Cochise Review

CITY MAY BUY COAL MINES.
English Municipality May in the Near Future Solve the Coal Problem.

In 1903 Manchester citizens may work a colliery, says the London Mail. Why not? If the victim of inexorable demand notes may be a washhouse proprietor, own a park, run his own tramcar, supply himself with water and draw illumination from his own mains—and all at a profit—surely he may go deeper afield and annex the bowels of the earth.

Thus argued a member of the Manchester corporation gas committee. Taking his cue from a wise Glaswegian he has bidden his colleagues to consider the question for a month. He has drawn a veil of anonymity around his plan, and until the officials have had time to prepare it means to keep it as dark as a coal mine.

This year the Manchester city gas works will use 500,000 tons of coal and cannel. Already the increasing cost of it has sent gas up three pence per 1,000 cubic feet. Of the extra 500,000 tons five shillings, say 60 per cent. is clear profit to the mine owner. But coal is dearer as gas is costlier, and the contribution of £50,000 a year to the city rates out of gas gain is in jeopardy, all of which need not have been if the Manchester rate payer could have been digging his own coal as well as making his own light.

Those who are in the corporation predict that the project will come to fruition and special bargains in coal mines are being looked for. The chief rock of offense will be that colliery exploitation is too hazardous and speculative a business for the public to touch. To which the answer is that when you buy coal you pay for all mining risks, and that citizens' pits producing 10,000 tons a week would provide their own insurance.