Abundance of Coal and Coke.
Mr. E. W. Parker, of the United States Geological Survey, who served by appointment of President Roosevelt as one of the anthracite strike arbitrators, recently called the attention of the Washington State Press Association to the fact that Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado and Washington are the chief coal-producing States in the four longitudinal sections or belts of the United States from east to west and that each of these States takes the lead in manufacturing among all the States in its section. Washington has incalculable supplies of coal of excellent quality for producing heat and generating steam. The coal is stored in the Cascade Mountains and the mines of Pierce, Kittitas and Southern King Counties are in close and direct railway communication with Tacoma. It is said that the cars loaded with coal at fifty mine openings in Western Washington, would run by gravity into Tacoma by simply unloosening the brakes. Tacoma has huge bunkers for coaling steamships and a line of colliers plies constantly between this port and San Francisco. The best, if not the only coking coal yet mined in Washington is found in abundance in Pierce County within thirty miles of Tacoma. But fuel from the waste of the great lumber mills is so abundant and cheap in Tacoma that the tremendous advantage of her proximity to the rich coal fields of Washington is not as yet fully realized.