SUFFERING FROM WANT OF FUEL.
The Springfield (Mass.) Republican of December 12 tells us that on December 9 the thermometer registered 20° below zero at Boston; Norfolk, Conn., 23 below; Ogdensburg, N. Y., 22 below; Saratoga, 30 below, with the average for the 24 hours of 20 below; one place in Franklin Co., N. Y., reported 38 below. Many of the towns could get no coal. The same paper tells the condition in Springfield, which may be regarded as typical of other towns. It says:— The situation in this city and in all the cities of the State and this section of the country in respect of fuel is entirely unprecedented. The like of it has never been known in the history of the country, whether within the period of the use of coal as a domestic fuel or back of that when all dependence was upon wood. Probably two-thirds of the people of this town, in the midst of about as severe weather as a New England winter ever brings, are being driven to the most desperate expedients to keep their houses warm, and often to keep only one or two rooms in the house tolerable. Some of them have a little hard coal which must be used sparingly. Others are relying upon wood; others upon charcoal, soft coal, even engine sparks and boards. Gas heaters and oil heaters come into anxious requisition, shade trees and fruit trees have been sacrificed, and oil-soaked bricks are resorted to. Meantime hard coal dribbles into town occasionally, a few car-loads at a time, which are but a drop in the bucket of demand, and the price is a famine price. All the while the hope is held out that the situation will speedily mend. The suffering already is considerable, and the cost of abating it even to a moderate degree is not small. Hard coal at $12 a ton is probably the cheapest of all the fuels offered, but it is next to impossible to get any. Wood, at $8.00 a cord or thereabouts, involves a cost to the householder of a dollar a day or more to keep the cellar furnace properly going in such weather as this. Soft coal at $8.00 a ton is about as expensive, and far less satisfactory, requiring constant attention to effect a heat-producing combustion. No house chimney has a strong enough draught to make the burning of soft coal easy or satisfactory. We have had several decidedly cool, frosty mornings in Oakland, of late, which tingled the ears and nose and fingers, and made furs and overcoats comfortable; and we pay $8.00 a cord for wood inferior to the maple of the east, if we burn wood, and $9.00 to $11 a ton for soft coal, a steady standard price all the time. But there is little suffering, and we sympathize with the people in the East, who are deprived of fuel simply because of man's stubborn selfishness.