This surplus coal could be taken care of in several ways. It might be stored on the ground at the breakers, it might be stored in transit at storage yards, or it can be kept in the cars, on the breaker sidings. Storage on the ground at the breaker is generally impracticable. The breakers are not equipped for this operation, and lacking special handling equipment, which in any event is not now obtainable, it would be very expensive, and add considerably to the over-all cost of anthracite. In addition, the anthracite-producing region is mountainous and in many cases there is no available place for coal storage.

Storage in yards in transit is practicable, particularly with the steam sizes, and this method is resorted to rather commonly. Only a few of the producing companies, however, have such storage yards, and they are usually pretty well filled with coal belonging to their owners. The handling of prepared size coal in and out of storage results in a great deal of breakage and degradation, and costs approximately $1 per ton, so that storage is not generally practicable for these sizes.

This leaves, as the only practicable method, the storage of this surplus coal in cars on breaker sidings. This has been the practice in the anthracite business for many years, and in the bituminous coal business as well. Under the present demurrage rules, these cars are held on breaker sidings, or mine tracks, without demurrage charges.

Senator REED. How long might cars be held without demurrage charges?

Mr. GOODYEAR. There is no limit in the tariff. The restrictions are based on number of cars held and not on length of time held. There is a good reason for that. We may have in the breaker yard several hundred cars. If we cared to do so we could always consign the latest car of that several hundred. The reason we do not is to save the railroad switching work necessary to set out the latest car. The latest car received may be the hardest one for the railroad to reach, so we consign a car the railroad company can get at the easiest. may only have 1 day's production of coal standing in the breaker yard and the latest car there might be 30 days old. But that is done purely for the convenience of the railroad.

We

Senator REED. Is that analogous to what the bituminous coal people call the no-bill car?

Mr. GOODYEAR. Yes.

Senator REED. What is the effect in the matter of the detention of a car between your practice and what Mr. Estes described?

Mr. GOODYEAR. I think they may have the same kind of situation. It depends a good deal on the lay-out of the yard and what happens to cars that makes it necessary to pull out a car ordered. Sometimes cars may be pulled out in pretty fair sequence as produced, while at other times they may get mixed up and be on the back end of a track, where 40 cars would have to be pulled out. If you have a car where it can be taken out without much switching they take that car out. It is purely a matter of convenience for the railroad. Our people and the railroad people work together and try to arrange shipments so as to save switching.

Senator TUNNELL. Practically it is the same thing, I take it, no matter what car you send out.

Mr. GOODYEAR. It does not make any difference.

Senator REED. It was not the process of shipping out as to whether you would get a car in the calendar year or not. I was

wondering about the over-all effect. I think I shall ask the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Association of American Railroads to check up on that. This is my offhand impression, but I think there is possibly room for some abuse there in the matter of detention of cars.

Mr. GOODYEAR. We have heard that claim made, but we doubt it. Senator REED. We will not try to legislate on that, but I will ask the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Association of American Railroads to give us information on it.

Mr. GOODYEAR. The holding of cars for long periods of time is not what we want. As far as anthracite coal is concerned it deteriorates as the car stands on the tracks. A certain amount of dust is blown into it, and cinders come from the stacks in the yard. We want to move it out as soon as we can but as a matter of cooperation with the railroad we let them take the cars easiest to get at.

Senator REED. I see no objection to that, but it does strike me there is a possibility of abuse there.

Mr. GOODYEAR. I will cover that a little in the next paragraph of my statement.

Senator REED. While the anthracite coal industry would like to have coal moved out promptly, yet they would like to have the handling of their coal done for their own convenience and the convenience of the railroad rather than for the coal receiving public as a whole. That goes to the very heart of what we are trying to do. If you are following a practice that is detrimental to the public interest certainly we will ask the Interstate Commerce Commission and the railroads to correct it. And if they do not correct it we might possibly have to legislate on the matter.

Mr. GOODYEAR. We have been all over this thing with the people in the Commission as well as the railroads.

Senator REED. Unfortunately from the standpoint of the longtime history of the anthracite coal business and its affiliation with the so-called anthracite railroads, that has been so close that it has produced a lot of abuses and discriminations and prejudices. Far be it from me to discuss that subject here, but I take it possibly there is a little prejudice there, a prejudice about the close financial relationship between the anthracite coal industry and the anthracite-hauling railroads.

