Matthew Fontaine Maury

“ Through its agency in producing the motive power for machinery in the steam-engine, the wild places of the earth are penetrated, men have ready and quick transit thereto, all the benefits of civilization flow in, cities spring up, the husbandman has facilities for sending his surplus produce to the markets of the world, and waste places are made to blossom like the rose. ”

“ AS we sit by our firesides and peer into the glowing coals, or watch the bright jets of flame spring into existence to throw their cheery light into the room, making weird, fantastic shadows on the wall, and bringing with them such comforting cheer to our senses of sight and feeling, we are often brought into very reflective moods, especially if we are sitting in the twilight, while the cold wind is whistling, and the sharp snow and hail of winter are clicking against the windows. ”

“ The light for our homes and cities, the most beautiful and delicate dyes for clothing fabrics, and the ink that prints our books and papers to scatter knowledge through the world, all come from the products of its distillation. In all the power exercised by it, it works greater wonders than the magician's wand in the "Arabian Nights;" in its beneficial effects to mankind, it may be said, like mercy, to shed its gentle dews from heaven ”

“ It was during the Carboniferous epoch, when our principal and most valuable seams of coal were deposited, that all these favorable circumstances were in their highest development. For a dense vegetation we also want a warm, moist, and equable climate, and air more or less charged with carbonic-acid gas, as that is the food of plants (just as the oxygen gives life to man) , though it is poisonous to warm-blooded animals, it being impossible for such to live in an atmosphere containing more than about one per cent. ”

“ From numerous experiments and observations, an able-bodied man, in working ten hours a day, exerts an average force of 1,000,000 foot-pounds. When coal is burned under a boiler it produces steam, which in turn produces work as it drives machinery. Therefore, coal produces work, the amount of which will vary according to the perfection of the machinery and the appliances for generating the steam. If we take an average of all kinds of engines, one pound of coal will produce steam sufficient to exercise a power of 500,000 foot-pounds. ”

“ In all these circumstances, therefore, there exist the most advantageous conditions for the rapid and continuous growth of vegetation, and, judging from the fossils thereof, it must have gone on with a density and luxuriance that wellnigh surpasses conception. Floating vegetables first made their appearance, spreading their branches and leaves on the surface of the water, and filling the basin or lagoon with their débris thus forming a support for the more aërial vegetation, compared with which anything in our day of the same species, in respect to size and quantity, fades into insignificance. ”

“ Hence the work accomplished by two pounds of the fuel equals a man's day's work. Now, mark the surprising results to which this leads us. The population of the United States is about 40,000,000, and in 1877 we produced 50,000,000 tons of coal. If one-fourth of this were applied to manufacturing, etc., it would do as much work as our whole population, assuming them all to be able-bodied men, in 350 days. The coal at the engine will average about four dollars a ton, while the price of unskilled manual labor can be put down at one dollar a day. ”

“ There is one more benefit that coal has been the cause of bestowing upon mankind that is as striking as all those previously set forth, to which I would call attention before closing. The Bible tells us that the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air were not created until after the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind ”

“ It has been stated that one of the requisites for the vegetation of the coal era to flourish as it did was that the atmosphere should be charged with a compound of carbon and oxygen known as carbonic-acid gas, and that this gas, except in very small proportion, destroys life in warm-blooded animals. ”

“ In these days, accustomed as we are to its multitudinous uses, it is difficult to imagine ourselves in the position of the early writers, who touched with uncertain pen on what they thought to be the leading characters of a rare and ambiguous mineral, or to conceive that its introduction was accompanied by such prejudice and superstition that laws were actually passed forbidding its use by the very countries that now consider it as the greatest of their possessions. ”

“ When air passes over, or rests on, oceans, or lakes, or rivers, etc., it becomes laden with vapor, whose influence is very potent, as its power of absorbing and retaining heat is thousands of times greater than that of air. ”

“ It was the tree that drank in the noxious vapor through its leaves, decomposed it, took of the carbon to add to its stature, and to yield seed and fruit after its kind, while it breathed the life-producing oxygen back into the air, and in this way the atmosphere was purified for the use of man and beast. ”

“ During the Carboniferous age of the earth's history the water covered very much more of area than it now does, and portions of the continents were so little raised above its surface that a slight elevation or depression would change them from marshes and lagoons into dry land, or sink them below the surface of the sea. ”

“ It was now to enter upon its second grand phase of usefulness—that for the generation of force, as manifested through the agency of the steam-engine, which was first used for mining purposes. By this application of steam not only was the mining of the coal made cheaper, but the facilities for distributing it enlarged, and as engines were improved from time to time, their number increased, because they could be economically employed in a greater number of industries, and therefore the demand for this class of fuel rapidly extended. ”

“ Those nations that possess it in the greatest abundance and purity are those that rise the most rapidly to the highest and mightiest positions; for it is the mainspring of all manufactures, and it carries the products of such to the consumers in distant countries, across the trackless waste of waters, with a certainty and speed unattainable by any other means ”

“ When this subsidence ceased, fresh growths sprang up and a new deposit was formed, to sink and be covered in its turn; and as often as these periods of rest and submergence were repeated, so often did a new coal-bed come into existence, and in this is a simple rational explanation why the coal-measures have more than one seam in them. ”

“ It is not only the most useful but it is the most valuable of all minerals, on account of the wealth that is produced through its agency. It is well understood that money is a sequence of work, and a community that has small labor-bills can take the trade away from those that have to pay high rates. ”

“ And now for the story of how this wonderful mineral was formed. It is one of the well-established facts of geology that it is of vegetable origin. This is not simply a theory, for in Nature coal can be seen in various stages of formation where vegetable tissue is heaped up and accumulated in bogs. As we dig down into these bogs where the woody matter is surrounded by moisture, and in a favorable position for slow decomposition, it is seen that it is transformed into a dark, combustible compound which is first called peat ”

“ There are old men yet dwelling in the village where I remain, which have noted the multitude of chimnyes lately erected, whereas in their yoong days there was not above two or three, if so many, in the most uplandish towns of the realme, but each one made his fire against the reredose in the halle where he dined and dressed his meate. ”

“ The formation of different kinds of coals, such as anthracite, semi-anthracite, semi-bituminous, and the many different varieties of bituminous, is supposed to be owing to the different degrees of progress made in the process of softening and carbonization, and to there having been freer escape for the gaseous constituents in some cases than in others. ”

“ As the country was settled, railroads built, furnaces erected, and steam and machinery came into greater and greater use, the demand increased, until in 1877 the production was one and a quarter ton to every man, woman, and child of the Union—or 50,000,000 tons. ”