COAL

When we begin to study the mineral resources of the country we pass to conditions altogether different from those which we have been considering. Heretofore we have been dealing with resources that can be renewed, the soil by proper management, the forests by replanting, the waters by nature’s own processes; but the fuels, the iron and many other mineral resources once used are gone for ever.

As to their importance Andrew Carnegie says: “Of all the world’s metals iron is in our day the most useful. The opening of the iron age marked the beginning of real industrial development. To-day the position of nations may almost be measured by its production and use. Iron and coal form the foundation of our prosperity. The value of each depends upon the amount and nearness of the other. In modern times the manufacturing and transportation industries rest upon them, and with sufficient land and a fertile soil, these determine the progress of any people.”

We are sometimes told that we need have no anxiety about the future, that new discoveries and inventions will take the place of the present fuels, and even substitutes for minerals will be devised long before the supply is exhausted. This may be true, and in a way the future must take care of itself, but until new inventions have actually been made it is criminal to waste present resources and blindly trust that time will make our folly appear good judgment and foresight.

We have vast mineral resources unused; the present generation, even its children and its children’s children need have no fear of a shortage. But in the use of those resources that are steadily and for ever diminishing we must look a long way into the future. We are under the most solemn obligation to take only our part of the store, and leave the rest untouched and unspoiled for those who are to come after us. When we consider what these mineral resources have done for our country in the last fifty years, when we realize that it is only by having cheap and abundant coal, iron, and copper that our railroads, our various electric systems, and our great manufactories have been developed, we can realize our duty to give the coming generations an equal opportunity to develop their ideas.

The yearly products of the mines of the United States are now valued at more than $2,000,000,000. Sixty-five car-loads of freight out of every hundred carried by our railroads are made up of mineral products. More than a million men are employed at the mines, and more than twice that number in handling and transporting mine products.

Of every one hundred tons of coal mined in the whole world, the United States produces forty-three tons. We supply forty-five tons out of every hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver, thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eight tons of the zinc, about fifty-five tons of the copper, and sixty-three tons of the petroleum consumed by all civilized countries.

This would be a cause for great national pride if we did not need also to consider the shameful fact that our wastes or losses in the mining, handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than $1,500,000 per day, or, for the year, the gigantic sum of $547,500,000. That is, more than one-fourth of the entire output is wasted!

Of all our minerals, the fuels which supply heat, light, and power for domestic and manufacturing purposes, are the most necessary and important. Other materials can not be manufactured without their aid. Almost every particular of modern life would be changed if we no longer had plenty of fuel. Its use means its immediate and complete destruction, which is true of no other resource, and the use of fuels is increasing and will increase so rapidly that their conservation is becoming a serious problem.

The principal fuels are coal, gas, oil, peat, alcohol, and wood, and of these, coal is at present by far the most important. The first record of coal mined in this country was in 1814, when twenty-two tons of anthracite, or hard coal, were mined in Pennsylvania. An increasing amount was mined each year, but until 1821 the production was less than five hundred tons per year. In 1822 the production advanced to nearly 60,000 tons, and since that time has increased by leaps and bounds.

During the seventy-five years from 1820 to 1895, nearly 4,000,000,000 tons were mined by methods so wasteful that 6,000,000,000 tons were destroyed or allowed to remain in the ground so that it could never be recovered. Within the next ten years as much was produced as in the entire seventy-five preceding years, and in this period 3,000,000,000 tons were destroyed or left in the ground beyond the reach of future use. Up to this time the actual amount of coal used has been over 7,500,000,000 tons; the waste 9,000,000,000 tons.

Experts estimate that in the beginning there were somewhere about 2,000,000,000,000 tons of available coal, so that we have now, with all our wastefulness, used less than two per cent. of our original inheritance. But we must remember that in the ten years closing with 1905, we used as much as during the entire history of our country up to that time, and the rate of consumption is still increasing. In 1907 the amount mined was about 450,000,000 tons. Counting on a continuance of the same rate of increase, in 1917 it will be 900,000,000 tons a year, and if the same conditions should continue for twenty years we should be using and wasting in one year as much as we have used in all our history up to the present time. By that time more than one-eighth of our original supply will be gone, and in less than two hundred years nearly all of it will have for ever disappeared.

That is a long time to look forward, but a short time in looking backward. It carries us back only to the childhood of Benjamin Franklin and others prominent in our early history; and if this nation could look forward to only an equal period of prosperous development in the future the time would seem short indeed.

But the danger of our coal supply becoming exhausted lies not so much in its present use as in the rapid increase in its consumption. Fifty years ago (about the time of the Civil War) we were using an amount equal to a little more than a quarter of a ton for every man, woman and child then in the country. Now the rate is five tons, or twenty times that amount, for each person of all our greatly increased population.

