The paradox of power: How 90% waste defined the age of coal and industrial revolution

“ Steam raising was coal's first great play for power and it is the work through which it still holds its industrial supremacy. Between 1800 and 1900 coal-driven engines multiplied until by the end of the century they were producing energy equivalent to seventy million horse-power; during the first twenty years of the twentieth century, their power-producing capacity more than doubled. So coal wrought the industrial revolution, the greatest revolution in all human history, which transformed social and economic life as radically as the geographical revolution transformed the earth's surface. ”

“ But the first effect of coal was not to usher in the good life but to intensify the ancient struggle, widening its stage from pocketed civilizations to the world. For more than a hundred and fifty years, the abundant and readily accessible coal of Great Britain made her the protagonist in the world drama. Her acquisitive instinct, charged with cosmic energy, shot lines of imperial expansion out across the seas to America, India, Australia, China, and Africa. ”

“ At present it is the electrical energy of the sun stored up in our coal that does our work for us. Even here, however, science condemns our existing methods, root and branch, as absurdly prodigal of human labour, and as incredibly inefficient.
By our present procedure we apply effectively, as the president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers has recently pointed out, much less than 10 per cent of the energy in the coal consumed. Assuredly, the total waste of more than 90 per cent of the value of our coal in the process of conversion is an evil of magnitude. ”

“ But the reader will perhaps think that by improvements in the steam engine, and in other ways, means will be found of getting more and more work out of coal. It is true that we obtain from coal only a fraction of its available energy; but the whole work which could, by any possible process, be done by the combustion of coal is definite and limited, although its amount is large. A pound of coal burnt in one minute sets free an amount of energy which would, if it could all be made available, do as much as 300 horses working in the same time. ”

“ THE sciences concerned with man and the conditions most favorable to his physical, mental and moral development have received a great deal of attention during the last quarter of a century and the results are most striking. It is found that there is tremendous waste of adult human life in preventable deaths and injuries caused by disease and accidents, and immense waste of human energy in idleness and misapplied effort, while morality is shown to depend to a much greater extent than was formerly supposed upon proper housing, feeding and recreative and social opportunities. ”

“ Here again we have one small class benefited by the [88] misery of millions of unemployed, and willing to perpetuate this condition of unemployment in order to profit by it. Of all the waste that attends the competitive system this waste of human energy is the most unjust, and the most unjustifiable, unless it can be found that the pauperism it imposes on the millions and the heartlessness it promotes in the few, contribute, as the bourgeois tells us, "to make character!" ”

“ The worst feature of our social scheme at present—the most dangerous flaw in the machine—is the waste, the absolute throwing away of the years between fourteen and eighteen, the most important period of the male life (and, for that matter, of the female life) , the years when physique and character are forming when the instrument is malleable; years for the most part now left to chance and to blind-alley occupations. If we want to be a strong and healthy nation, this is the weakness of all others to overcome. ”

“ The industrial disturbances lately felt throughout civilization have consisted in the economic waste, the displacement of occupations, capital, skill, and social habit, due to the rapid and unceasing change in the methods of production and distribution ”

“ Science is ever advancing and the exploitation of waste lies in its true scientific utilization. Under the present conditions inventive effort in this province is not able to exercise the influence or reap the benefits which it really deserves. The tendency to be satisfied with what is already installed, no matter how inefficient it may be, is too deeply implanted. On the other hand, competition is the lever which impels private enterprise. To turn a blind eye to invention is to court disaster. ”

“ It will have to forget a good deal of what it has assimilated in connection with the disposal of the contents of the ash-barrel. A change-over from the old to the new method must inevitably occupy time, especially as those two dragging chains which always retard the march of progress—prejudice and conservatism—have first to be released. Nevertheless, as destruction of domestic waste by fire superseded dumping upon open land, so must incineration, in turn, give way to the latest demands of science and the immutable economic law. ”

