Business & Finance: Lump, Egg, Pea

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The present B. C. C. is headed by Charles Franklin Hosford Jr., a 50-year-old Princeton graduate who went on to Harvard Law School, practiced in Butler, Pa. until 1923 when he began his coal career as president & general manager of Erie Coal Mining Co. A member of Governor Pinchot's Pennsylvania Coal Commission in 1931, he had a hand in drafting the NRA coal code, went to Washington under the first Guffey Act as a National Coal Commissioner. A Guffey man, he is extremely dictatorial, rules the commission, whose majority supports him, with an iron hand. Whenever this backing has wavered (and it has done so frequently over patronage, office furniture and Senatorial meddling) B. C. C. has spluttered like wet coal. Last month a squabble reached such heat that Chairman Hosford went so far as to tender his resignation, which President Roosevelt refused to accept.

Meanwhile, B. C. C. is facing its crucial test, a challenge on constitutional grounds from the doughty Carter Coal Co. of Coalwood, W. Va. Carter Coal brought the suit which resulted in the Supreme Court's invalidation of the original Guffey Act. It would dearly love to do the same with the Guffey-Vinson Act.