Consuming Interest
No Smoke Without fire
By LESLIE ADRIAN IN our patch of London we have been 'smoke- less' for exactly six months. Six mild months of the sort of winter which is cursed by the coal industry for depres- sing their sales graphs and bringing a blush to the figures on the balance tam sheets. Yet an order in January for 5 cwt. of premium smokeless fuel was an, obvious embarrassment to our coal merchant, and for five weeks we received from him nothing more combustible than a string of deferred delivery dates.
Meanwhile, with our small stock of fuel diminishing faster than our faith in the mer- chant's promises, I phoned several well-known London coal firms to sec if any of them could do any • better. The same cold facts were handed out by all -no 'smokeless fuel for at least two or three weeks.
The only variation in the story was in the technique of telling. One suggested that I should buy an extra electric fire. Two gave me a little lecture on stocking up in the summer (words rather wasted on someone with storage space for only 5 cwt. of coal). One dropped hints about all smoke being black in the dark, and how he could easily deliver sonic ordinary household nuts. And one, a girl this time, said she was ever so sorry but there would be no smokeless fuel for a month because the manager was at home with a chill.
The Coal Merchants Federation tell me that the manufacturers of the premium fuels (Coalite, Rexco and Warmco, the only 'clean' coals which burn satisfactorily in an ordinary open grate) produced I million tons last year while the residents of the smokeless zones needed only 250,000 tons to keep their home fires burning through the winter. The 'shortage' arises from the popularity of Rexco and Coalite outside the smokeless zones. In son e areas the clean coal habit is much older than the Clean Air Act. and the demand for both Coalite and Rexco was growing before Britain )ad a single smokeless zone. Warmco, made by the Coal Board, is a child of the Act.
Free enterprise being what it is, it is hardly surprising that the makers of Coalite and Rexco see no reason for voluntarily upsetting their established markets, their regular distributors and their old customers merely to satisfy the upstart demand in the smokeless zones.
Direction is a dirty word in the coal trade, but if the Ministers of Housing and Power don't get together before next winter and direct enough smokeless fuel into the smokeless zones (or at least give them some priority in the national scramble for dean coal) the clean air will be blue by Christmas.
And if the Minister of Housing signs all the clean air orders which are awaiting his appro- val. the demand for fuel in the controlled areas alone will amount to nearly II million tons— seven times the present demand. But there will be no startling increases in the production of smoke- less fuel until the famous 'Bronowski briquettes' make their debut— after eight years they are still in the pilot plant stage.
Householders with the storage space to do so can save money and anticipate the crisis by stocking up at summer prices. Unfortunately, the average coal bunker holds only 10 cwt. of ordinary coal (according to the Coal Utilisation Council) and little more than half that weight of bulky smokeless fuel. On the other hand, many of the large coal merchants get decidedly distant when asked to deliver less than 5 cwt. of coal. And some just flatly refuse. (Yes, I have heard about coal in paper bags, but I have heard about the price of it as well.) In spite of this problem of winter distribution, local authorities do not consider coal bunkers (enlargement of) as one of the essential grant- worthy expenses of turning a dirty area into a clean one. They will pay the lion's share of quite elaborate alterations inside the house (including in some cases, necessary redecoration) but the expense of extra storage for the special bulky fuel to be burnt on the newly installed grate must be borne by the householder. Mr. Robens and his 'use more coal' campaign won't do much good at this rate.
One word about the fuels themselves. A few months ago I wrote that Rexco was, for some reason, 8d. to I Id. a cwt. dearer than the other premium smokeless coals. Now I think I know the reason. I find that two scuttles of Rexco do the work of two and a half scuttles of either Coalite or Warmco.
'If you go to the Ryman's (stationers) shop in Knightsbridge,' writes a correspondent, 'and go down to the office equipment section in the basement you'll sec about two dozen new type- writers displayed on a table. Each and every one is chained and padlocked for every potential customer to see. Charming way to greet a customer : "You may look, but we suspect you may walk out with one under your coat." ' I did go and I talked to the manager. He was entirely conscious of the unpleasant impression given to honest shoppers but told me that he simply had to use lock and chain to try to prevent the shoplifting which is costing him a good deal of money. Portable typewriters and small adding machines can easily be put under a coat or dropped into a bag and taken out of the shop. (Non-portable typewriters, I noticed, were not chained.) The manager was perfectly polite and reasonable and, 1 must say, a good half of my sympathy is with him. After all, assistants cannot be expected to outnumber customers all the time and a small shop can't afford the security officers and floor-walkers whose sole job it is to keep an eye out for pilferers in large depart- ment stores. Moreover, insurance does not cover the shop-owner for pilferage.
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