coal trade bulletin - Clpdigital.org

22 THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
is being made and even that more than meets
demand, the surplus being absorbed by other sec­
tions. The one encouraging feature that has
persisted through all the dullness is the demand
for slack. No matter how soft other grades might
be, slack held its own, and even now with the up­
turn just started, premiums for prompt shipments
of slack are not missing from trade reports. This
fact has aided producers in maintaining prices at
card rates and has been a material factor in pre­
venting the weak brethren from making conces­
sions that might have been harmful. With mines
operating sixty per cent., with unseasonable
weather and with general trade dullness the mile­
stones of the fortnight prices have been held at
card rates: $1.30 to $1.40 for run-of-mine coal;
$1.40 to $1.50 for three-quarter coal; $1.50 to $1.60
for inch and one-quarter coal, and 90 cents for
slack, and the last named grade in greatest de­
mand.
The coke trade, apparently has passed its crisis
and now is starting a climb to the top once more.
During the last week for which reports are avail­
able over four hundred additional ovens were fired
and the production took a jump of about thirty
thousand tons. This, itself, is a splendid sign
and it is backed up by the additional encouraging
sign of the manufacturers being able to maintain
their prices, despite all the hammering of consumers
who had hoped to obtain tonnage to meet
their fueling needs at a concession. Not onlyhave
the prices been maintained, but operators are
not overly anxious to contract their output at
present prices, because they believe still better
things are in store. Prices are held now at $2.50
to $2.75 for furnace coke and $3.50 to $3.75 for
foundry coke.
The anthracite branch of the trade seems to have
been the greatest sufferer from the weather and
stagnant business conditions. The tonnage
figures for January, when available, are likely to
show a decided decrease from those of last year,
due in the main to the causes above stated. It
will require considerable chilly weather to bring
the situation back to normal. Mines are working
fairly steady and some coal is going into storage.
Prices are held at card figures.
* * *
THE MINERS HAVE BEEN IN SESSION FOR THE PAST
TEN DAYS, this being the first biennial convention
of the organization. A fairly complete story of
the sessions is printed in this issue ol' THE COAL
TRADE BULLETIN, and the salient features of the
official reports also are reproduced. The one big
factor of the convention, ihe fixing of their wage
scale demands, had not been reached up to the
hour of going to press, but as district conventions
have set forth their demands it is not improbable
they will indicate in the main, what the international
convention's demands are likely to
embody. On some of the questions that were
before the convention radical action was taken,
while in others more conservative counsels prevailed.
The work of the convention is worth
looking over.
* # #
OPPOSITION OP BOTH .MINERS AND OPERATORS failed
to prevent the Ohio senate from passing the antiscreen
mine bill. It has been heralded as the
best piece of legislation along that line yet brought
to the attention of legislators. But the mine
owner and the mine worker say it will ruin the
industry in the state and its provisions are impracticable.
When these two bodies—both most
vitally interested—decry it, it is hard for the
average man to see wherein its wonderful worth
ties. * * *
MOKE PROBING BY CONGRESS is decreed by the
House of Representatives. This time the Colorado
and Michigan labor difficulties are to be the
subjects of the probe. Just what is hoped to be
accomplished is not made clear as it might be
aside from the political capital to be gotten out
of if. Unless all former actions of the same kind
have lost their significance they point to a petering
out of the whole affair, just as all the probing
of the West Virginia troubles failed to substantiate
the peonage charges, the interference with
the mails charges and numerous other allegations
that were heralded forth as being onerous to the
mine employe.
• LONG WALL BRUSHINGS •
White made a nice fatherly speech to the delegates
telling them to be polite and then the constitution
committee comes in with a paper raise
in his salary and bing! there was a bedlam that
outdid Milton's Paradise Lost.
* * *
When the convention was passing through one
degree of purgatory a delegate in the gallery let
out a record lusty warwhoop for silence and there
was silence—for a minute. That guy is not engaged
in narrow work.
* * *
No use talking, when it comes to literary effects
the ruling international officers of the miners have
any preceding unicorn beat a whole lap.
* * *
My, ob my! Some convention. Machine rule
was in the gob.