Coal trust

“ 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. ”

“ That day, however, has not yet come; and until it does we may consider our coal as the surest insurance which we can have that America can meet the severest contest that any industrial rival can present. It is more than insurance—it is an asset which can bring to us the certainty of great wealth, and if we care to exercise it, a mastery over the fate and fortunes of other peoples.
Next to the fertility of our soil, we have no physical asset as valuable as our coal deposits. ”

“ It would seem that every one in this Congress should be deeply interested in the conservation of coal whether his State produces it or not, for the permanence of this resource has a power relation, one that affects the industrial and social development of the whole country. ”

“ The world wants our coal, envies us for having it, fears us because of it. It is not only useful to us, but it has a cash value in the markets of the world. Therefore it should be saved.
In the next place we treat coal as if it were all alike, not selected by nature for specific uses; whereas we should choose our coal with as scientific a judgment as we choose our reading glasses. There is coal for coke and coal for furnaces and coal for house use and coal adapted for one kind of boiler and a different kind of coal for a different kind of boiler. Therefore we should discriminate in coal. ”

“ Much power will always be needed where no stream for power is available. But the lesson is plain that where water can be used it should be, both in order to save the coal and because it can be produced more cheaply. The 30,000,000 horse-power now available, if produced in our most modern electric plants, would require the burning of nearly 225,000,000 tons of coal, and if in the average plant run by steam-engines, more than 650,000,000 tons of coal, which is fifty per cent. more than all the coal that is now produced in this country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nearly all our manufacturing processes are full of imperfections; thus the loss of gas by a single large provincial gas company, after that substance has left the works, amounts to nearly one hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet per annum, and to a value of about £18,000; and the soil of all our large cities and towns is permeated and rendered fœtid by coal gas. And it has been stated by an eminent authority in such matters that we might save 500,000 tons of coal a year by economizing the waste heat of furnaces, by purifying the coal, coking it, etc. ”

“ The loss of motion resulting from lack of co-ordination in the use of coal is just as great in other directions as in that of coke making, and the advantages of integral usage may confidently be expected to assert themselves. Already projects of the kind are coming under serious contemplation in proposals such as those for furnishing gas to cities, for employing by-product operations located at the mine in support of the waning natural-gas supply, and for integrated heat, light, and power projects operating on coal with by-product recovery. ”

“ Let it always be kept in mind that we must not check the careful use, only the waste, and the best way to avoid an unnecessary drain on the coal and at the same time increase our manufactures is to substitute other power. Coal is only a form of energy that came originally from the sun. The same causes that produced coal still exist. Scientists tell us that coal is still being made, but it will take thousands of years to perfect it. ”

“ In general, it may be said that the control of the anthracite coal business by the great corporations, rather than by individual operators, is an undoubted benefit, not only to all the parties in direct interest, but to commerce and society as a whole. The only danger to be feared is from an abuse of the great powers to which these companies have attained; a danger which, thus far, has not seriously menaced the community. ”

“ In the making of coke from coal, enormous quantities of coal tar and gas have been lost. Most engines consume a far greater amount of coal than they should in doing a given amount of work. Most of us do not know how to use coal economically in our homes, and thus aid not only in wasting the coal supplies but in making the cost of living higher than it should be. All together, in the handling of coal we lose fully half of it. The coal supply of the earth is disappearing very fast, and at the rate at which its use is now increasing it may not last more than one hundred years. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Thus all this abundant wealth of money and of vivid life is Nature’s investment in club-mosses and the like so long ago. But what becomes of the coal which is burnt in yielding the interest? Heat comes out of it, light comes out of it, and if we could gather together all that goes up the chimney and all that remains in the grate of a thoroughly-burnt coal fire, we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral matters, exactly equal in weight to the coal. ”

“ This is an example of wholly useless waste of coal, and just such waste is to be found in hundreds of places in our country.
If wise mining methods be put into operation, if proper care be taken in its use, particularly in manufacturing, if the low-grade coals be utilized, and if other power be substituted wherever practicable, [Pg 143] there need be no question of shortage. There is enough coal in the ground, if used rightly, to last for ages to come. ”

