Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

The Royal Commissioners estimate that the North-American coal-fields contain an untouched coal area equal to seventy times the whole of ours. Further investigation is likely to increase rather than diminish this estimate. An important portion of this vast source of supply is well situated for shipment, and may be easily worked at little cost. Hitherto, the American coal-fields have been greatly neglected, partly on account of the temptations to agricultural occupation which are afforded by the vast area of the American continent, and partly by the barbarous barriers of American politics. Large amounts of capital which, under the social operation of the laws of natural selection, would have been devoted to the unfolding of the vast mineral resources of the United States, are still wastefully invested in the maintenance of protectively nursed and sickly imitation of English manufactures. When the political civilization of the United States become sufficiently advanced to establish a national free-trade policy, this perverted capital will flow into its natural channels, and the citizens of the States will be supplied with the more highly elaborated industrial products at a cheaper rate than at present, by obtaining them in exchange for their superabundant raw material from those European countries where population is overflowing the raw material supplies.

When this time arrives, and it may come with the characteristic suddenness of American changes, the question of American versus English coal in the English markets will reduce itself to one of horizontal versus vertical difficulties. If at some future period the average depth of the Newcastle coal-pits becomes 3000 feet greater than those of the pits near the coast of the Atlantic or American lakes, and if the horizontal difficulties of 3000 miles of distance are less than the vertical difficulties of 3000 feet of depth, then coals will be carried from America to Newcastle. They will reach London and the towns on the South Coast before this, that is, when the vertical difficulties at Newcastle plus those of horizontal traction from Newcastle to the south, exceed those of eastward traction across the Atlantic.

As the cost of carriage increases in a far smaller ratio than the open ocean distance, there is good reason for concluding that the day when London houses will be warmed by American coal is not very far distant. We, in England, who have outgrown the pernicious folly of “protecting native industry” will heartily welcome so desirable a consummation. It will render unnecessary any further inquiry into the existence of London “coal rings” or combinations for restricted output among colliers or their employers. If any morbid impediments to the free action of the coal trade do exist, the stimulating and purgative influence of foreign competition will rapidly restore the trade to a healthy condition.

The effect of such introduction of American coal will not be to perpetually lock up our deep coal nor even to stop our gradual progress towards it. We shall merely proceed downwards at a much slower rate, for in America, as with ourselves, the easily accessible coal will be first worked, and as that becomes exhausted, the deeper, more remote, thinner, and inferior will only remain to be worked at continually increasing cost. When both our own and foreign coal cost more than peat, or wood, or other fuel, then and therefore will coal become quite inaccessible to us, and this will probably be the case long before we are stopped by the physical obstacles of depth, density, or high temperature.

As this rise of value must of necessity be gradual, and as the superseding of British by foreign coal, as well as the final disuse of coal, will gradually converge from the circumference towards the centres of supply, from places distant from coal-pits to those close around them, we shall have ample warning and opportunity for preparing for the social changes that the loss of the raw material will enforce.

The above-quoted writer, in the “Edinburgh Review,” expresses in strong and unqualified terms an idea that is very prevalent in England and abroad: he says that, “The course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power is directed by coal. That wonderful mineral, of the possession of which Englishmen have thought so little but wasted so much, is the modern realization of the philosopher’s stone. This chemical result of primeval vegetation has been the means by its abundance of raising this country to an unprecedented height of prosperity, and its deficiency might have the effect of lowering it to slow decline.”

*** “It raises up one people and casts down another; it makes railways on land and paths on the sea. It founds cities, it rules nations, it changes the course of empires.”

The fallacy of these customary attributions of social potency to mere mineral matter is amply shown by facts that are previously stated by the reviewer himself. He tells us that “the coal-fields of China extend over an area of 400,000 square miles; and a good geologist, Baron Von Richthofen, has reported that he himself has found a coal-field in the province of Hunau covering an area of 21,700 square miles, which is nearly double our British coal area of 12,000 square miles. In the province of Shansi, the Baron discovered nearly 30,000 square miles of coal with unrivaled facilities for mining. But all these vast coal-fields, capable of supplying the whole world for some thousands of years to come, are lying unworked.”

If “the course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power” were directed by coal, then China, which possesses 33·3 times more of this directive force than Great Britain, and had so early a start in life, should be the supreme summit of the industrial world. If this solid hydrocarbon “raises up one people and casts down another,” the Chinaman should, be raised thirty-three times and three tenths higher than the Englishman; if it “makes railways on land and paths on the sea,” the Chinese railways should be 33·3 times longer than ours, and the tonnage of their mercantile marine 33·3 times greater.

Every addition to our knowledge of the mineral resources of other parts of the world carries us nearer and nearer to the conclusion that the old idea of the superlative abundance of the natural mineral resources of England is a delusion. We are gradually discovering that, with the one exception of tin-stone, we have but little if any more than an average supply of useful ores and mineral fuel. It is a curious fact, and one upon which we may profitably ponder, that the poorest and the worst iron ores that have ever been commercially reduced, are those of South Staffordshire and the Cleveland district, and these are the two greatest iron-making centres of the world. There are no ores of copper, zinc, tin, nickel, or silver in the neighborhood of Birmingham, nor any golden sands upon the banks of the Rea, yet this town is the hardware metropolis of the world, the fatherland of gilding and plating, and is rapidly becoming supreme in the highest art of gold and silver work.