People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1894 — THE COAL FAMINE. [ARTICLE]

THE COAL FAMINE.

It Make* Itself Feit in New York and the East. New York, Mav29. —The coal famine has begun to make itself felt in all lines of business in New York and the east, and unless relief comes speedily there will be a serious interruption of manufacturing and transportation industries. The corporations which have reserved fuel for ordinary uses are observing strict economy in its use : and are refusing to sell their holdings ! under any circumstances. The usual ’ source of supply being cut off by rea- | son of the strike among-the miners in j Pennsylvania and in the west. New Yorkers have been compelled to send to ; Wales for fuel. Thirty big ships are now on their way to this port with coal from the Welsh mines, but under the most favorable circumstances the relief to be afforded by their arrival will i be but temporary. Coal contractors say that by the time the vessels arrive New York will be entirely out of fuel and that the supply they will bring will be exhausted in a week or ten days. One of the leading coal merchants 1 * 1 admitted that the famine in the trade has reached alarming proportions. The coal firms with contracts to fill have cabled to England and Wales for all the ships that they can engage on short notice to bring cargoes of bituminous coal as fast as they can load. The immediate trouble has been caused by the seizure of coal in transit by the railway companies for use in their locomotives. One firm has been forced to pay $8 a ton for bituminous coal to till a contract that, when it was made, it was estimated could be tilled at the rate of $2.75 per ton.

I The coal brought here from England costs about $4.80 per ton to land, at the present state of the English market. Coal men say that the English prices will take a boom on receipt of the big orders which have been sent 1 from this city in the last two or three . days. There are now about thirty ships on tile way from England with coal for the New York market. Their cargoes will aggregate something over 60,000 tons Dealers say that the anthracite supply is not as yet seriously affected. Many consumers who could do so have been purchasing anthracite coal to use instead of the bituminous until the famine is over. Coalmen say that this country never experienced so large and so important a strike. If not settled soon its effects must be far-reaching, as dispatches show. Already the earnings of the roads, notably in Pennsylvania, have been reduced most seriously, aud soon their carrying capacity will be impaired. The miners will not yield, they say, until a uni form rate of 75 cents a ton is established throughout the country. Many, , and perhaps a majority, of the operat- : ors are willing to give this, but they have not been able to come to such an ! agreement.