130 years ago in 1895, transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

Coal Famine. Scarcity of black diamonds causes considerable alarm. Advance in prices. The elements and miners strike cut off the coal supply.

People who bought their winter’s supple of coal last fall and who still have enough to last them until warm weather are in luck. A coal famine is imminent in Youngstown, and the price of coal has advanced 50 cents a ton since last Thursday, with every indication of a still further price. Even at the advanced price coal is hard to get and the supply on hand by local dealers is not enough to supply the demand for a week.

Some dealers who handle Pittsburgh coal have not a pound on hand and with no prospects of getting any.

The strike of miners for an increase of wages in the Monongahela District, where most of the coal shipped into Youngstown is mined, is responsible for the conditions.

Since last Friday only two cars of coal have been received by local dealers, and they were ordered and billed before the strike.

Not a car of coal was received by any of the dealers, although they have enough orders on hand for several car loads. Many people who were in urgent need of fuel had to be satisfied with slack, for which they paid $1.50 a ton.

The Glenview Coal Company, which handles Pittsburgh coal, has heretofore supplied a large trade, received a letter this morning from Hartley & Marshall, some of the largest mining concerns in the Monongahela District, and who have supplied a number of dealers in this city, stating that their miners had gone out on a strike Thursday and that their stock of coal was entirely exhausted, making it impossible to ship any to their customers here.

The letter also stated that the price paid by the company was all that they could afford to pay and that unless the miners agreed to go back at the old wages, the prospects of any future operation of the mines were very uncertain.

The weather indications are that another extreme cold spell will begin on the sixteenth lasting several days and unless there are some arrangements made for a supply of coal, there will be a great amount of suffering, especially among the poor who cannot afford to buy coal at the advanced price, and the county banks which furnish a small supply to the dealers cannot possibly give an output equal to the demand.

Compiled from the Youngstown Vindicator by Traci Manning, Mahoning Valley Historical Society curator of education.