Join the Enemy

Oakey L. Alexander, president of Virginia's Pocahontas Fuel Co., Inc., shocked his friends last week as much, he said, as if "Harry Truman had joined the Young Republican Club." The boss of one of the biggest U.S. soft-coal producers went into the oil business. With California Oil Co., a subsidiary of Standard of California, Pocahontas plans to spend about $1,500,000 building an oil terminal at Portland, Me. The 192,000-bbl. terminal will be supplied by Cal-Standard tankers.

Pocahontas is going into a competing business, said Alexander, because "our customers are thoroughly disgusted with interruptions year after year because of [John L.] Lewis' attitude. We are going into oil where oil is available in order to hold on to our business."

Coalmen everywhere were finding business harder & harder to hold on to. This was due to: 1) Lewis, whom coalmen call "the best oil salesman in the country"; 2) the greater efficiencies and cleanliness of oil and natural gas; 3) the rise in coal prices and drop in oil prices, which has put oil on a competitive footing with coal. On the East Coast alone switchovers from coal to oil have cut this year's coal sales at least 20% below 1948.

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