Business headache of the week was the soft-coal strike, with 400,000 miners still idle and negotiations snarled at week's end over removing the 40¢ wage differential in Southern fields. Coal carloadings dropped to 58,841 for the first week of April (41,785 below the same week in 1940) then skidded to 31,592 the next week, to an estimated 28,000 last week. When the strike began there was enough coal above ground to supply the U.S. for 36-38 days. By this week some industries were only a matter of hours from the end of their stockpiles.
Behind the wage-differential dispute was the...
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