COAL NEEDED TO SPEED FOOD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 94, 24 April 1946, Page 5

COAL NEEDED TO SPEED FOOD

APPEAL TO U.S. MINERS STRIKE IN SOFT COAL MINES HINDERS U.N.R.RA. Recd. 8 p.m. Washington, April 22. The Director-General of U.N.R.R.A., Mr. La Guardia, has sent a letter to the soft coal mine chairman, Mr. Ezra van Horn, and the United Mineworkers’ president, Mr. Lewis, appealing for a speedy end of the strike to enable U.N.R.R.A. to supply vitallyneeded coal for the famine areas. He said wheat already was at the seaports, but the famine countries needed coal to enable the railways to transport the grain. “I ask for about half a million tons of coal monthly,” he wrote. ‘This is needed mainly for two countries, but if their needs are not met all the countries near them wall suffer, because their food transport facilities are largely inter-dependent. Among the most important industries which must be kept functioning, at all costs, are the light and power plants, which are dependent on coal. We have ships, but the present coal supplies are rapidly drying up. Shipments of solid fuel are expected to cease in a fefl days.”