The Pittsburg Coal Company owns about one-seventh of the great Pennsylvania anthracite fields. From the amount it is now mining each year and judging from the amount of coal it is able, with present methods, to reclaim from an acre of coal land, the estimate is made that this Pittsburg field will be exhausted in ninety-three years. A like comparison of all the eastern fields indicates that by the beginning of the next century there will be practically no cheap fuel left in the entire Appalachian basin.

The Geological Survey reports that, taking into account the available coal which can be reached and mined by present methods, and supposing the present conditions of use, waste, and increase to continue, the coal supply will be exhausted by the year 2015 A. D., but taking into account the probable improvements in its use, the year 2027 A. D. is estimated as the time when the present coal fields will be exhausted, and the middle of that century as the time when all coal fields in the United States will be gone.

This true story well illustrates the need of conservation and the folly of careless waste. High in the hills of the Pittsburg region a thick bed of excellent coal was found by the early settlers. It was impossible for them to build roads up the steep cliffs, so some method of getting the coal down to the valleys had to be devised. Buffaloes roamed the western plains in countless millions, and were so abundant about Pittsburg that the supply seemed inexhaustible. So the pioneers killed the buffaloes, filled each skin with a few bushels of coal, sewed it up, and tumbled it down the mountain side.

This was the way they marketed their coal by destroying their buffaloes. For many years no one dreamed that there was any end to the supply of buffaloes. And so both east and west they were killed for their skins, which sold for a few cents, for their horns, for a supply of steak, or for mere sport; and then one day people woke up to find that the buffalo had disappeared, not in one settlement only, as they had supposed, but everywhere. There are a few remaining, carefully cared for by the government. They are among our most valued possessions, and yet only a few years ago they were destroyed, wasted, by millions.

This passing of the buffalo, the skins of which, as common then as burlap bags are now, were used to market our first coal, carries with it a deep lesson as to what will happen to the coal itself, even within the present century, unless our people awake to the consequence of what they are doing and make a determined effort to stop all unnecessary waste.

Let us see where and how these wastes occur. The first serious loss of our coal occurs at the mines. There are three great wastes in mining.

(1) A coal bed is not made up entirely of pure coal, especially if it be very thick. Sometimes there are layers of shale or clay, which makes a large amount of ash. This can never be sold as regular marketable coal; but it is rich in carbon, and much of it might be used if it could be marketed near the mines and sold as low-grade coal. In the past there has been almost no market for it, and if it were either in the roof or bottom of the coal bed, it has been left unmined. If mixed with pure coal, the low-grade coal was thrown into great heaps at the mouth of the mine. This refuse coal is called culm. The amount varies from one-tenth to one-half of the coal in nearly every coal bed, and would probably average one-fourth in all the mines of the country.

This material is rich in carbon, and when used in gas-engines will furnish more power than the best Pocahontas coal when steam-engines are used. Thus one-fourth of all our coal is wasted at the mines simply because steam-engines instead of gas-producer engines have been employed. If in the future installation of power this fact is taken into consideration, it will make the cost less to the user, and at the same time utilize a large proportion of our impure coal and save the higher grades for other purposes.

(2) In the mining of coal it was formerly the unfailing custom to leave supporting pillars of coal for the over-lying rocks to rest upon, to make suitable working-rooms, etc. These pillars, twelve to eighteen inches square, and higher than a man’s head, are scattered throughout the entire mines and are usually of the highest grade coal. In many mines, also, a roof of coal a foot or more in thickness must be left because the material above the coal is not solid enough to prevent cave-ins. When the mine is abandoned and closed these pillars and roofings remain untouched, because removing them constitutes one of the greatest dangers to life, and is one of the frequent causes of mine accidents. It is improbable that the coal thus left in abandoned mines will ever be reclaimed, because not enough is left to make it profitable at present prices to re-open the mines; and frequently the rocks cave in about these pillars and make the task almost impossible.

(3) By careless blasting an unnecessarily large amount of coal is blown into powder, the slack which has not been marketed at all until within the last few years. Much of this slack, which is the best grade of coal in a pulverized form, is left inside the mines. These wastes in abandoned roofing, pillars, and small-sized coal, together make a total which for all the mines in the country will average fully one-fourth more of the coal that is in the ground.

It is to be noted, however, that conditions are changing for the better. The most modern mines use fewer supporting pillars of coal, and these are of larger size, so that there is less danger of accidents. Wherever possible they use timbers of wood instead of these smaller pillars of coal. They also mine as near the top of the seam of coal as can be done safely, and so regulate the blasting that much less slack is made than by the heavy discharges. These changes in mining methods save a far larger proportion of coal, and also prevent many accidents, which are the most unfortunate feature of coal mining, and the one which should receive most careful consideration. (See chapter on Health.)