Mr. GOODYEAR. Well, I do not believe you will find any very close association between the railroads and the majority of the anthracite coal industry. I know that my own company was formerly owned by the Reading Co., but for the last 17 years they have been entirely separate, the management completely separated; and sometimes when we get together with the railroad people if we are even forty-second cousins you would never know it from the way we go at each other. Senator REED. I hope there will be nothing of that kind.

Mr. GOODYEAR. There is no hardship on the railroad industry involved in this practice, nor does it interfere materially with war transportation. Generally speaking, when the coal business is good, and the demand for coal cars is heavy, there is a minimum number of these unbilled loads, or no-bills, as they are called. At the last report, for instance, there were about 1,500 no-bills on hand in the anthracite mining region, where the production is about 4,800 cars per day. This indicates that cars are being delayed less than one-third of a

day beyond the day they are placed for loading, or that two-thirds of all cars placed are loaded and billed out within about 8 hours after placement.

When the demand for coal slackens, the number of no-bills naturally increases, but by the same token, the number of cars required to move the available coal shipments decreases in an even greater proportion, because some of the mines will cease operation.

The application of the demurrage rules and charges contemplated by this legislation would, even at the very low level of no-bills now standing, add to the operating costs of the anthracite industry alone about two and a quarter million dollars per year. If the industry held as no-bills an average of 1 day's production, the cost would be $7,200,000 annually. This would represent the cost to the industry of holding cars placed for loading for a time averaging not more than 2 days.

I turn now to anthracite which is shipped to railroad piers at ports on the North Atlantic and the Great Lakes, for transshipment by vessel beyond. Most of this tonnage, ranging from 8,500,000 to 10,000,000 tons per year, is transshipped over the piers on the New Jersey shore of New York Harbor.

The present demurrage rules for coal transshipped by water are different from those applicable to coal for track delivery. Anthracite transshipped at the North Atlantic ports is subject to a tariff which provides for average free time of 5 days, with monthly settlements. The more liberal demurrage rules at the ports are necessary for a number of reasons. New York City uses about 8,000,000 tons of anthracite every year. Some is used by public utilities, some by industries, a great deal by retail coal dealers. Almost none of these people have space for the storage of any great quantities of coal, as property in New York is generally too expensive to use for such purposes. Many New York dealers have so little storage space, in relation to their volume of business, that 1 very cold day will result in complete exhaustion of the stored supply. This situation makes it necessary that some coal be kept stored in cars at the tidewater piers to meet the daily calls of the New York market. The amount of coal that any producer should keep at the piers for this purpose can be determined only by the exercise of the most precise judgment, and unexpected weather conditions can upset all such calculations. Sometimes a spell of warm weather will leave a producer with a considerable number of cars on hand for substantial periods.

At present a serious effort is being made to reduce the number of cars of anthracite on hand at New York Harbor. At the request of Commissioner Johnson, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, we have set up in New York the Anthracite Tidewater Emergency Bureau, of which I am chairman of the executive committee. The members of this bureau are the principal transshippers of anthracite over the New York Harbor piers and the railroads serving those piers. A railroad man of considerable experience in such matters is manager of this bureau, and of a corresponding organization of bituminous transshippers.

The sole purpose of this bureau is to keep close track of the situation at the piers, to seek out those who are not unloading cars quickly, and, if he cannot be brought to more prompt handling of equipment, the

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bureau, the railroads, and the Commission are prepared to compel compliance by the placing of embargoes.

The report of the bureau for the period ending at 7 a. m., June 22, shows the average detention of anthracite cars at New York Harbor piers to be 1.40 days, including Sundays. The actual demurrage account shows that excluding Sundays the average detention was 1.19 days. It would be too much to expect that this record can be continued into cold weather, but it is a tribute to the ability and willingness of shippers to cooperate in the effort to increase the efficiency of car movements to the maximum.

I want to put in a word for the retail coal dealer. I think there is no question that retail coal dealers are releasing cars promptly. I do not believe the car supply would have held out during this period of heavy movement of coal if dealers had not been releasing them promptly.

Conditions exist, however, whereby sometimes a dealer cannot regulate that situation. For instance, anthracite coal is always loaded wet, and in the wintertime it gets to the consignee frozen.

