THE FEWNESS OF FUEL

The coal situation today presents a curious medley of inconsistencies. Although the strike at the mines has been finally settled, the railroad companies have not enough sound freight cars to distribute the enormous output. This deficiency in rolling stock is a result of the railroad strike. There has been an unprecedented importation of coal from Great Britain; so great, in fact, that Boston has had to stop importing it. The British coal, however, was bituminous, of which there is at present no scarcity in Boston; although, in default of even this, the rest of Massachusetts has to burn wood.

Even in Boston, it is almost impossible to get a pound of hard coal. To alleviate this hardship, the city government undertook to sell coke, which it had put up in bags by convict labor to lessen the cost. The price, however, of this aid to the poor was five dollars a ton higher than the price of coke sold by private concerns. A few days ago, in North Cambridge and Somerville, several families paid eighteen dollars a ton for an excellent grade of crushed rock, powdered with wet soft coal dust, which an affable stranger offered them in unlimited quantities. A small town in the heart of the Pennsylvania anthracite district has had to appeal to the federal government for aid in securing coal to heat its schools.

All these facts assembled from a complicated pattern in which the motif to stand out most obviously is a warning for the future. The strikes of last summer were tolerated only because people were short-sighted enough not to foresee the consequences. The same overnight is not likely to happen again.