16 



The Florists* Review 



NOVBHBEB 9, 1916. 



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FUEL FAMINE FEARED 



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COAL HIGH AND HARD TO GET. 



Many Florists Are Hit. 



The most tremendous rise in the price 

 of steam coal the trade ever faced has 

 caught many florists unprepared for 

 winter — prices not only hav« skyrock- 

 eted, but fuel is diflScult to get, for of 

 free coal the principal markets are prac- 

 tically bare. 



Florists who did not heed the warn- 

 ings given in The Review, which since 

 midsummer has been putting emphasis 

 on the necessity for preparedness, now 

 find themselves in a predicament — coal 

 that could be had at $1.35 to $1.50 per 

 ton at the mine in August actually has 

 brought in exceptional cases as much 

 as $6 per ton during the first week in 

 November. To a florist such quotations 

 are unthinkable; he can not believe 

 them to be true, but the trouble lies in 

 the fact that the mines are producing 

 little more coal than is needed to fill 

 contracts and the man, be he florist or 

 manufacturer, whose regular source of 

 supply does not take care of them must 

 go among strangers and bid high. 



Growers Partly Covered. 



Most of the large growers are at 

 least partly protected by contracts made 

 in the spring and in most cases have 

 taken delivery of considerable quanti- 

 ties during "the summer. These now 

 encounter considerable difficulty in ob- 

 taining scheduled deliveries on their 

 contracts, but are protected as to price 

 to the extent of the contracts if they 

 can get delivery. The seriousness of 

 the situation for them, however, lies in 

 the fact that during the last two or 

 three years of Aveak coal markets the 

 custom has grown up among large grow- 

 ers of contracting only a part, say half, 

 their season's needs, relying on the 

 open market for the other' half. In re- 

 cent years there have been frequent op- 

 portunities to pick up at less than con- 

 tract price cars on which the consignee 

 wished to avoid demurrage. But this 

 season the grower who must buy on the 

 open market even a small part of his 

 requirements will hand back to the coal 

 trade all the savings he ever has been 

 able to make picking up bargains. 



It is of record that the cheapest 

 greenhouse heating under normal condi- 

 tions costs 8 cents per thousand square 

 feet of glass per day, and from that up 

 to 30 cents per thousand feet per day. 

 Also, the largest grower has been quot- 

 ed as saying his place use§ 135,000 tons 

 of steam coal per year. There are many 

 growers who under normal conditions 

 use $10,000 worth of coal a season and 

 quite a few who use from $25,000 to 

 $50,000 worth. 



Small Florists Are CaugM. 



^at it is the small man, who buys 

 by the wagon-load rather than by the 

 carload, who is pinched by the present 

 situation. He, as a rule, has no con- 

 tract on which he can demand delivery 

 at a stated price; he must pay the mar- 

 ket rate. Thereiare thousands of flo- 

 rists who find their coal bills jumping 



day by day, 50, 100, 200 per cent or 

 more, depending on the strength of the 

 source of supply and previous business 

 relations. There is nothing to do but 

 pay the price. Dealers will not quote 

 prices on soft coal because there is no 

 supply. The price is changing over 

 night. 



It is reported that the railroads are 

 confiscating commercial coal for their 

 own use all over the country, paying 

 the market price to the owners for 

 whom it is being transported. 



The Reasons for It. 



"This sudden shortage in the supply 

 of steam coal," said George H. Gush- 

 ing, editor of the Black Diamond, "is 

 a matter I have been investigating and 

 1 find several causes. The railroads 

 have required more coal on account of 

 increased /traffic; the cotton mills of 

 the southV which were using water 

 power, have had a dry spell since the 

 severe fload of last summer and are 

 now using^coal; the munitions plants 

 have required millions of tons; extra 

 coal has beeV-cklled for by the steel 

 plants supplying steel for shipbuilding, 

 which has been extremely active re- 

 cently; there has been a large increase 

 on account of the double shifts at mills 

 now running day and night owing to 

 the business bt)om, and it is estimated 

 that Ganada has taken three million 

 tons extra this fall owing to better con- 

 ditions there in part and because of 

 the demands of munition plants in the 

 Dominion. 