One large mining company in Kentucky raises its own timbers by planting trees in straight, close rows on its coal land, thus making the land produce its own mine timbers to conserve the coal below. This company claims to have lost but one life in ten years, and to save seventy-five per cent. of its coal. This is a striking illustration of what better mining methods will do for both the miner and the mine owner and of how forestry may be an aid to the conservation of coal and also of human life in the mines.

We have already shown how half of the coal is wasted, but there still remains another source of waste at the mines. This is a large but unknown quantity. Coal usually exists in beds or layers with shale or rock between, much as a “layer-cake” is made, the layers of cake being represented by the coal and the icing between by these “rock-partings,” as they are called. In rich fields, there are from three to ten of these rich layers or beds of coal, one above another. It often happens that the thickest and best layer is the lowest, and when this is the case, it is usually mined first, regardless of the fact that some, and possibly all, of the higher beds are dislocated and broken or filled with deadly gases. Nearly all this loss could be avoided by simply mining the upper stratum first.

So much for waste at the mines. This is serious enough if it were all, but it is not all, it is only the beginning. Let us see now what becomes of the coal that is marketed. The railroads are the largest single users of coal, and here we are confronted with the surprising statement that our locomotives consume three tons of coal in doing the same work that is performed by English locomotives with one ton. This difference is said to be due to different construction of the engines themselves, and to more careful stoking, or firing. Our locomotives use 100,000,000 tons per year, and by even the best methods known a large proportion of the heat units is wasted. Great effort should be made to improve the locomotives so that they will consume less coal; but as long as the railroad companies own the coal mines, as they do in many instances, they can obtain coal so cheaply that the cost of the improved form of engine is greater than the amount saved.

Another great use lies in the manufacture of coke, which is used in the making of steel, and here, too, we see where great wastes have existed. The old form of coke-oven was called the bee-hive on account of its shape. These old style ovens consume all the coal with the exception of the fixed carbon which is left behind as coke. At the prices which prevailed in 1907, the value of the by-products wasted in bee-hive coke-ovens was a little over $55,000,000 surely a loss worth considering. A different form of coke-ovens is much used abroad and is coming into use in this country. This is the retort or by-product oven, sometimes called the recovery oven.

The bee-hive ovens are usually located near the mines where the cost of coal is low, with small expense for transporting it. On the other hand, the by-product ovens are established near the larger cities in order to dispose of their gas and other by-products. Here the cost of transportation must be added to that of the coal, but the products are marketed near by instead of at a distance, as in the case of the bee-hive ovens. The most improved by-product ovens produce not only coke and gas, but coal-tar, pitch, ammonia, and creosoting oils, all extremely valuable and adding greatly to the value of the output of the ovens.

Electricity is another form of light and power which involves a large waste of the energy of coal; only one-fifth of one per cent., that is, one-five hundredth of the value of the coal is used in electricity, and there is at present no known remedy for this.

There are methods, however, of lessening even this waste, and these are constantly receiving more attention. One is for the electric plants located in cities to sell their exhaust steam or water heated by the coal as it is converted into electric power, as a by-product. The electric power-house thus becomes a central heating plant to supply stores, offices, and residences. Another system being tried abroad, though scarcely past the experimental stage in this country, establishes great electric power-houses at the coal mines to use the culm, low-grade slack, and lignites, the lowest form of coal, in short, all the waste of the mines. Still another plan is the manufacturing of electricity by water-power, as we have seen in a previous chapter.

The manufacturing industries of the country waste a large amount of fuel annually, but here the waste is mostly due to expensive methods of producing power, and to careless stoking, and is largely preventable. As we have shown, gas-engines are a far more economical form of producing power than are steam-engines. Steam uses from five to ten per cent. of the heat-units of coal, gas-producer engines use fifty per cent. and burn a lower grade of coal.

One of the great problems of cities is the heavy volume of bituminous or soft coal smoke that hangs over the entire surrounding region, levying a heavy tax in cleaning and laundry work, making the air difficult to breathe, and shutting out the daylight itself. Every residence adds its mite, but the factories and public buildings are the worst offenders. There are several good smoke-consuming devices on the market that have been thoroughly tested by the government, which will furnish their names on application.

If factory owners who use steam power could realize that the gases, the highest heat-producing part of the coal, escape with the smoke, and that by using smoke consumers they not only prevent all the evils of the smoke nuisance but save fully half of the value of their coal, they would gladly put in this equipment. What manufacturer would not eagerly welcome any device that would cut his fuel bills in half?

The other cause of waste of coal in the manufacturing industries is recklessness in the use of fuel, filling the furnaces with the drafts so disposed that much of the heat is wasted. Every factory owner should learn (from the government reports if he has no other means of learning) the best methods of firing furnaces, and should employ them in his factory.

