Political and commercial geology and the world's mineral resources

by Unknown

The policy of Great Britain, furnishing her petroleum and oil bunkering stations all over the world, and assuring her control of the seas, will further immensely increase her already extensive world domination.

The United States has no such program of imperial expansion, but she has her Monroe Doctrine, which is to a mild degree an assumed protectorate over the Western Hemisphere.

Coal.

—Next let us take up coal, among the most important of all minerals—source of power, light, and heat, and smelter of iron and other metals. Here again, as in oil, we find the United States wonderfully endowed by nature. She is credited with reserves of 3,527,000 million tons out of a total 7,909,000 million in the world, or practically half of the whole world’s supply. As the world’s coal reserves are large, the high-grade varieties, so situated as to have cheap transportation, are of most immediate importance. Great Britain has such coal close to seaboard, and so, until the war, controlled the export trade all over the world. The industries of America leave her little coal for export, and her coal is farther from seaboard. The efforts of Germany before the war to build up a coal-export trade were hindered by the long rail haul; and these deposits are now being handed over to France. Besides France, Great Britain, and the United States, only Canada, Australia, and China have sufficient reserves for extensive export trade. Of these countries, China is the one most likely to increase exports, on account of nearness to the coast, and good quality of coal.

Although the coals of the United States are not so close to the coast as in England, they not only constitute by far the largest reserves, as above stated, but are also most immediately available, owing to their shallow depth and the good railway transportation facilities.

No natural substance is so universally used, and so necessary to every individual, as coal, and hence every individual feels a natural right to it, and believes that it should be available at a minimum cost. This has resulted in several countries in the nationalization of the coal industry, as in parts of Chile, Bulgaria, Prussia, and Australia. In other countries, as in parts of the United States, the government retains the ownership of coal lands, leasing them to private operators. In England the present conditions point toward the nationalization of the coal industry. In France the coal lands belong to the government, which gives concessions for their operation, and receives a royalty or rental and a percentage of the net earnings of the operator.

Although the United States is pre-eminent among the world’s nationalities as regards coal, England has the advantage of having adequate supplies scattered all over the world, in her colonies of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Borneo.

Unlike petroleum, coal is a mineral which does not lend itself readily to control by commercial combination. The mining and marketing of coal is a simple matter, requiring relatively little skill or equipment, so that it is a business open to everybody; and the vast extent of coal lands assures a multitude of owners. Therefore the effect of the control of coal on the world’s commerce and history is almost entirely a matter of political control. Organization among producers exists in various countries, as in the case of the anthracite industry of the United States, but this does not as a rule extend to a central ownership, nor does it usually extend to foreign countries.

In coal, then, as well as in petroleum, we find the two dominating nations are the great Anglo-Saxon powers, England and the United States. The United States mines about 40 per cent., or two-fifths of the world’s annual production, while the British Isles have produced one-fifth of the production, making them second only to the United States. In neither case have the respective governments in the past attempted to control the mining and the sale of coal, but in England, at least, it is likely that some form of joint control, participated in by the government and the miners, will come.

The methods of mining necessary for maximum production of British coal mines during the war resulted in putting the mines in such poor condition that it will be a year or two before they can supply all of the former British export trade. The demands of British workmen for shorter hours (resulting in decreased production) will hinder still further a resumption of large exports. One of the important phases of this, to England and America alike, is the South American trade. England has always supplied this market, but the United States will probably do so for the present, and should take care to do so if she desires South American trade, and on the commercial theory of the Monroe Doctrine. Up till recently, the United States has exported by sea only about 4 per cent. of her production, whereas England sent out 25 per cent. Our own expanding industries have provided an ample market.