SIDE ISSUES OF FUEL CONTROL
Economizing coal involved all kinds of unexpected side issues. As an illustration of the far extended reach of the Fuel Administration there was the example of the skip-stop plan in street railway traffic enforced by the Federal administration. A writer in the Chicago Engineering and Contracting Journal suggested, September 4, 1918, that the Government should adopt and extend the policy of compelling individuals and corporations to use economic methods and machines:
"Conceive, if you can, what could be accomplished in America in the way of increased productivity and economy if our Federal Government had the authority to make every individual and every company adopt any method or device that had been proved to be economic. No engineer acquainted with the application of the principles of the science of management can doubt that if the universal adoption of those principles could be forced upon producers in general, this nation could increase its productivity fully 25 per cent. That would alone add more than twelve million dollars annually to the national income. But that is not all. The application of the principles of the science of management is only a fraction of the total enginery at our disposal. We have literally countless labor and material-saving machines and appliances that are scarcely used, although many of them are generations old. Does this sound incredible? Certainly not to any engineer who has a wide acquaintance with the literature of engineering.
"Take so simple a thing as the heat insulator for steam pipes and boilers. It has been known to engineers for nearly a century that by encasing boilers and pipes with magnesia or other suitable insulators, practically all heat radiation and conduction losses could be stopped. Furthermore, it has been known to engineers that the saving in fuel thus effected would pay an annual interest of 20 per cent. on the cost of the heat insulator. But go into the basements of steam-heated residences if you want to get a conception of how rarely this knowledge is applied. The landlord may know that heat insulators would earn a big return on their cost, but since they would earn it for the tenant and not for himself, he does not cover the boiler and pipes adequately, if at all. The tenant, even if he knows the economics of heat insulating, will not spend the money for insulators whose use he may not enjoy for more than a year or two before he moves out. For similar reasons very few houses have double windows, although double windows will save fully 15 per cent. of the fuel required to heat the average house. On these matters the Fuel Administration has power to act, and it should act."
FUEL CONTROL IN GREAT BRITAIN
Coal mining was always one of the most significant elements in British trade. Before the war 270,000,000 tons of coal were produced in the mines of Great Britain. Parliamentary legislation of a most radical character dealing with the ownership and operation of coal mines was passed. The main provision of this legislation was described in the following passage from the London Morning Post:
"Briefly, the main provisions of the bill are the following: Under the present Finance Act the state takes 80 per cent. of the profits in excess of those made in the two best of the last three pre-war years, or above 9 per cent. of the capital employed. The new scheme deprives owners of these statutory rights. It does away altogether with the percentage standard. Output is made the chief determining factor in the regulation of the profits to be retained by the coal owner. The production of a colliery working under normal conditions during the two pre-war years, which has already been adopted under the Finance Act for the purposes of the Excess Profits Duty, is adopted as the standard output. If that output is maintained in any accounting period under the new bill, the colliery owner will be guaranteed a profit equal to the average profit made in the standard period, whether he makes it or not. If his trading profits in the accounting period are greater than those in the standard period, the treasury will take its 80 per cent. of the difference under the authority of the Finance Act, the Controller will retain 15 per cent. of it in order to create a fund for the compensation of the less fortunate collieries and the administration of his department, and the coal owner will be allowed to retain 5 per cent. of the excess. Thus a colliery company with a profits standard of £50,000 will, if it maintain its standard output, continue to receive £50,000; if such company make, say, £70,000, it will be permitted, generally speaking, to retain only 5 per cent. of the extra £20,000, that is to say, £1,000, plus the statutory £200, or £51,200 in all; but in no case shall the retainable profits exceed five-sixths of the profits standard. In that illustration the scheme is to be seen at its best, and, under the conditions, it is not unreasonable."
Photo by P. Thompso
Drying Fruit and Vegetables to Save Tin and Glass