The Americans appear to suffer from their great strikes much
more than we do. As a consequence of the coal strikes in Pennsylvania, which have now ended, many of the cities of the East are passing through a coal famine. The weather is most bitter in New York, but coal is 40s. a ton for large orders, and 50s. when distributed to the poor. Even at those rates the supply is inadequate, and supplies even to the rich are only forwarded as matter of favour, well-to-do members of the middle class actually lying in bed because they cannot obtain coal. In Boston the situation is even worse, and it is appre- hended both there and in New York that there may be dangerous rioting. It is difficult to see against whom riots would be directed, for both masters and men have given way, and the railways are refilling the depleted stocks of the dealers as quickly as they can, but no doubt privations of that sort increase the dislike felt by the poor to the rich. The foreign element is more conspicuous in American than in English towns, and can be stirred to violence by suffering very rapidly. A coal famine of long duration would soon produce a strong demand for the nationalisation of all coal-mines, with its inevitable sequel, their working by convict labour.
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