Coal merchant

“ A Law of this kind would at once terminate that ruinous competition among the Coal owners, which has urged them to vie with each other in the wasteful destruction of small Coal, in order to increase the Profits of the Coal Merchants, and gratify the preference for large Coals on the part of rich consumers ”

“ Having secured an economical production, in which we should no longer commit the crime of killing a thousand miners every year, we should distribute the coal cheaply to our local authorities, who would act as distributing agents. The army of coal merchants and their clerks and the thousand and one artful dodges of the retail coal trade would disappear, and the public would secure their coal economically. ”

“ In 1900 more than half of the tonnage carried on the railroads of the United States consisted of mining products; and of these coal certainly formed a very considerable, perhaps the major, part. Still coal does not rank among the chief wares of foreign trade. ”

“ Both these commodities represent wealth; but coal is a much less portable form of property. There is, from that point of view, a deplorable lack of concentration in coal. Now, if a coal-mine could be put into one's waistcoat pocket—but it can't! At the same time, there is a fascination in coal, the supreme commodity of the age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel. And I suppose those two considerations, the practical and the mystical, prevented Heyst—Axel Heyst—from going away. ”

“ If by the time of exhaustion of the home mines Britain is still dependent upon coal for fuel, which, in this age of electricity, scarcely seems probable, her trade and commerce will feel with tremendous effect the blow which her prestige will experience when the first vessel, laden with foreign coal, weighs anchor in a British harbour. ”

“ Taking first the mineral products, and including coal with them, as common usage justifies us in doing, we find, at first sight, that this article takes a far lower rank among the modern wares than we should expect from its commanding importance in industrial life. There has been, it is true, a great growth in the coal trade, and considerable quantities are exported from England, Belgium, Germany, on occasion the United States, etc., for use in countries lacking coal mines, or at sea. There is an immense internal commerce in coal. ”

“ The rich owners, popularly known as the “coal barons,” agree to fix absolutely the wholesale price of coal, always securing an immense rise just before the winter sets in. There is no such thing known or possible as free trade or open competition in the anthracite coal produce of America. ”

“ And in this country, with our severe climate, coal is all-important as a factor of domestic economy, as well as a necessity to manufacturing and metallurgical industries. The total cost to the consumers of the coal used in the United States every year (about 120,000,000 tons) , calling the average retail price $4.00 per ton, is nearly $500,000,000, or over $8.00 per annum for every man, woman, and child in the country. ”

“ But from every point we look we reach this fact, that our coal trade is one which develops itself according to laws that we are perfectly powerless to control; if it seems to promise a less rapid increase here, it is only that it may spread abroad with accelerated vigor elsewhere; if it is our slave in some aspects, it seems as if it were our master in others.
Finally, we have to ask, What of our export coals? Rapid as has been the growth of our total production during the last twenty-three years, the growth of our export of coals has been greater still. ”

“ In some manufactures, besides, coal is a necessary instrument of trade; as in those of glass, iron, and all other metals. If a bounty could in any case be reasonable, it might perhaps be so upon the transportation of coals from those parts of the country in which they abound, to those in which they are wanted. ”

“ Crossing the Buller bar, the voyager will find not a narrow tortuous channel, but a wide and straight run in, up which vessels sail without danger, and where, already, a coal fleet comes and goes, carrying Mount Rochfort black diamonds to the markets of the world. Preparations have been made, a quarter of a million or more of pounds sterling spent in wharves, staiths, and railways, the coal is in the hills in millions of tons, the accumulation of ages, a store which a legion of cyclops could scarce diminish, and its production, as a marketable commodity, has now been fairly established. ”

“ The dogs are hardly suitable for coals, but might not a good trade in coals with the Continent be brought about? I suppose the abundance of wood renders it unnecessary. But a great deal may result from the force of habit, or, not improbably, there may be a prohibitory duty preventing the people from using coal. ”

“ Seeing, then, that our supply of coal has a limit, and that at the present increasing rate of consumption, the chief source of the wealth of Great Britain must necessarily be exhausted in a few more centuries, it behoves us to turn our mineral treasures to the best account, and to adopt every possible means of obtaining from our coal its whole available heat and force. The amount of avoidable waste of which we are guilty in the consumption of coal is enormous. ”

“ I have heard working people in New England deploring that they must now pay $20 per ton for anthracite coal, shivering as they talk about it, for the New England winters are cold, and there was the implication that there would not be very much coal coming to these people at that price. ”

“ The great centers of coal production—the Pennsylvania and Illinois fields of the United States, the Midlands district of England, and the lower Rhine or Westphalian fields of Germany—are also the great centers of the iron and steel industries of these countries. As in the case of iron ore, there is rather a striking absence of important coal production in the southern hemisphere and in Asia. A significant item in the world's distribution of coal supplies is England's world-wide system of coaling stations for shipping.
The principal coal-producing countries all have large reserves of coal. ”

“ Moreover our modern chemical industries, such as the dye industry, are based upon the substances contained in bituminous coal, most of which are wasted in our customary methods of consumption. These facts impose an immense burden of needless cost [Pg 77] upon the consumer, and draw into the overexpanded coal industry tens of thousands of miners in excess of efficient requirements. ”

“ It has given us a power over other nations, and vast sums of money are yearly brought to our country from abroad in exchange for the coal we send. Nearly £17,000,000 is the representative value of the coal raised every year at the pit's mouth, and £20,000,000 represent its mean value at the various places of consumption. The capital invested in our coal-mining trade, apart from the value of the mines themselves, exceeds £20,000,000 sterling, and the amount of coal annually extracted from the earth is over 70,000,000 of tons. ”

