[1] Extract from the annual report of the Secretary of the Interior for
the fiscal year ended June 30, 1919. The page numbers are the same as
those in the report.
[2] In spite of the strike order, effective the last day of the week,
the production of soft coal during the seven days Oct. 26-Nov. 1 was
greater than in any week this year save one. The exception was the
preceding week, that of Oct. 25, which full reports now confirm as the
record in the history of coal mining in the United States. The total
production during the week ended Nov. 1 (including lignite and coal made
into coke) is estimated at 12,142,000 net tons, an average per working
day of 2,024,000 tons.
Indeed had it not been for the strike, curtailing the output of
Saturday, the week of Nov. 1 would have far outstripped its predecessor.
The extraordinary efforts made by the railroads to provide cars bore
fruit in a rate of production during the first five days of the week
which, if maintained for the 304 working days of full-time year, would
yield 715,000,000 tons of coal. It is worth noting that this figure is
almost identical with the 700,000,000 tons accepted early in 1918 by the
Geological Survey and the Railroad Administration as representing the
country's annual capacity. During these five days, therefore, the
soft-coal mines were working close to actual capacity. There can be
little doubt that the output on Monday, Oct. 27, was the largest ever
attained in a single day. (U.S. Geol. Survey Bull.)
[3] It is the western and southern fields that are most affected by the
seasonal demand. As a typical example, Illinois may be cited, with 18
per cent of the year's production in 25 per cent of the time, April,
May, and June, in 1915, and 15 per cent in 1916. Retail dealers received
27 per cent of the coal from Illinois in the period from August, 1918,
to February, 1919, compared with 4 per cent from the Pittsburgh, Pa.,
field.
[4] In every trainload of coal hauled from the mines to our coal bins, 1
carload out of every 5 is going nowhere. In a train of 40 cars, the last
8 are dead load that might better have been left in the bowels of the
earth. No less an authority than Martin A. Rooney states: "Every fifth
shovel full of coal that the average fireman throws into his furnace
serves no more useful purpose than to decorate the atmosphere with a
long black stream of precious soot. At best one-fifth of all our coal is
wasted."
The first requisite toward effecting fuel economy is to secure
cooperation between owners, managers, and the men who fire the coal.
Mechanical devices to increase efficiency in the use of coal can not
produce satisfactory results unless the operators who handle them are
impressed with the importance of their duties.
It is not essential for the plant manager to be a fuel expert, but he
should be familiar with the instruments that give a check on the daily
operations. It is a mistake not to provide proper instruments, for they
guide the firemen and show the management what has taken place daily.
Instruments provided for the boiler room manifest the interest taken by
the management toward conserving fuel. It indicates cooperation and
encourages the firemen to work harder to increase the efficiency.
A second factor effecting fuel economy is the selection of fuel for the
particular plant. It is not expected of a plant manager that he should
be thoroughly informed as to the character of all fuels; but he can
enlist the services of a man who is thoroughly trained In this field.
The Bureau of Mines has compiled valuable information on the character
and analyses of coal from almost every field in the United States.
Information concerning the character and chemical constituents of the
coal, together with knowledge pertaining to the equipment of the plant,
makes it possible to select a fuel adapted to the equipment, thereby
insuring better combustion. Hundreds of boiler plants operate at no
greater than 60 per cent efficiency, and it would be a comparatively
simple matter to bring them up to 70 per cent efficiency. The saving in
tonnage would be more than the combined yearly coal-carrying capacity of
the Baltimore & Ohio and the Southern Railway systems. The direct saving
to our industries at $5 per ton would amount to $200,000,000 worth of
coal per year.
[5] Assistant Secretary Herbert Kaufman before the Senate Committee on
Education presented facts and figures which accentuate the seriousness
of the national situation. Among other things he said:
"The South leads in illiteracy, but the North leads in non-English
speaking. Over 17 per cent of the persons in the east-south Central
States have never been to school. Approximately 16 per cent of the
people of Passaic, N.J., must deal with their fellow workers and
employers through interpreters. And 13 per cent of the folk in Lawrence
and Fall River, Mass., are utter strangers in a strange land.
"The extent to which our industries are dependent upon this labor is
perilous to all standards of efficiency. Their ignorance not only
retards production and confuses administration, but constantly piles up
a junk heap of broken humans and damaged machines which cost the Nation
incalculably.
"It is our duty to interpret America to all potential Americans in terms
of protection as well as of opportunity; and neither the opportunities
of this continent nor that humanity which is the genius of American
democracy can be rendered intelligible to these 8,000,000 until they can
talk and read and write our language.
