THE OPEN LETTER

Coal is “a burning question,” that has to be met and answered every day. It supplies heat, light and power—and a thousand and one useful by-products—and it is an ever-present, ever-fruitful subject of public and private discussion. We average folk know something of the varied uses of coal in the big affairs of the world, but we know it more intimately and vitally in the forms in which it ministers to our own personal welfare. Coal, in our everyday—and night—life, means heat and light. It means home comfort—and if this “coal comfort” is denied us, or even curtailed, we raise an immediate and mighty outcry. And why not? The health of a community can be fatally affected by a few heatless days. The experience of the past winter has shown us how dependent we are on fuel, not only for luxury and comfort, but for life itself.

Why do we need so much heat? Many of the peoples of the earth get along comfortably with much less heat than we consider necessary. Europeans and South Americans call us a “steam-heated nation.” Why do we have to surrender so completely and abjectly to the domination of Old King Coal? It is true, as Owen Meredith said: “Civilized man cannot live without cooks”; and light is all important in turning night hours to advantage; but why must we be so warm? Humanity was not created in a warm room, nor was the human race nurtured, in its infancy, by a coal fire or a gas stove. Primitive man was his own heater. He had to discover fire, and then exploit its uses. He was originally supplied by nature with a warm body, and he now finds artificial ways of making it warmer. Has not civilization pampered us to a point that has impaired our original heat-giving resources and substituted a forced warmth that has enervated us? The doctors tell us that many diseases come out of artificial heat—indoor diseases, they might be called—the diseases that are treated, and sometimes cured today, by foregoing artificial heat and going back to nature.

Does this mean that I suggest reverting to primitive conditions and giving up heat? No, indeed. I suffered enough last winter. I do not advocate giving up heat—suddenly. But letting up gradually on artificial heat, I do most earnestly advocate. Most of us live an over-heated existence—to the depletion of our health. The steam pipe, like a huge python, is closing its coils about us, and gradually stifling our native vital resources.

On the coldest days of winter a white-haired man, nearly seventy years of age, may be seen walking New York streets, without a hat, clad only in light “Palm Beach” trousers, and a silk negligée shirt, open at the throat. “He is crazy,” you say. “Perhaps,” I answer, “but at any rate he is healthy—and immune from cold.” Heatless days mean nothing to him. On a raw, drizzling day in November last a slender man was playing golf in a light woolen suit. A companion player, weighing over 200 pounds, full blooded and hearty in appearance, and bundled up in two heavy sweaters, asked the lightly clad player if he was not afraid of catching a fatal cold. “No,” he answered, “you are the one that gives me concern. If I had your clothing on I would be a sick man. I am not healthy enough to wear all those things.”

Which means that we would be better off in health if we could accustom ourselves to less heat; if we could live as the people of some other nations do—comfortable and content with heat enough to take the chill off the air, and not demanding that we shall be “kept going” by means of artificial heat outside of our own natural heat-giving apparatus. We make caloric cripples of ourselves by giving crutches to nature in the form of roaring furnaces and hissing steam pipes. Fresh cold air is better for us than hot air—in winter as well as in summer. Would it not be worth while to form a national Fresh Air Fraternity, based on the principle of foregoing artificial heat and developing the original body caloric? We would then leave artificial heat largely to infants, weaklings and invalids; we would abolish several diseases altogether, improve the mortality rate, and be healthy, happy and vigorous. Incidentally, too, we would have more coal for cooking and other really necessary purposes.

W. D. Moffat Editor