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1940-1949 out for two weeks in March, a week in June, and for over seven weeks from September into November. From July 5 to September 19 and following December 5, he put his miners on a three-day week." Production fell dramatically to only 481 million tons combined between anthracite and bitumi- nous—the lowest total since 1939. In his October editorial, an angry Given summa- rized not only the moment but the whole era since the implementation of the New Deal "the federal government has moved into the field of labor relations with the ostensible goal of achieving the desired stabilization. But, has it been achieved? The answer, as far as the coal mining industry is concerned, is an emphatic 'No.' As of 1949, the industry is further from sta- bilization of relations between employer and employee than at any time in history— and is suffering accordingly." Demand was beginning to wane already, but with coal now more expensive and not always available, the editors asked "How much damage was done to coal's markets? How many customers, having switched to other fuels, can be persuaded to return to coal? What can we do to win customers back and secure our markets?" That question was to be asked throughout the 1950s as produc- ers struggled from one challenge to the next. Tomorrow's Coal Age: Just around the Corner Beginning in the 1920s, as the coal indus- try began to compete with oil and natural gas, producers funded research to make coal more viable. One major breakthrough occurred early on in Germany when two chemical engineers, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, developed a formula and system to make a diesel-grade oil from coal. Too expensive to compete with the flood of cheap oil that coal faced at the time, the FT process would eventually be deployed on a massive scale by the Nazi regime during WWII. Germany, cut off from the rich oil deposits of the Middle East and northern Africa, turned to its coal resources as a way to fuel the Wehrmacht. By 1943, both U.S. producers and the Allied governments had taken notice of Germany's success. In a long series of articles beginning in April 1943, Coal Age began describing the potential of coal to fuel America's econo- my throughout the postwar period. In that issue, the magazine published a long piece by the immensely powerful Secretary of the Interior, and wartime Petroleum Administrator and Solid Fuels Coordinator August 2012 for War, Harold Ickes. Perhaps the second most influential person in the Roosevelt administration behind only the president himself, Ickes was tasked with essentially running the economy throughout both the Depression and World War. A famous cur- mudgeon, Ickes also had a large hand in developing long-term fuel polices and much of the postwar economy as well. Like many, Ickes firmly believed that America's vast coal reserves would allow the nation to forever be energy independent. And he aimed to ensure that, in times of war and struggle, coal would be available as the backbone of the nation's economy. "A new industry based on the use of coal looms on the not-too-distant horizon. In its establish- ment I hope soon to lend an official hand," Ickes wrote in an April 1943 piece titled "Coal's New Horizons." Even as domestic oil production was increasing, Ickes wrote "it requires no seer to foretell that the day is approaching when petroleum must be supplemented as an industrial and domestic fuel and as a source of gasoline…it is prudent to look to coal and oil shale as sources of liquid fuel." Indeed, since cheap energy, specifically petroleum derived energy, had become perceived as something of a "right" by most Americans, Ickes stated that "when our petroleum reserves and imports are inadequate to meet the demands of this mobile and industrial age" the most practicable alternative is to "develop, on a commercial basis, known methods of making liquid fuel from coal, lig- nite or shale oil." Beginning in the 1940s, Ickes and others in the coal industry began taking coal-to-liquids and coal gasification seriously, funding and initiating various experiments designed to take these process- es commercial. And, just as they did, Big Oil and other industries lined up to thwart the process. Coal, too, stubbed itself in the foot. The Coal Age of Tomorrow might be possi- ble, but it was not without hazards. But how could coal miss out on a chance at an 80-million-ton market, asked the edi- tors in the November 1945 issue. "Coal can supply gas and gas can furnish clean, com- pletely automatic home heat and other ser- vices free from delivery and storage troubles. Needed is a cheap, practical process of com- plete gasification. The search is under way and intensified efforts can make it bear fruit quicker." The "House of Tomorrow" was what really concerned coal men in 1945: specifically the basement. Automatic heat and service, the editors knew, was the trend. Though coal could provide "community heating plants also providing hot water; gas 100th Anniversary Special Issue www.coalage.com 89