“ Again, coal is burned under the boiler of a steam engine. Heat is produced, steam is generated, the engine does work. The coal possessed a store of energy, potentially. That is, the coal had the capacity of uniting with the oxygen of the air and setting free a store of energy. This energy, potential or latent in the coal, becomes kinetic and evident in the heat of the boiler and the work of the engine. Moreover, the work done by the engine added to the heat given off by the boiler and engine is exactly equal to the total store of energy possessed by the coal. ”

“ Now, during any transformation of energy, a part of the energy is spent in overcoming friction forces, and is thus degraded.
The problem of economizing our stores of energy is one which is now attracting more attention than it did formerly. With the greater scarcity of coal, and the future prospect of its complete absence, other natural sources of energy are being investigated. ”

“ First on the list stands Great Britain, whose pre-eminence in industry and commerce is entirely founded on her vast deposits of coal. It is this invaluable mineral which sets those countless steam-engines in motion that perform the labours of a hundred millions of men; which spins and weaves the cotton of America, the silk of China, the wool of Australia, and the flax of Belgium into that amazing variety of tissues that serve to clothe almost all the nations of the globe; and which finally produces a greater quantity of the cheapest iron than the combined efforts of all the world. ”

“ It has been said, doubtless with a good deal of truth, that Britain owes her manufacturing prosperity to her abundant domestic resources of fuel. But, in the exploitation of our coal reserves, we emulate the rat in the corn-bin. We waste quite as much, if not more, than we ever use. The country around our collieries is disfigured with huge dumps, among which are thousands of tons of what is really low-grade fuel. ”

“ The only object in referring to it is to show that, unless by means of scientific investigation man is taught new methods of rendering the world's store of energy available for the production of heat and of motion, the age of the human race is measured by the extent of the supply of coal and other forms of fuel. By other forms of fuel I mean, of course, wood and oil. Plainly, as the demand for land for the production of foodstuffs increases, the amount available for the production of wood must decrease, so that wood need not be taken into account for the future. ”

“ Quite irrespective of the misery that results from unemployment and the evils that attend it for the whole [87] community—employed as well as unemployed—too much emphasis cannot be put upon the foolish waste of human energy that unemployment occasions. There have been for two years in this country over a million (and probably much more than a million) able-bodied men willing and anxious to assist in the production and distribution of the things we need, and who have not been permitted to do so—the energy of over a million, and probably a great many more, absolutely wasted. ”

“ There can be none in respect to the social harm of using the vitality, the charm, the strength, the happiness of minors, especially of potential mothers, to carry on the processes of machine-dominated systems of manufacture and business. It takes so little physical strength or mental power to become a cog in these rapidly revolving wheels. It means such a waste to thus use the years of youth, meant for education and development and meant to attract toward successful family life rather than away from it. ”

“ Such a principle means war, means waste, means wide-spread social demoralization; and it must, if society is to endure, be succeeded at no distant day by some true principle of accommodation and harmony, in virtue of which it shall become the interest of the laboring classes to promote the creation of wealth by faithful and intelligent work, and the interest of the capitalist class to extend the fullest measure of justice to those whose labor fructifies their capital. ”

“ Through periods of feverish activity the strength and health of the workers are mercilessly used up, and during periods of enforced idleness the workers are frequently reduced to starvation.
The climaxes of this system of production are the regularly recurring industrial depressions and crises which paralyze the nation every fifteen or twenty years.
The capitalist class, in its mad race for profits, is bound to [415] exploit the workers to the very limit of their endurance and to sacrifice their physical, moral and mental welfare to its own insatiable greed. ”

“ Likewise, the importance to industry of active and enterprising leadership. Thirdly: the social and economic evil effects of great inequality of wealth. Fourthly: the fact that the health, energy, spirit, and intelligence of the wage earners are 243 factors of high importance in the creation of a stable and effective industrial régime, and that the development and display of these qualities by individuals are affected by their economic conditions and surroundings, here and now. Likewise, the importance of giving the best possible opportunity to all to develop their natural ability. ”

