During the past few days the price of coal balls needed by the Chinese for cooking has been quoted at $12 per picul, which has created another record in the price-increasing campaign launched by manipulate ing merchants in Shanghai, It is now twelve times the price quoted the pre-war days, and most Chinese cannot afford to ' pay. The sudden increase of price of this necessary has caused a great stir among Chinese housewives, and hope is express sed again that the authorities will pay attention to the alleged hoarding indulged in by coal merchants.
Chinese circles find evidence of hoarding in advertisements appearing in the leading Chinese dailies published by big coal ball manufacturing firms urging their customers to remove large quantities of coal balls they ordered long ago. These customers who have ample means at 50 their disposal have bought the coal, which is apparently much more than they can consume, and the advertise ers urge the hoarders to take out the cargo, threatening to sell it to other customers who need it for immediate use, The advertisers promise to refund deposits from big customers, giving a time-limit for the latter to remove the cargo they ordered, Small coal ball manufacturing firms admit that they are also hard hit by the strange situation, alleging that big factories have been hoarding large quantities of coal needed for making coal balls. They have sent a petition to the Shanghai Machine-made Coal Ball Manufacturers Association, urging that big factories sell their coal to small firms. The firms hoarding the material for making coal balls are mentioned in the petition. These charges and counter charges between coal ball factories and their customers and between coal ball merchants themselves provide valuable data for official action against hoarding,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.