Coal trade

“ The advantages which the coal trade must reap from the introduction of the gas-light must be very considerable. There is already less waste, but a greater consumption of coal than formerly. The lower classes of the community are scantily supplied with firing; and nothing but a reduction of [24] price is necessary to increase to a very large amount the average quantity of fuel consumed in the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Coal overshadows all other mineral resources, except water, in production, value, and demand. It is the greatest of the energy sources—coal, petroleum, gas, and water power. Roughly two-thirds of the world's coal is used for power, one-sixth for smelting and metallurgical industries, and one-sixth for heating purposes. Coal constitutes over one-third of the railroad tonnage of the United States and is the largest single tonnage factor in international trade; 70 per cent of the pre-war tonnage of outgoing cargoes from England was coal. ”

“ Hall estimates the capital invested in the coal trade of the counties of Durham and Northumberland, including private railways, waggons, and docks for loading ships, at £13,000,000 sterling.
The great difficulty in working coal, should these upper seams fail, is not only the increase of cost in sinking further down, but the increased heat to be worked in. At 2000 feet the mine will increase in heat 28°, at 4000, 57°; to this must be added the constant temperature of 50° 5', so that at 2000 feet it would be 78° 5', and at 4000, 107° 5' Fahr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Great Britain will, however, be compelled to retire from the coal trade altogether, by the cheaper supplies which other countries will yield, long before the absolute exhaustion of her own coal-fields. It is calculated that the coal-fields of North America contain thirteen times as much as those of all Europe put together. Coal is also found 756abundantly in India, China, Borneo, Eastern Australia, and South Africa; and it is believed that these stores will supply the world for many thousand years.
Fig. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is not a trade in England, from steeple-building to hop-picking, that will not be a little worse off because of those 45,000,000 tons. Then the two hundred thousand out-of-work miners will burn less coal at home, the ships and the engines will burn less, and the workshops and the smithies will burn less, and the whole process will be repeated again and again, for coal is like a snowball in its cumulative effects, and it cannot stand still. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wood and other fuels are rarely sufficient to maintain an industry built up on a supply of coal. Oil is being successfully substituted in some industries, notably in shipping, but the importance of coaling stations will no doubt persist.
CHANGES IN PRACTICE
The technique of coal mining in many districts, and the development of heat, power and coal products are not far advanced. Wasteful methods are used, mostly as a result of competition and lack of co-operation and organization among producers. Economies are being advocated, however. Labor-saving machinery has been installed in many mines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The first cause is probably the most important, and this is particularly true of anthracite coals where a sliding scale of prices is used according to the season of the year. While market conditions serve as one of the principal reasons for coal storage, most power plants and manufacturing plants feel compelled to protect their coal supply from the danger of strikes, car shortages and the like, and it is customary for large power plants, railroads and coal companies themselves, to store bituminous coal. ”

“ In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of coal; that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, produce annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground; that 35 per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 years we have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 tons per annum ”

“ 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. ”

“ The price of coals can however have but little effect upon the cost of the gas-lights; because the very refuse, or small coal, which pass through the screen at the pit’s mouth, and which cannot be brought into the market, nay, even the sweepings of the pit, which are thrown away, may be employed for the production of coal-gas. It makes no difference in what form the coal is used. ”

“ It may indeed be hard to see how a practical method for drawing on this vast reserve of heat can be devised, but it is at least conceivable that it may be rendered available when the coal and other more accessible sources have become exhausted, or even when their yield has considerably lessened.
The coal of England may last a century or two; the coal in other parts of the globe may supply our cellars for a few centuries more, but the exhaustion of this truly marvellous product is proceeding at an accelerated pace. ”

“ It is evident that the immense consumption of coal has made coal cheap and abundant. It has rendered possible the employment of vast capital in the erection of costly machinery for the working of the mines, for the construction of adequate means of transportation, thereby making remote deposits accessible, and enabling capitalists to work the mines at the minimum of cost, which never would have been done had not the vast consumption of coal rendered it wise and practicable to do so. It is true the consumption of coal is increased by cheapness ”

“ The exhaustion of so vast a coal bed is a practical impossibility, and the questions that engage the attention of the mining engineer in these regions are not so much questions of the economy of coal as they are questions of the economy of labor. The coal lies near the surface, and the outcrops on the flanks of the hills and banks of the [194] rivers are so numerous that most of the mining can be, and is, done by drift above water level. The outlay of capital required in opening a mine is therefore very small, marketable coal being obtained at almost the first blow of the pick. ”

“ Moreover, wherever heat rather than light or power is desired, gas, in the present state of technical development, is even more economical than electricity. Under the by-product system the present annual coal output can be made to more than double its service in driving machinery and in addition it can be made to contribute heavily to our supply of fertilizers, motor fuel, and chemical [Pg 98] products. It is estimated that the aggregate loss resulting from the present wasteful utilization of coal is over ten dollars a year for each inhabitant of the United States. ”

“ Increase in the use of coal.—Some idea of the development of modern forms of manufacture in the United States can be gained by tracing the history of coal, the great source of power for the developed system of factory industry. The demand for coal was still very small in the first quarter of the century; in 1830 the total production was less than half a million tons, and the United States was surpassed in coal output by four of the states of Europe. The second quarter of the century was marked by a great extension in the use of steam power, and the successful application of coal to iron making ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the effective integration of fuel and power it will become necessary to separate the energy-producing elements in bituminous coal—and also of the sub-bituminous coal, of lignite and peat, of which we have reserves amounting to the billions of tons—from those which have only a commodity value. ”

“ We have been content to go without insurance as to a coal reserve. Each day has brought its daily supply. There was no thought of railroads stopping or mines closing down, so that large storage facilities have not been provided, and, indeed, we would rebel at paying for our coal the added cost of caring for it outside its native warehouse. We have not thought in terms of apprehension, but, as always, in the calm certainty that the stream of supply would flow without ceasing. In some way there would be coal into which we could drive our shovels when the need was felt. ”

“ All but a very small fraction of the heat thus escapes, and is lost to man and the world for ever; and surely we shall deserve the curses of our descendants if we continue recklessly to throw away a treasure which, unlike the oil in the widow’s cruse, is never renewed—for there is no contemporaneous formation of coal. Thanks to the enhanced price of coal during the last few years, some attention has been directed to contrivances 757for the economical consumption of coal in its domestic, as well as in its manufacturing, applications. ”

“ The investigations include the possibility of making satisfactory commercial fuels from lignite or low-grade coals which do not stand shipment well, the benefiting of culm or slack coals which are wasted or sold at unremunerative prices, and the possibility of improving the efficiency of good coals. Some of the various forms of commercial briquettes, American and foreign, are shown in Fig. 2, Plate XX. After undergoing chemical analysis, the coal is elevated and fed to a storage bin, whence it is drawn through a chute to a hopper on the weighing scales. ”

“ 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. ”