INDUSTRIAL EFFECTS OF COAL CRISIS

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5329, 15 February 1947, Page 2

INDUSTRIAL EFFECTS OF COAL CRISIS

^ f V" > QRIM OUTLOOK ALL EUROPE; EDLE A|NID SHIVERING. In England at the end of last week the Great Western Raflway, with 38943t#eccal-burning locomotives, had only days' eoal in hand. Other main lme railways were* little better off. Laundries deelare work will take longer owing to lack of hot water, hot meals in hotels and .restaurants dwindle under the pressuref of a 10 per cent. fuel eut, steelworks in Sheffield close owing to cuts in gas, and Lancashire weaving firms shut down through lack of power behind the looms. National Mines Output These are only the salient details. -Coming down to heart-rending particulars, they range from the pay-off of 41,000 paper mill employees, thousands of other workers in the big eleQtrical and automobile plants, a partial close-down in industries ranging from bread-baking to movie film manufacture. What lies behind this fantastic fuel crisis? At its heart is the grim fact that Britain used to produce 240 million tons of coal, and now, owing to- the ravages of war, worn-out machinery and worn-out miners — this output has shrunk to an annual 200 million tons. This is better than it wds in 1945, when production fell to 175 million tons and ' war-time safety stocks were depleted, but it is still far short of the national needs. Britain's newly nationalised miners are boosting production from week to week. Christmas week, 1946, production was half a million tons up on the same week in 1945, although the industry has 6000 fewer men, and this improvement has been maintainqd. Before the war Britain also exported 50 million tons of coal a year. Naturally this surplus has vanished, save for eonsignments somehow spared to maintain a spark of fuel power in Germany. South Africa is now exporting coal, yet this is only one bright element in the vast scene of spreading coal famine. Tour of Europe Let us make a lightning* tour of Europe and see what is happening. In France every cause of inefficieney, from food shortage to lack of pit props, menaces production, and mining output is less than half the coal that France needs. Street lighting is reduced, trains eurtailed, and many "non-essential factories" have been closed. The domestic ration for the whole winter ranges from 7 cwt. to 11 cwt. aecording to size of family, and black-market coal costs £20 a ton. Incidentally, no black market in coal exists in Britain, Belgium, or Holland. With 50,000 Italian volunteer civilians working in her mines, Belgian production is one-third below reauirements, and the defitit is being made up by paid imports from Ameriea. Holland, too, has made a remarkable recovery, boosting coal production to the higbest man output and achieving 80 per cent. of pre-war output. Poland, strangely enough, is protlucinf/ more coal than she needs, but is unable to export except to Russia. Norway and Sweden are relatively well off, effectively replacing- coal witb wood and hydroelectric power. Wood Ration for Swiss Switzerland, however, feels the pinch, for electric fires have been dimmed by the drastic effect of s drought on hydro-electric supplies Accustomed to baying coal from Czechoslovakia, France and 'Germany she can now import only a quarter of normal supplies. Last • year her four million people shared a millior and a half tons of-coal for industrial and domestic purposes and now the Swiss coal ration is a wood ration. Demnark, too, has been forced to ban water heating and1 Copenhagen's housewives line up for peat supplies. In Italy the stoppage of UNRRA shipments has not produced catastrophic results so far, but .power is cul off for two days a week. Ger*many ancl Austria are, of courst the chilliest "blue spots." In Vienna, all save food industries closed during shuddersome January, while Berlin hospitals ran out of coal at 20 degrees below zero. Hamburg, chief eity of the British zone, was frozen into paralysis hy the coldest weather in 20 years, and the closure of 100 factories brought TVinter unemployment to thousands. Finding themselves in similar straits before now, the people have flocked to communal warmth in the cinemas, but this tiine even the theatres closed. More than 100 people perished of cold. At the same time, this picture of general frostbite conceals an acute paradox, for Gernlany has the three biggest coal-producing fields in Europe — the Ruhr, the Saar and Silesia. Pre-war output was 184 million tons and the 'Ruhr mines are still intact, while French management has lifted the Saar mines to 60 .per cent. of 1939 production. The Silesian fields cah be discounted in this aftalysis, for the Russians are undoubtedly taking* a great deal of coal to replace their losses from the Donbas, the great Soviet coalfields destroyed hy the'Germans. „ Miners in Germany also. get higher ration s than the normal 1500 caloi*ies. Even so, a miner -Will not see his children and womenfolk hungry while >he eats himself, and efficiency remains perilously low. 'Coal output has ibeen rising in the Ruhr, but still lags 50 per cent. below former levels. Germany's Greatest Burd'en Yet the fuel shortage is probably defeated Germany's greatest burden.

Even when the war ended, there were ;till six million tons in stoclc. Under the inroads made while the mines were inoperative these spare tons have been reduced to a spare hallmillion. The smashed transport, ovevloaded railroads", and the snow and lce of the Ruhr further handicap distribution. Amid this winter's blealcness, truck radiators have frozen even when filled with anti-freeze mixture. To possibilities of suh-starvation, the added risk of dying of cold has become very real. "To-morrow the Spring," say the Germany. But can more coal be raisecl, reserves be built up, power plants set humming contentedly before the o(nslaught of yet another cruel winter?