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THE HEART OF "GAY PARIS" AT NIGHT NOWADAYS
The French have learned to save their coal. Their experience has taught them that electric street lighting is, in
the main, an unnecessary luxury.
DAMMING OUR BLACK RIVE
OF WASTE
By WILLIAM T. WALSH
A S the United States goes to war, the fleet, for fuel in steel and munition
f\ the first act should be the tak- plants, the black diamonds contributed
/ \ ing over of the control of the coal tar, from which high explosives
I % railways by the Federal were manufactured by the Allied na­
Government.
tions.
The second act should be a similar In spite of the fact that the British
control of the coal mines of the nation. Government practically took over the op­
The first act is prerequisite to the seceration of coal mining, industry was
ond. It has a direct bearing on the coal seriously handicapped. This was due,
industry. The situation abroad helps to first of all, to strikes in Wales, subse­
explain this.
quently settled through the tact and good
When Great Britain went to war, the sense of Lloyd George; and second due
first thing the government did was to to the fact that the army found many
commandeer all the best steam and do­ eager recruits among the coal miners.
mestic coal in the United Kingdom. The Presently it was discovered that the
situation was too critical to permit of any normal output of coal, despite the in­
consideration at that time of the needs creased demand for the product, had
of private industry. England's first and been reduced by about twelve per cent.
last line of defense was her fleet. There­ Only skilled miners could make up this
fore, coal for her naval units was the deficiency. Thereupon, the British Gov­
first consideration.
ernment called back from the trenches in
Besides the need of coal for operating Flanders and northern France those
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