision, and the. sooner the nation, or the industry itself, starts about it, the sooner will the huge leaks in our pros neritv he pluRged up