The march of contemporary civilization is occasionally disrupted by shortages of oil. In the frigid winter of 1947, a shortage of tankers cooled things in the Northeast, and President Truman refused to take one simple step to alleviate the situation—cast the Jones Act aside during the emergency and utilize foreign-flag tankers. More recently the periodic antics of OPEC have led to times of angst in various parts of the world. Nearly eighty years ago, the New York area shivered through a fuel shortage of a different type. Coal, the predominant fuel, was in short supply.
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