DIFFICULTIES OF FUEL CONTROL
Some conception of the difficulties involved in the work of fuel control was set forth officially in a paper published by the Fuel Administration called Fuel Problems in War Time. The production of coal, it pointed out, stands on a different basis from that of any other major industry of the country. The differences are illustrated in the following paragraphs:
"As an illustration, consider the cotton crop with its millions of bales. Every bale of cotton raised in the country last year amounted to no more than the coal moved in one and one-third days. Or take the wheat crop for comparison. We hear of the immense preparations made during the fall months for moving the wheat crop; yet the weight of America's enormous wheat crop of 1917 is equaled by the coal mined and transported every eight days.
"Every year the miners go into the ground and dig out coal and the railroads ship it for hundreds of miles, dragging back the empty cars, until the amount mined equals two and one-fourth times the earth and rock removed in digging the Panama Canal. It took sixteen years to dig the Panama Canal. Our miners will dig two and one-half Panama Canals this year.
"In the mining of coal we are dealing with a task so gigantic that the wonder is not why we have not increased production to meet the demand, whatever that might be, but how, with the men and equipment overtaxed by the multiplicity of the demands of the war, we were able to increase the output fifty million tons in 1917, and will be able to add a probable fifty million tons to that high record the present year.
"The wonder is increased when we note that every other coal-producing country now in the war found it impossible to maintain the pre-war production of coal. In every case the output is less now than before the war. In England seven and one-half per cent. less coal was produced the first year of the war than in the previous year and five per cent. less than this reduced output in the following year. America alone has been able to increase its production of coal in addition to meeting the thousands of other increases demanded by war preparation.
COAL AND THE STEEL SUPPLY
"As every one knows, coal mining is very largely a matter of coal transportation. The most difficult task involved in an increase must fall upon the railroads. The wonderful work these railroads are doing is brought into bold relief when we remember that in 1914, when the great war started, the output of bituminous coal in the United States was 423,000,000 tons, and that in 1918 it promises to be nearly 200,000,000 tons greater.
"Apparently, this country today can furnish the steel required if only it can get the necessary coal. The work of the Fuel Administration during many months has been directed toward increasing coal production. These efforts have borne much fruit, miners are approaching one hundred per cent. service, while the railroads are outdoing themselves expediting the movement of coal cars from the mine to the consumer and back again.
"But war's demands mount so rapidly that even with full speed ahead production can not make the pace. A fuel deficit can be averted only by the most intensive conservation. Conservation, economy, savings, sacrifice must fill the gap between the possible increase of production and the greater increase of demand. If every user of coal will join the army of fuel conservationists, realizing that the need for steel to carry on this war is practically unlimited and that every ton saved means an additional five hundred pounds of steel, there is prospect—the figures show it—that the work of the miners will not be in vain. Our increased production, plus conservation, the Fuel Administration believes, can furnish the coal, and hence the steel needed for the war, and still leave none of our people cold."