"Steel and iron manufacturers employ 58 per cent of foreign-born
helpers; the slaughtering and meat-packing trades, 61 per cent;
bituminous coal mining, 62 per cent; the silk and dye trade, 34 per
cent; glass-making enterprises, 38 per cent; woolen mills, 62 per cent;
cotton factories, 69 per cent; the clothing business, 72 per cent; boot
and shoe manufacturers, 27 per cent; leather tanners, 57 per cent;
furniture factories, 59 per cent; glove manufacturers, 33 per cent;
cigar and tobacco trades, 33 per cent; oil refiners, 67 per cent; and
sugar refiners, 85 per cent.
"You will agree with me that future security compels attention to such
concentrations of unread, unsocialized masses thus conveniently and
perilously grouped for misguidance.
"They live in America, but America does not live in them. How can all be
'free and equal' until they have free access to the same sources of
self-help and an equal chance to secure them?
"Illiteracy is a pick-and-shovel estate, a life sentence to meniality.
Democracy may not have fixed classes and survive. The first duty of
Congress is to preserve opportunity for the whole people, and
opportunity can not exist where there is no means of information.
"It is a shabby economy, an ungrateful economy that withholds funds for
their betterment. The fields of France cry shame upon those who are
content to abandon them to their handicap.
"The loyal service of immigrant soldiers and sailors commit us to
instruct and nationalize their brothers in breed.
"The spirit in which these United States were conceived insists that the
Republic remove the cruel disadvantage under which so many native borns
despairingly carry on.
"How may they reason soundly or plan sagely? The man who knows nothing
of the past can find little in the future. The less he has gleaned from
human experience the more he may be expected to duplicate its signal
errors. No argument is too ridiculous for acceptance; no sophistry can
seem far-fetched to a person without the sense to confound it.
"Anarchy shall never want for mobs while the uninformed are left at the
mercy of false prophets. Those who have no way to estimate the worth of
America are unlikely to value its institutions fairly. Blind to facts,
the wildest one-eyed argument can sway them.
"Not until we can teach our illiterate millions the truths about the
land to which they have come and in which they were born shall its
spirit reach them--not until they can read can we set them right and
empower them to inherit their estate.
"If we continue to neglect them, there are influences at work that will
sooner or later convince them who now fail to appreciate the worth of
our Government that the Government itself has failed--crowd the melting
pot with class hates and violence and befoul its yield.
"We must not be tried by inquest. We demand the right to vindicate the
merit of our systems wherever their integrity is questioned or maligned.
"We demand the right to regulate the cheating scales upon which the
Republic is weighed by its ill-wishers.
"We demand the right to protect unintelligence from Esau bargains with
hucksters of traitorous creeds.
"We demand the right to present our case and our cause to the unlettered
mass, whose benightedness and ready prejudices continually invite
exploitation.
"We demand the right to vaccinate credulous inexperience against
Bolshevism and kindred plagues.
"We demand the right to render all whose kind we deem fit to fight for
our flag fit to vote and prosper under its folds.
"We demand the right to bring the American language to every American,
to qualify each inhabitant of these United States for self-determination,
self-uplift, and self-defense."
Dr. Philander P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, in his analysis of
the illiteracy figures of the census, said:
"Illiteracy is not confined to any one race or class or section. Of the
5,500,000 illiterates as reported by the census of 1910, nearly
3,225,000 were whites, and more than 1,500,000 were native-born whites.
"That illiteracy is not a problem of any one section alone is shown by
the fact that in 1910 Massachusetts had 7,469 more illiterate men of
voting age than Arkansas; Michigan, 2,663 more than West Virginia;
Maryland, 2,352 more than Florida; Ohio, more than twice as many as New
Mexico and Arizona combined; Pennsylvania, 5,689 more than Tennessee and
Kentucky combined. Boston had more illiterates than Baltimore,
Pittsburgh more than New Orleans, Fall River more than Birmingham,
Providence nearly twice as many as Nashville, and the city of Washington
5,000 more than the city of Memphis.
"It is especially significant that of the 1,534,272 native-born white
illiterates reported in the 1910 census 1,342,372, about 87.5 per cent,
were in the open country and small towns, and only 191,900, or 12.5 per
cent, were in cities having a population of 2,500 and over. Of the
2,227,731 illiterate negroes 1,834,458, or 82.3 per cent, were in the
country, and only 393,273, or 17.7 per cent, were in the cities."
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