Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1918 — COAL PRICES TO BE REDUCED [ARTICLE]

COAL PRICES TO BE REDUCED

la Jasper County 55 Cents Per Ton After April 1. The new schedule of coal prices fixed for Jasper county, which appears in another column of The Bemocrat, is a reduction of 55 oents per ton over the prices fixed last November on bituminous coal. The price of anthacite coal is fixed by the government, and we should have a reduction of about $1 per ton over the prices charged here last winter, when as high as $lO per ton was exacted by some dealers. The price fixed is based on Indiana lump coal, remember, and is the maximum price that can be charged. Mine run coal should be some 50 cents per ton below the price of lump, which cannot be over $5.45 per ton delivered, or $4.95 at the blns. This maximum price also, understand, does not affect any price /^semipetition, and dealers are permitted to sell at any price below the maximum figure that they may desire. The only requirement is that they do not sell above the maximum figure.

There is not now and has not been for some years at least, any price competition between the coal dealers of Rensselaer, and it is hardly possible that any of our local dealers will see fit to cut below the maximum price fixed 'by the fuel administration. This reduction of 55 cents per ton still allows the dealer $1.70 a ton for handling, and proves The Bemocrat’s position last winter that excessive profits were being made by the Rensselaer dealers, and at a time, too, when the consumer was compelled to submit to the extortion. The coal business differs from almost any other line of retail business, because of the fact that it does not take a large capital and that, if the dealer sells for cash only, he is turning his money over rapidly and does not carry any "dead stock" on hand. Hie gets in two or three carloads of coal and in a very few days—and in the ease of last winter, with forty-eight hours —has disposed of it and got -bls money. In most lines of business one has to carry many items in stock that there is only an occasional call for, and therefore the retailer should have a larger profit than one who turns his stock over rapidly and never has any "dead stock” at any time. The reduced prices should encourage everyone who can possibly do so to lay in their next winter’s supply of coal during the summer months, and will probably also discourage the talked of plan of establishing a community coal yard here. No fair-minded man can object to one’s making a reasonable profit on the goods he handles, but it was an outrage the way consumers were held up on coal prices here last winter when coal cost the dealer no more than it is costing him now.