The last great waste of coal is in households. In stoves and furnaces, and to a certain extent in kitchen ranges, this waste is through carelessness in firing, as it is in factories. There still remains a large amount of wasted energy in cooking that is unavoidable. The amount of coal consumed before certain articles can be cooked, the heat remaining after the meal is prepared, are wastes that it seems impossible to prevent, though wise management will prevent undue waste even here. Fireless cookers, an invention of recent years, go far toward solving the problem of waste by long hours of cooking single articles, and each year we see more prepared food bought in order to save the cost of heat. Housekeepers find that it does not pay to bake their bread themselves, since a dozen loaves can be baked in a large oven with the fuel used in baking one at home.

Briquettes are a new form of fuel made from coal, principally for household use. They are made from the low-grade coals, culm, slack and lignites, blended with coal-tar pitch. They are commonly used not only in households, but for locomotives and ships, in several European countries, especially Germany; but in this country the cost of making them about a dollar per ton makes the retail price higher than the cheaper grades of coal, and their general introduction at the price of the higher grades is rather slow.

Let it always be kept in mind that we must not check the careful use, only the waste, and the best way to avoid an unnecessary drain on the coal and at the same time increase our manufactures is to substitute other power. Coal is only a form of energy that came originally from the sun. The same causes that produced coal still exist. Scientists tell us that coal is still being made, but it will take thousands of years to perfect it. If we could only learn to take the sun’s heat directly and use it for our heat, light, and power, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world, greater even than the discovery of electricity.

Many attempts have been made to produce power directly from the sun through solar engines, or by concentrating it in furnaces. At the St. Louis Exposition a few years ago, a Portuguese priest exhibited a solar engine called a heliophore, in which, by means of the sun’s rays, the temperature was raised to 6000 degrees F., and a cube of iron placed in it melted like a snowball. The sun helps to raise the tides and some day they may be used to produce power. Many experiments are being made with both solar and tidal energy, some of them successful in a small way, but nothing that is ready to stand the test of every-day use has been devised.

Doctor Pritchell says that on a clear day when the sun is high, it delivers upon each acre of the earth’s surface exposed to its rays, the equal of 7,500 horse-power working continually. If the extra energy not needed for the growth of plants and animals could be used, all the work of the world could be done and the problem of fuel supply would be solved for ever.

But the greatest conservation of coal possible at present lies in the use of the water-power which now goes to waste, and which, if employed, would, as we have seen, give us 30,000,000 horse-power, or more than all that is now produced from fuel by all our engines combined.

Alabama offers a striking illustration of this failure to take advantage of our opportunities, for Alabama has both coal and water-power. Engineers estimate that the three principal rivers have power equal to 436,000 horse-power. At Muscle Shoals, on the Tennessee River, there is now developed 188,000 horse-power, second only to Niagara and if the waters were conserved, the figures would reach 1,084,000 horse-power on the three rivers. This means that, according to the amount of coal required to produce each horse-power of energy, it would require 11,201,000 tons of coal each year to produce by steam as much power as these streams might easily be made to produce.

Alabama, as we have said, is also a great coal state. It is now mining about 14,000,000 tons per year and only four states produce a larger amount. It will be seen that four tons out of five mined in this state will be needed to produce by steam the power that is going to waste in its rivers. The Honorable W. P. Lay, of the Alabama Conservation Commission, in calling attention to this fact, says:

“Suppose for a moment that the coal fields of Alabama were sliding down an incline and pouring off over a precipice at the rate of 11,201,000 tons per year, how long would it take the people of the United States to do something to try to stop such a waste? Yet what else are we doing when we sit idly by and let the water of these streams go to waste over a precipice while we ourselves burn up the coal?”

And what is true in Alabama is true to a lesser extent in most of the states. Wherever water-power is going to waste, coal is being used to take its place, and that coal is needed in some place where there is no water-power.

On a certain stream in one of the central states was a fine waterfall. The early settlers built a mill there. The water turned the mill-wheel and then passed on to water the valley and turn other mill-wheels. But one night the old mill was destroyed by fire. It was not rebuilt, but some distance from the stream a new steam mill was built, the motive power of which was natural gas. When, after a few years, the natural gas was all gone, the miller began to use coal, and he still uses coal hundreds of tons of it while the water which once turned the wheels, runs idly over the falls. This is an example of wholly useless waste of coal, and just such waste is to be found in hundreds of places in our country.

If wise mining methods be put into operation, if proper care be taken in its use, particularly in manufacturing, if the low-grade coals be utilized, and if other power be substituted wherever practicable, there need be no question of shortage. There is enough coal in the ground, if used rightly, to last for ages to come. But because we have wasted vast quantities of it in the past, and are still wasting it, so that if the same conditions continue we can distinctly see the end in sight, it is important that every one understands what these conditions of use and waste are, and how the abuse may be corrected, so that mine owners and consumers may all work together to preserve this most necessary resource.