ECONOMICS OF WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 139, 9 December 1918, Page 3

ECONOMICS OF WAR

SAVE CINDERS. (ntOH OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON 19th September. The.National Salvage Council supplies some surprising information relative to cinders, estimating the waste alone an being equivalent to 2.226.000 tons of coal a year. LondoD is responsible for a cinder waste expressed in coal, equivalent of half a million tons a year. The object of the cinder saving campaign, started by the National Salvage Council, is to induce local authorities who are at present wastefully disposing of refuse, to screen it. Apart from other products of value, the recovery of the cinders now going" to waste, reckoning coal at--26e a tori, means an: annual saving of £2,894,000. The labour saving also would be great. On the basis of the 1916 colliery output, it would take 11,008 miners, working a whole year, to raise the amount of coal which in heat value equals the cinders annually dumped into municipal refuse heaps. BEDROOM CANDLES TABOO. With the intention of .helping the Coal Controller, many people have t>een buying candles in order to use less gas and electricity for lighting purposes, and thus incidentally helping the coal crisis. But it seems they are doing the wrong thing, and the Coal Controller brands as "unpatriotic" those well-intentioned people who are taking to candles and lamps in lieu of gas or electricity. The Controller considers that the lighting rations are sufficient, if the utmost economy is observed, to give everyone enought light for ordinary purposes, without resorting to substitutes. If this growing practice is not stopped, he says, there will soon be a famine in paraffin and candles, the supplies of which are limited. Wax and fat for candles are particularly scarce. Large supplies of oil and candles are absolutely necessary for country districts where there is no gas or electricity, and if these show any signs of running out the distribution and rationing of oil and candles will be the next TO EKE OUT COAL. An order dealing with the sale and distribution of a million tons of fuel wood, which should ultimately be available; will soon be completed, and will apply to England, Scotland, and Wales. It is intended to use the timber to the best advantage to help out the serious coal shortage and save the transport of coal. The wood will be available only in districts where it is cut. A maximum price, is fixed of 40s. a ton, each ton being considered equal in ration value to half a ton of coal. No one will be entitled to buy more than two tons of fuel wood in the year without a permit from the local Fuel Overseer, arid where fuel wood is plentiful, customers will be required to take a proportion of their allowance in wood instead of coal. Except in some cases, it is intended to bring under control the whole of the fuel wood available for consumption during the coming winter.