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GOAL TRADE BULLETIN.
Vol. XII. PITTSBURGH, PA., MAY 15, 1905. No. 12.
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN:
PUBLISHED TWICE A MONTH.
Copyrighted by THE COAL TRADE COMPANY, 1U04
A. R. HAMILTON, Proprietor and Publisher,
II. J. STRAUB, Managing Editor.
SUBSCRIPTION - - - - $2 00 A YEAR.
Correspondence and communications upon all matters
relating to coal or coal production are invited.
All communications and remittances to
THK COAL THADK COMPANY.
926-030 PARK BUILDING, PITTSBURGH, PA.
Long Distance Telephone 2D0 Grant.
[Entered at the Post Office at Pittsburgh, Pa., as
Second Class Mail Matter.]
THE tour of inspection being made by the
rivers and harbors committee ot congress, from
the source to the mouth of the Ohio, should and
probably will be the last requirement of the kind
needed to bring this long-wanted improvement
into existence. The trip was not planned to
show the great necessity for making this splen­
did water highway available at all times; that
would be an insult to the intelligence of the
most obtuse of national legislators. The object
is to convince the members of the committee of
the extreme urgency of this necessity, of the
extreme danger to the country at large from
further delay and of the fact that no other
economic question before congress possesses half
the vital and national importance of that of a
permanently open roadway from Pittsburg to the
gulf of Mexico. With an annual tonnage already
the largest in the world, under conditions fraught
with heavy expense and a constant danger to life
and property not exceeded under any transporta­
tion system on the globe, the maximum carrying
capacity of the Ohio has been reached. To do
more under present conditions is practically im­
possible, but with the desired expenditure for
improvements the possibilities are almost limit­
less. Without improvements there can be no ex­
pansion for the greatest freight-producing center
on the globe. Without expansion decay must
inevitably set in and that speedily. Already the
Southern states are heavy sufferers on amount
of the lack of regular transportation facilities
on the upper Ohio. Pittsburg business interesis
and particularly those identified with coal hav.>
been sufferers for years. These interests have
a great duty to perform and they have reached
the limit of capacity. The opening of the Panama
canal will vastly increase their destined task.
Unless they are aole to meet the added require­
ments progress must stop and retrogression set
in. Unless they alone are equal to the occasion
it cannot be met. Retrogression in a district so
vast and so important industrially, means na­
tional industrial retrogression in any circum­
stances and particularly under the prevailing
conditions. Setting aside the questions of the
local prosperity of the Pittsburgh district and
the Ohio valley, and the pressing needs of the
Mississippi valley, which can be adequately met
in no other way, the Ohio must be made a con­
tinuously open water way, as a measure of na­
tional defense, and that with the utmost speed.
* m *
i THE PiTTsiiuituH COAL Co. has started in earnest
to meet specifications for deliveries on its new 25-
year contract with the United States Steel Cor­
poration. The effecting of this contract and the
appreciation of the valuable coal owned by the
Pittsburgh Coal Co. is evidently a factor in pur­
chases of large blocks of the company's stock by
bankers in Amsterdam and others in Holland and