TOPICS OF THE DAY
COAL, OIL AND SMOKE
Tr. pause for reflection which Mr. Baldwin most wisely secured after the publication of the Coal Report can be used in various ways. We propose to use it by discussing frankly some of the essential aspects of the problem, without, however, forgetting that the Report must without fail be used as the way of approach to a settlethent. It gives an opportunity which it would be disastrous to miss.
The essential trouble in the Coal Industry is the falling cif in the demand for coal. The extended use of elec- tricity, oil, coke, water power, and a hundred devices for economizing in the burning of coal, plus an epoch of trade depression, have combined to produce this diminution. . At the same time, we have artificially kept alive mines which ought to be dead, which ought to have yielded to the competition of new mines, working better and thicker seams with improved machinery. Can we wonder that in such circumstances the result is misery for a large number of the men and economic chaos for the industry itself ?
What is the remedy ? It is simple to describe, but it is, or seems to be, difficult to apply. increase the demand for coal. That accomplished, our difficulties and discontents would vanish. But how can it be accomplished ? By converting our coal into what is fast becoming the fuel of the age—oil. If we converted all our coal into oil at, or as near as possible to, the pit's mouth, as we already do partially in the case of gas or electricity, we should have solved our problem. To put it in a concrete form, by turning coal into oil, and using the British coal-oil instead of Mexican, or Persian, or Pennsylvanian petroleum, we should immensely increase the demand for coal, and so find that new market for which the mining industry is pining.
Apart from the benefit to the mines and miners, the results would be beneficial. (1) We should not be at the mercy of foreign producers for what is fast becoming a necessary in land and sea transportation—the thing we use to fire our liners, to drive our motor 'buses, to cook many of our dinners and to warm many of our rooms, the thing which either, burnt or exploded, is year by year invading a thousand new fields. Since we have at present only a tiny supply of home-made oil fuel, we may at any moment be held up by an overseas panic or a deliberate corner in oil. If the American motor public thought that its supply of cheap gasoline was in danger, they would not hesitate for a moment to forbid exportation.
(2) If we turned our coal into oil before we used it, we should find ourselves in possession of a cheap residual fuel which, though smokeless, would burn efficiently in our Open grates or furnaces, or, if pulverized, would prove an admirable raiser of power or heat. (3) Our skies and our land would be cleansed from the dirt, darkness and depression of smoke. Our working women would not have their hearts and their backs broken by a continual and ineffective effort to keep their' houses, their clothes, their sheets and blankets clean, and our householders would not see paint and metal being destroyed before 'their eyes by sulphurous deposits. The economic benefits they secured by refrain- ing from sending up our chimneys oil and other chemical products would be very great.
(4) The last point is perhaps the most important of all. The amount, we have to, spend in remedying the health of a population depressed and degraded by passing their lives under a darkened heaven, and without seeing more than occasional glimpses of sunshine and blue sky, is prodigious. Though we do, not know it, we are a nation of slow-poisoners.
Is all this a dream ? No. Then why is it not recog. nized by our rulers and why is not the remedy applied ?, Because they are frightened by economic experts who tell them that this turning of coal into oil, though it, may be chemically sound, is not a " commercial propo,; sition." It would be too costly ; the oil produced_ would' have either to be sold at above the cost of natural mineral oil, or be subsidized by Government. Therefore we, cannot cure but must endure the present evils of smoke pollution, dependence upon foreign supplies of oil, and a yearly diminishing demand for coal ! To this we answer that in our belief the turning of coal into oil by low temperature carbonization—the process which secures the maximum of oil and the best form of residual fuel— is so nearly a " commercial proposition " that it could be made one. If our producers were less timid, less conservative, and less unwilling to " scrap " obsolete plant and obsolete methods, mental and material, we should have low temperature carbonization plant springing up unassisted throughout our coalfields.
Let us assume, however, that the pessimists are right and that the turning of coal into oil is not a "commercial!
proposition," and that we can only get the change by some form of Government subsidy, in other words, by State expenditure. Then we say deliberately, let us face that expenditure. It will pay us to do so. We shall find our off-set in the diminution of our national washing bill, of our bill for decay in metals and buildings, and of our health bill, and in the increase in our happiness account. The expenditure would pay us over and over again in results.
To be specific, we would abolish the present system of motor taxation and substitute the much fairer system of a tax on petrol. Next, we would exempt from taxation all home-made forms of oil. The result would be :— (1) Encouragement to the production of coal-oil, and therefore assistance to the coal industry. (2) A con, siderable stimulus to the motor industry—men who now keep only one car because of the tax would very often keep two, for they would not thereby increase the burden of taxation. Again, many more men would keep cars for occasional and seasonal use if they did not feel, as now, that the car, though standing unused, was sweating taxes. (3) Meanwhile, under the shelter of the Petrol Tax, and still more through the suggestion of safety for the capital employed in carbonization (a Protective duty has a greater psychological than economic effect) we should, year by year and month by month, be increasing the demand for coal ; we should free our- selves from the desperate dilemma of either permanently turning off a quarter of a, million miners and closing hundreds of mines, accompanied by a menacing inflation of the " dole " and of Poor Law Relief and all the attendant evils, or else continuing a State subsidy of many millions directed, not to cure the evil, but to prop up a costly and inefficient system of using crude. coal, as a power and heat raiser. (4) Many allied industries would benefit by the home-production of oil,. but these we do not want to deal with at present. _ This is an insidious plea for Protection ? No ; it is no more Protection than the " dole " or the " subsidy," and owing to, the smoke and national safety problems it is a far better policy than that of the " dole" and the " subsidy." But we do not rely solely on that plea. Needs must when over-population, restricted immi- gration, and timid capital -drive as they: are driving at this moment.
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