There is, therefore, no absolute contradiction to the notion of making available for technical purposes the billions of calories that occurred in our problem. As soon as we admit it as possible for discussion, we find ourselves inquiring what the solution of the problem could signify. In our intercourse we actually arrived at this question, and discovered the most radical answer in a dissertation which Friedrich Siemens has written about coal in general without touching in the slightest on these possibilities of the future. I imagine that this dissertation was a big trump in my hand, but had soon to learn from the reasoned contradiction of Einstein that the point at issue was not to be decided in this way.
Nevertheless, it will repay us to consider these arguments for a moment.
Friedrich Siemens starts from two premises which he seemingly bases on scientific reasoning, thus claiming their validity generally. They are: Coal is the measure of all things. The price of every product represents, directly or indirectly, the value of the coal contained in it.
As all economic values in over-populated countries are the result of work, and as work presupposes coal, capital is synonymous with coal. The economic value of each object is the sum-total of the coal that had to be used to manufacture the object in question. In over-populated states each wage is the value of the coal that is necessary to make this extra life possible. If there is a scarcity of coal, the wages go down in value; if there is no coal, the wages are of no value at all, no matter how much paper money be issued.
As soon as agriculture requires coal (this occurs when it is practised intensively and necessitates the use of railways, machines, artificial manures), coal becomes involved with food-stuffs. Thanks to industrialism, coal is involved in clothing and housing, too.
Since money is equivalent to coal, proper administration of finance is equivalent to a proper administration of coal resources, and our standard of currency is in the last instance a coal-currency. Gold as money is now concentrated coal.
The most advanced people is that which derives from one kilogramme of coal the greatest possibilities conducive to life. Wise statesmanship must resolve itself into wise administration of coal. Or, as it has been expressed in other words elsewhere: "We must think in terms of coal."
These fundamental ideas were discussed, and the result was that Einstein admitted the premises in the main, but failed to see the conclusiveness of the inferences. He proved to me, step by step, that Siemens' line of thought followed a vicious circle, and, by begging the question, arrived at a false conclusion. The essential factor, he said, is man-power, and so it will remain; it is this that we have to regard as the primary factor. Just so much can be saved to advantage as there is man-power available for purposes other than for the production of coal from which they are now released. If we succeed in getting greater use out of a kilogramme of coal by better management, then this is measurable in man-power, with which one may dispense for the mining of coal, and which may be applied to other purposes.
If the assertion: "Coal is the measure of all things," were generally valid, it should stand every test. We need only try it in a few instances to see that the thesis does not apply. For example, said Einstein: However much coal we may use, and however cleverly we may dispose of it, it will not produce cotton. Certainly the freightage of cotton-wool could be reduced in price, but the value-factor represented by man-power can never disappear from the price of the cotton.
The most that can be admitted is that an increase of the amount of power obtained from coal would make it possible for more people to exist than is possible at present, that is, that the margin of over-population would become extended. But we must not conclude that this would be a boon to mankind. "A maximum is not an optimum."