“ The price is advancing each year as the supply is getting scarcer and the wood brought from greater distances. There is no way by which coal or wood could be brought here from other places. The recent discovery of a deposit of coal in the Paloo region, two days’ journey from Harput, aroused hopes that this problem might be partially solved, but the coal has proved to be of inferior quality and hardly worth bringing here. ”

“ We do this as to wheat and meat; it is just as necessary to avoid injustice in the case of coal, and it is thoroughly practicable. The public should know the kind of coal it is buying, because it should buy the coal it needs. There need be no prohibition against the mining or selling of any coal, [4] but coal should sell in terms of its capacity to deliver heat. Some coal that is only a pint bottle is selling as a quart bottle. And the quart is hurt by the competition of the pint. A bill to effect such fuel inspection has been drafted and will be presented to Congress. ”

“ It was not until the middle of the following century that the coal industry became important in itself; but once its importance was recognised, it was worked with the utmost energy, and exported to every part of the world. ”

“ Steel could not be manufactured without coke, coke could not be made without coal; coal could not be commercially produced without transportation; transportation was dependent upon coal.... Industrially we were in a wild scramble of manufacture, production, and shipment.... It was no longer a question of withholding coal from non-war industries but rather a question whether any coal could much longer get through to any consumer. ”

“ It is thus evident beyond dispute that the production of anthracite coal in this country is an industry uncontrolled by competition. To sum up: these seven great corporations own more than two thirds of the area in which workable anthracite coal is found: they mine and market directly the great bulk of the total production; the individual operators are dependent on the railways for getting their coal to a market; and the price at which they can afford to sell it depends on the railroad [36] rates. ”

“ An important feature of the coal industry, which recent events have brought into sharp prominence, is the great diversity of conditions between different coalfields and different collieries. We speak of rich seams and poor seams, of fertile and unfertile mines, and we are aware that the costs of raising coal to the surface differ very widely in accordance with these diverse natural conditions. Nor must we confine our attention to the cost price at the pit-head. ”

“ It seems to be so in some of the inland parts of England, particularly in Oxfordshire, where it is usual, even in the fires of the common people, to mix coals and wood together, and where the difference in the expense of those two sorts of fuel cannot, therefore, be very great.
Coals, in the coal countries, are everywhere much below this highest price. ”

“ This concentration of coal lands and coal mining in the hands of great corporations, aside from its tendency to stifle healthy competition, is productive of many benefits. Coal can be mined much cheaper when the mining is done on a large scale. ”

“ Most of the coal-mines will, indeed, have been worked out in less than a hundred years hence, and then, perhaps, the competition brought about by the demand for, and the scarcity of, coal from the remaining mines, will have resulted in the dreaded importation of coal from abroad. ”

“ Indeed, the increased demand, thus caused for these great articles, would soon bring our make of iron, and consumption of coal, up to that of England, and ultimately much larger. Freight is a much greater element in the cost of coal and iron, than of agricultural products, but the increased exchange would be mutually advantageous. ”

“ As important as increased production in the mines was the rapid distribution of coal as soon as it was brought to the surface. Coal is not commercially produced until it is distributed, for coal dumped at the mine mouth or lying in cars on railroad switches is of no more use to the consumer than that still underground. ”

“ It would clearly appear that the coal business may be stabilized, not wholly, but in a very large measure, in some of the western fields, [3] if the public does not regard its supply of coal as it does its supply of domestic water, which requires only that the faucet shall be opened to bring forth a gushing supply. ”

“ In the north of England a powerful combination has long existed among the coal-owners, by which the public has suffered in the payment of increased price. The late examination of evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, has explained its mode of operation, and the Committee have recommended, that for the present the sale of coal should be left to the competition of other districts. ”

“ If any morbid impediments to the free action of the coal trade do exist, the stimulating and purgative influence of foreign competition will rapidly restore the trade to a healthy condition.
The effect of such introduction of American coal will not be to perpetually lock up our deep coal nor even to stop our gradual progress towards it. ”

“ And lastly, our coal assisted in the manufacture of most of the articles of our dress, and of most of the articles we require in our domestic economy. It is by means of the coal that we raise that we are able to manufacture the greater portion of the articles we export to every part of the civilised or uncivilised world. ”

“ Metals and Manufactures.—An explanation of the comparative insignificance of coal in foreign trade is found in its bulk. An active industrial people can compress the value of coal, as it were, by using it near the mines for the production and transformation of other materials. Coal is transmuted into iron and manufactures, and so loses its identity, though it remains still the real power behind the exports of that character.
Commerce in iron and steel, and the manufactures depending on them, has increased enormously in the course of the century, as the reader may readily suppose. ”

“ Every other important bed of coal and ironstone could have been laid down on its separate map, showing its extent, depth, thickness, richness, and the places where it had and where it had not been gotten.
Every one who has had anything to do with coal mining, even as a spectator, must be aware of the great waste of money, labour, and materials, consequent on the division of property among many small owners, each having different and opposite interests. ”

“ We even want those who can’t afford to pay for coal now, to use Consumers coal, because at some time in the future their circumstances may change; they may be able to pay for coal then and if they once use Consumers coal they will never use any other. ”

“ Meantime this distribution has been almost everywhere in western Europe enormously influenced by the distribution of coal. Everywhere the coal has had an attractive influence, dragging population, wealth, and intelligence from the agricultural regions, even the fertile regions, to the vicinity of the coal measures, where alone great industries can be profitably established.
In Great Britain, where the coal-bearing beds are not only numerous, but in some instances crop out at the surface, coal seems to have been worked earlier than elsewhere in Europe. ”