' ' All this demand has come in the 

 eastern district, east of Harrisburg and 

 Buffalo practically. I estimate the 

 amounts as follows: 



Tons. 



Gotten mills 4,000,000 



Exports 4,500,000 



Eastern railroads 20,000,000 



Munitions plants 15,000,000 



Increase in Ganada 3,000,000 



Increase owing to ship-build- 

 ing demands 1,500,000 



Increase owinfc to increased 

 business of lactories (dou- 

 ble shifts) 20,000,000 



Total 68,000,000 



"When people reflect that there was 

 no shortage of coal apparent up to Sep- 

 tember 15 it is easy to understand why 

 there is congestion now, when a de- 

 mand for 68,000,000 tons comes on the 

 coal companies and the railroads in ad- 

 dition to normal supplies. 



Car and Labor Shortage. 



"The car shortage is due to several 

 causes. There are complaints from rail- 

 road men and shippers that speculators 

 in coal, in grain, in food supplies and 

 in war munitions are tying up cars al- 

 most indefinitely while they use the cars 

 to sell and resell the contents, always 

 at an increase in price. This specula- 

 tion in the necessities is advancing 

 the price of coal while slowing down 

 its delivery. The railroads make par- 

 ticular complaint that in some instances 

 the reconsignment of a car takes from 

 six to seven days and involves numer- 

 ous transfers of ownership during the 

 delay. 



' ' The bituminous coal production in 

 1915 was, in round numbers, 442,000,000 

 tons. The miners worked only 203 

 days. If the same rate of production 

 had been continued for 300 days the 

 mines would have turned out 654,000,- 

 000 tons. This indifference of labor, 

 the scarcity of miners since the Euro- 

 pean war began and the present car 

 shortage, together with the enormous 

 increase in the demand for coal coming 

 within a short period of time, explains 

 the situation, in my opinion." 



TO GET THE MONEY BACK 



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UNCLE SAM OFFERS HELP. 



Investigation of British Censorship. 



In view of the number of letters that 

 came to The Review in August, with re- 

 gard to the non-arrival of seeds from 

 Germany, particularly cyclamen seeds 

 ordered of Ferd Fischer, of Wiesbaden, 

 it was apparent that considerable sums 

 of money had been dispatched to Ger- 

 many by readers of The Review and 

 never heard of afterward. The appear- 

 ances were, either that the men to whom 

 the remittances had been sent were pre- 

 vented by the British 'blockade from 

 filling the orders, or that the British 

 censor had intercepted the orders and 

 remittances. All doubt in the matter 

 was removed by arrival of a post-card 

 from Fischer, of Wiesbaden. It read: 



Plense do no^ puHlsh again my advprtlsompnt 

 of cyclamon seeds becauRe orders, checks and The 

 Review also do not arrive more since months 

 now. 



The card was dated at Wiesbaden 

 .June 30 and did not reach Ghicago until 



September 12. The fact that it carried 

 the O. K. of the British censor showed 

 where it had been in the meantime and 

 where the "orders, checks and The Re- 

 view" had gone — the censor had held 

 them up. 



An Important Sum Involved. 



It was apparent that, while none of 

 the sums was large, the lost remittances 

 were sufficiently numerous so that in the 

 aggregate the loss is important. In the 

 case of the cyclamen seeds, Ferd 

 Fischer, a German specialist of wide re- 

 pute, has advertised in The Review for 

 several years and has built up a large 

 mail-order business in this country — a 

 surprisingly large business as revealed 

 by the inquiries as to the probabilities 

 of receiving the seeds. It is evident 

 that hundreds of orders were sent to 

 Fischer which he, according to the evi- 

 dence of his postal, never received. A 

 few were for small sums, $3 or $5, but 

 many were $30, $50 or even more. 

 Nearly all had sent cash with order. 



