Business: Haste Makes Waste

A delight to Washington gossips last year were the bickerings of the National Bituminous Coal Commission, many of them attributable to the vigorous, Napoleonic methods of its chairman, 50-year-old Charles Hosford Jr. At year's end, however, the commission finally managed the herculean job of fixing 30,000 minimum prices for soft coal produced east of the Mississippi (TIME, Dec. 27). By last week it became apparent that the commission, in its haste, had erred on the side of being too Napoleonic. The Association of American Railroads, whose members burn 22% of U. S. soft coal, got an injunction three weeks ago against the commission's prices for railroad coal. The grounds: the commission had not held public hearings before fixing the minima. The city of Cleveland and Associated Industries of New York then obtained other injunctions on similar grounds. So last week the unhappy commission revoked all 30,000 minima, set out to do its work over according to the letter of the law.