Senator REED. I do not want to interrupt your train of thought, but why is anthracite coal always loaded wet?

Mr. GOODYEAR. Because water is necessary in the cleaning process. Senator REED. Is it not possible to apply some aid in drying out if the coal is going to become frozen by the time it reaches the market? Mr. GOODYEAR. It is possible to dry anthracite coal but that would mean running up the cost considerable. We have made some research into that, and there are methods of drying anthracite coal, but when you get through drying it cheaply then you have to rescreen it because the process of drying it breaks it up. When you rescreen anthracite coal you have to put on more water in order to do a good job, and then you are right back where you started.

Senator REED. There may be something peculiar about the anthracite coal business that I do not understand, but it does strike me as rather unusual that a shipper would load wet anthracite coal into an open-top car in extremely cold weather knowing it is going to freeze. Then you have to drill it loose or blast it loose.

Mr. GOODYEAR. My own company has spent quite a little money investigating that question and trying to figure out some way to ship dry anthracite coal without running up the price. We find that it would cost us about 25 cents a ton.

Senator TUNNELL. Do you mean to dry the anthracite coal?

Mr. GOODYEAR. Yes; and to put it in marketable condition again. Senator TUNNELL. How does it affect the coal as to weight?

Mr. GOODYEAR. The carriers' tariffs and provisions have allowances for moisture.

Senator TUNNELL. You do not gain anything for weight, then? Mr. GOODYEAR. No, sir.

Senator REED. What amount of the load does the moisture represent?

Mr. GOODYEAR. That varies. I think the minimum allowance is 1 percent and the maximum allowance about 6%1⁄2 percent. The smaller the size of the coal the more water it will hold.

Senator REED. Is that deduction invariably made?

Mr. GOODYEAR. I would not say it is invariably made. Some mines are located quite a distance from railroad scales. Some coal is not

weighed until 24 or 48 hours after it is shipped. The allowance is not always made where sufficient time for drainage has occurred between loading and weighing.

Senator REED. Is there a tariff provision to that effect?

Mr. GOODYEAR. The tariff is permissive. If the shipper calls for the allowance he can have it. The shipper calls for the allowance based on the situation of the relation of the mine to the scales. Some tariffs have a provision varying the amount of the allowance in relation to time between loading and weighing. In other words, you have one allowance that is good up to 3 hours, and a different allowance between 3 and 24 hours, and a different allowance after 24 hours.

Senator REED. Well, I have learned something about the anthracite coal industry.

Mr. GOODYEAR. There are still a lot of us trying to learn something about moisture. It is not a closed book at all. Another thing that happens to anthracite coal, even if moderately dry when shipped it may run into a rainstorm followed by a snowstorm and freeze up, so that anthracite coal shipped reasonably dry may be frozen when it gets to the consignee.

Senator REED. I take it shipments of coal the United States over are somewhat subject to that.

Mr. GOODYEAR. Yes. I have no doubt there is a certain amount of bituminous coal that has the same difficulty of unloading on account of freezing, but I think it is worse with anthracite coal because practically all of it is shipped wet.

Senator REED. I did not know that you shipped all anthracite coal

wet.

Mr. GOODYEAR. I think every process that is now effective for cleaning anthracite coal needs a very large quantity of water. The last thing we do before we put coal into a car is to run it over a screen under a very high pressure stream of water, to clean off all dust. I think most producers have a somewhat similar arrangement.

Senator REED. Is that all that you have to present?

Mr. GOODYEAR. I want to say something about seasonal demurrage. Senator REED. We will be glad to have you do that.

Mr. GOODYEAR. You used the term "from October to January" as being the time when shipments of coal were heavier and the demands on car supply greater. Last year the big portion of the anthracite coal business started about the middle of June. People got excited and started ordering in their coal. That was fine. The anthracite mines were operated every day they were able to operate from the middle of June until about the first of November. On the first of November the demand ceased, and from the first of November until the first part of this year we were running only 2 or 3 days a week. The job of filling the needs of consumers was done so fully that we did not have a thing to do all winter.

This year we started the big push on the 1st of April. Our production has been somewhat reduced by the floods we had in the mining regions, the effects of which are still felt. But the chances are that by the first of October of this year the big job will be done. Unless something happens to stimulate demand for anthracite coal I do not believe we will have any big load in October, November, and December of this year.