“ Industries, especially those which generate electric power, have made similar effort to gain from their fuel its greatest potentiality, and with varying success. We can overlook the stoking of the domestic furnace as a national concern, for the amount of coal used in this way amounts to not more than 17 per cent of the national coal bill, and this whole charge could be saved, it is estimated, by giving care to the 75 per cent of our coal which is burned under boilers to make steam. ”

“ They are rapidly getting into a position where they can dictate the conditions under which they will hazard their lives underground. And these are not conditions which the coal industry with its competitive overdevelopment, its load of parasite railroads, sales companies, company-owned houses and stores, its inefficient operating methods, and particularly its antiquated energy-producing equipment on which it must pay heavy interest, is prepared to meet. ”

“ To the poor people who live in the vicinity of the breakers these heaps of refuse coal are an unmixed blessing. Pieces of good coal are always being thrown out inadvertently with the waste, and the bony coal that is discarded is not by any means without value as a fuel; indeed it makes a very respectable fire. So, too, one can obtain, with a screen, from the culm heap quite a little percentage of material that will burn. ”

“ And again we have shown little willingness to dignify coal by seeking to draw out by improved mechanical processes all the stored content of heat in this lump of carbon. Instead we content ourselves by giving it a mere pauper touch, driving off the greater volume of its value into the air. ”

“ At the beginning of the present century the anthracite or stone coal was in general use, in all the districts where it was found, as a fuel for the blacksmith’s fire and the iron worker’s forge. This, however, was the limit of its utility. It was thought to be necessary to force a strong artificial air current up through it to make it burn, and since this could not well be done in grates, stoves, or furnaces, there was no demand for coal for domestic use, or for the great manufacturing industries. ”

“ The nation's safety made it imperative not only that coal should be produced, but that it should be delivered where it was needed. The miners were digging more coal than had ever been produced before, yet cries of coal shortage went up from domestic consumers and manufacturers all over the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Should such a thing at any time actually come to pass, it will indeed be a retribution to those who have for years been squandering their inheritance in many a wasteful manner of coal-consumption.
Thirty years ago, when so much small coal was wasted and wantonly consumed in order to dispose of it in the easiest manner possible at the pitmouths, and when only the best and largest coal was deemed to be of any value, louder and louder did scientific men speak in protest against this great and increasing prodigality. ”

“ Central heating and power plants that can burn coal efficiently will no doubt be more popular and numerous in a few years. Government control and legislation may be expected to hasten the changes. In Europe the technique of coal mining, except in undercutting machinery, is further advanced than in the United States, as regards mining all the coal and in supporting the surface. ”

“ As a matter of fact, we got coal reserves that will last us for 250 more years. But coal presents an environmental challenge. We know that. So I've asked Congress to provide more than $2 billion over 10 years for a coal research initiative, a program that will promote new technologies to remove virtually all pollutants from coal-fired power plants. ”

“ To no other resource more frequently than coal has this stupidly false adjective been applied. Yet our coal supplies are so far from being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years continues to prevail, our supplies of anthracite coal will last but fifty years and of bituminous coal less than two hundred years. From the point of view of national life, this means the exhaustion of one of the most important factors in our civilization within the immediate future. ”

“ Can it make any real and vital difference and convert a public into a private use if, instead of burning the fuel at the power station to produce the electricity, or at the central heating plant to produce the heat and then conducting it in the one case by wires and in the other by pipes to the user's home, the coal itself is hauled over the same highway to the same point of distribution? ”

“ Certain parts of the earth, such as Wales, the Saar Basin and Newfoundland contain coal deposits upon which the entire industrial society is dependent for its survival. It is, then, a matter of the gravest importance to secure a maximum coal output, at least to the point of satisfying the minimum demands of the community. Whatever men and machinery are required to produce the ration of coal upon which industrial efficiency depends must be directed toward that goal. At the same time, waste, inefficiency and dis-employment, whether of men or of machines must be reduced to a minimum. ”

“ The coal operators are conscienceless robbers. They hold within the hollows of their hands the anthracite coal supply of this country. They own it or control it as you own or control a gas range that you have bought or rented. The coal supply of this country is their property. And though you must draw upon it or freeze in winter, you cannot have a pound of coal except at their price. And their price is always all they believe they can get out of you without a riot. The cost of production does not matter. ”