Conservation Through Engineering / Extract from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior

by Franklin K. Lane

COAL AND COAL.

The Government should sample and certify 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. It is not a bill commanding anything, but rather gives to those who are willing an opportunity to have their product inspected and attested and thus acquire merit in the eye of the world as against those who are not willing to subject their coal to the official test tube. Coal is coal in the sense of the classic traffic classification. Coal is, however, not always coal, nor is it altogether coal when put to the pragmatic test of the furnace. If such a bill were passed it would promote the interests of those who schedule their price upon the merit of their goods and make against the hauling of slate and dirt, its storage and handling under an assumed name. The plan is not to punish the malefactor who attempts to impose upon the public a slender number of thermal units as a ton of coal, but rather to give to ever man an opportunity to advertise the number of such units which his particular article contains, thus enabling the injured public to strike against an unfair mine.

Furthermore we are to become great exporters of coal, unless all signs fail, and such certification should be required as to every ton sent abroad.

EXPANSION ABROAD.

It has been said that we have too many mines in operation, as we appear to have too many miners, if we are to maintain only our present output. Rapid expansion in the development of industry in general may justify the existence of such mines and so large a corps of workers, even with an adequate car supply and more abundant local storage facilities, which are greatly needed in almost all places, and a more even demand. If, however, this should not be so, there is a foreign demand for the best of our bituminous coals, which at present we are altogether unable to meet for lack of credits on the part of those who wish the coal, and lack of ships to carry it. England's annual production has fallen 100,000,000 tons, according to Mr. Hoover, and the European demand next year will be more than 150,000,000 tons above her production. Whatever the world need, it can not be supplied. It is too large for any possible supply by ship, even if all necessary financial arrangements could be made, either by loan or credit. Europe, indeed, will sadly learn through this winter how little coal she can live on and how more than perilous is the state of a people who are short of power, light, and heat.

As this country prior to the war sold abroad no more than 4,500,000 tons as against England's 77,000,000, it is quite manifest that here will be a new field for American enterprise, the enterprise being needed not for the winning of markets as much as for finding ways of dealing with the larger phases of a heavy overseas trade with those who are without immediate resources.

SAVING COAL BY SAVING ELECTRICITY.

It is three years since Congress was urged that we should be empowered to make a study of the power possibilities of the congested industrial part of the Atlantic seaboard, with a view to developing not only the fact that there could be effected a great saving in power and a much larger actual use secured out of that now produced, but also that new supplies could be obtained both from running water and from the conversion of coal at the mines instead of after a long rail haul. A stream of power paralleling the Atlantic from Richmond to Boston, a main channel into which run many minor feeding streams and from which diverge an infinite number of small delivering lines—the whole an interlocking system that would take from the coal mine and the railroad a part of their present burden and insure the operation of street lights, street cars, elevators, and essential industries in the face of railroad delinquencies—this is the dream of our engineers, and a very possible dream it has seemed to me; of such value, indeed, that we might well spend a few thousand dollars in studying it, not with the thought that the Government would construct or operate even the trunk line, but that it might so attract the attention of the engineering and financial world as to make it a reality.

To tie together the separated power plants of 10 States so that one can give aid to the other, so that one can take the place of the other, so that all may join their power for good in any great drive that may be projected—this would be the prime purpose of the plan; and from this would evolve the development of the most practicable method of supplying this vast interdependent system with more power—perhaps from the conversion of coal, as it drops from the very tipple, using the mine as one might use a waterfall, or by the development of great hydroelectric plants on the many streams from the Androscoggin to the James.

WHITE COAL AND BLACK.