Button Up Your Overcoat

From Solid Fuels Administrator Harold L. Ickes came a chilly prediction last week: unless the Army quickly releases some coal miners from the service, U.S. citizens will have the most uncomfortable winter of the war.

"I am not a prestidigitator," said Honest Harold, "and neither are any of the members of the Solid Fuels Administration staff. We have no magic wands and we cannot produce coal without coal miners. No one else can."

Then he gave the figures: in the present fuel year (which began last April 1) the manpower now in the mines can produce 575,000,000 tons of soft coal (estimated need: 600,000,000 tons) and 43,000,000 tons of hard coal (estimated need: 55,000,000 tons). "These figures," said Ickes, "point definitely to a worrisome deficit of 37,000,000 tons."

Although he had fervently urged that 6,000,000 tons of bituminous coal be sent to Europe to avoid "rioting, bloodshed, and the destruction of nearly all semblance of orderly government," Harold Ickes glumly announced that the U.S. would be in a bad jam if not even a pound were sent abroad.

Meanwhile C. J. Potter, deputy Solid Fuels Administrator, predicted that war industries, including steel mills, would have to go on a four-day week unless the Army helped out. The Ickes solution: immediate furloughs for 30,000 experienced miners from the Army. The Army's answer: no. Now it was a problem for President Truman to solve.

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