“ We do not speak here of the intellectual influence of inventions, that belongs to the technical conditions in which the spirit plays a part ultimately by the side of the tool; technic is the conscious discovery and application of tools by thinking men.
Like the other ideological factors morality can also advance the economic and social development. Just in this lies its social importance. Since certain social rules arise from certain social needs, they will render the social co-operation so much the more easy the better they are adapted to the society which makes them. ”

“ Although we have made vast strides during the past few years in the processes of reclamation and utilization of waste we are still far from having penetrated the threshold of the new world of industry, science, and invention which it embraces. The unknown lies before us. For aught contemporary knowledge can say, other triumphs and vast fields of conquest, comparable with those associated with the gas and oil industries, are waiting to be discovered, and this fact is adequate to foster experiment, research, and investigation. ”

“ The necessity to conserve our industrial resources, which is so pronounced to-day, is acting as a powerful stimulant to inventive effort. The mere circumstance that approved apparatus exist for the reclamation of wastes and are readily available to those of a thrifty or enterprising turn of mind no longer suffices to meet the situation. In the past we have been content to practise waste recovery along what may be described as satisfactory lines, but satisfactory only in so far as they represented an attempt to turn refuse to commercial account. ”

“ A new line of thought and development, possessing greater and more economic possibilities, has been opened up to the advantage of one and all. As a rule one need never hesitate to abandon the existing for something new, because the former is generally associated with some form of waste which has become so heavy as to act as a drag. ”

“ It may not seem a savoury occupation to rake over the repulsive assorted contents of the household dust-bin, but it serves to swell, to an appreciable degree, the streams of raw materials flowing into the insatiable maws of industry. What is left after these industrious toilers have completed their work finds its way to the dust-destructor to assist in the raising of steam to drive engines and generators for the supply of electricity.
The diligent exploitation of waste exercises a far-reaching influence upon the wealth of nations. ”

“ Nevertheless, the longer such abnormal conditions obtain the more impressed shall we become of the wealth to be won from waste. They will compel us to strive to extract the utmost from the raw material placed in our hands. They will induce us to become more and more reluctant to discard a material after we have secured all apparent worth which it appears to be capable of yielding, from the fear that the ultimate residue may still contain something of potential value which we have not succeeded in discovering. ”

“ There are even some cases on record where the manufacture of the staple has been abandoned, at all events for a time, because the by-product, the former incubus of the industry has become invested with such far-reaching importance as to demand the concentration of effort upon its production. Waste—by-product—staple: such constitutes the brief evolution of more than one of the world’s leading lines of trading. ”

“ Fire is an excellent destructive agency, but is far too handy for the removal from sight, if not from memory, of the multitude of odds and ends incidental to our complex social and industrial existence. With the coming of the electric age, and the supersession of kitchen stoves and factory furnaces by cheap current, the facilities for the ready destruction of what is really valuable raw material under the guise of waste will be removed. In the interests of economy and wealth, both individual and national, it is to be hoped that the coming of the electric era may not be unduly delayed. ”

“ To convert force and power into useful operation requires intelligence. And that intelligence must guide us to use the accumulated force for a defined purpose. That purpose, as it seems to be agreed, is to form a new social, or rather industrial structure within the shell of the old. To accomplish this the advocates, the militants for the new, must know to what extent the present factors in industrial development have organized and systematized industrial production. ”

“ To build and to arrange correctly, and for lasting purposes, the constructors of a further developed industrial structure must possess a thorough knowledge of the material, and of organizations destined to accomplish the task. The architects must know the proper grouping of each component part and cell in the composition of industrial combinations, so that, when harmony in the industrial relationship of mankind is established, it will be reflected in the harmonious social, political, judicial, and ethical institutions of a new age. ”

“ The workers will utilize the knowledge of ages to build and to plant on a solid rockbed the foundation of a new industrial and social system.
The foundation must be firm and solid. The revolutionary climax, after an incessant course of evolutionary processes by which forms and methods undergo changes, will eliminate forever the cause for the industrial division of society into two hostile camps. Harmonious relations of mankind in all their material affairs will evolve out of the change in the control and ownership in industrial resources of the world. ”

“ That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. ”