THE SMOKELESS CITY.
MR. SIMON, Lord Mayor of Manchester and a member of the Departmental Committee on Smoke Abate- ment, and Miss Marion Fitzgerald, formerly Sanitary Inspector and Health Visitor to the Woolwich Borough Council, have — under the blessing of Lord Newton, who contributes an important preface — put together a short, simple, but very impressive book on The Smokeless City." (The Smokeless Oily. Longmans. Is. 6d. net.) We commend it to all who want to understand our prime hygienic problem—the smoke problem.
The subject is one which has been followed closely in these columns for many years, but we never remember to have seen an account of our national idiocy in the matter of the pollution of the air by smoke better put, nor the true remedy more forcibly and plainly indicated. At present, we not only pollute our atmosphere, but destroy a great many valuable fabrics, and cause an enormous waste in washing and cleansing and in effacing the dreadful deposit of soot with which we deliberately smother ourselves, our buildings, our flowers, and our grass. In Manchester alone the extra cost of washing collars is calculated at sonic £50,000 a year, and probably a great deal more, while the total loss incurred every year in Manchester by coal smoke is estimated, and the estimate is not a fancy one, as at least a million pounds sterling a year. This takes no account of the extra labour involved, in working- class households, in contending against the black battalions of the air. The loss there cannot very well be calculated in pounds, shillings and pence. All the same it exists, and is a very real loss on the economic side. But apart from that, consider what it means that in a single city a million sterling is actually paid -put in extra washing, cleaning and renewals of things destroyed by the smoky atmosphere. With such facts before one, the first question to ask is : " Is this expenditure preventible ? " " Yes, it is." If the further question is put : " Why, then, is it not prevented ? " the answer must be : " Because mankind- is incurably idle, or, to use a milder word, conservative, and does not make reforms until it is absolutely driven to them."
So much for the preliminaries. Now for the remedies.
The true, or rather the least injurious and expensive, remedy is to use coal from which the most deleterious, i.e., the smoky, elements have been abstracted. Everyone knows such a form of fuel under the name of coke. If we burn coke, we make very little smoke and comparatively little dirt in the house. But in coke the remedy has been carried a little too far. Coke is difficult to light and diffi- cult to keep alight. It is a very potent remedy, it is a remedy which would be the better for being less drastic. Happily there is no necessity to use a fuel from which the readiness of combustion, the flare qualities, have been abstracted. Coalite, to give it its trade name—that is, coal which has been treated by the low temperature system of carboniza- tion, i.e., glorified coke—affords us exactly the solution we require. Such glorified coke is not only smokeless, but it is easily lit. It keeps in easily, gives out a pleasant glow as well as heat, and it is not dirty. One of the great advantages of the solution by coalite or glorified coke is that it requires no expensive constructional revolution in existing houses. Low temperature coke will burn in any ordinary grate, in any kitchen range, or on any open hearth. In a word, it has all the advantages of coal and none of its disadvantages. But though it has no hygienic disadvantage it has an economic drawback. It is at present a good deal more expensive than ordinary coal. Therefore, the ordinary individual will not use it. Pressed by economic troubles, he argues : " I would rather have my house dirty, and even the heaven above me dirty, than have less to spend on the other things I need." It is no use to point out to him that he is penny wise and pound foolish, because, though he will spend a little more on his fuel, he will spend so much less on his washing, so much less on house decoration, and so much less on cleaning labour. To all that he answers : " Such savings might pay all right if everyone would play the game, but I am sure they won't. I shall be put to a great deal of expense personally, and yet, owing to my neighbours' smoky fira, have to do almost as much cleaning as before." We arc, therefore, at a deadlock.° It would pay us as .a community very well to use semi-coked coal ; but it would not pay us as individuals unless in some way or another we could all be be forced to use the more expensive smokeless fuel. Therefore, unless some scheme can be devised to reconcile the personal and the communal interests of the consumer, we shall go on polluting the atmosphere, and, what is even more, inefficiently go on sending up our chim- neys a great many very valuable materials—materials which, if detached from the coal and preserved for other purposes under the low temperature system of carboniza- tion, would supply us with a whole sheaf of " utilities."
The plan that we propose is not to prohibit the use of smoky coal, nor to make people alter their grates, nor to have any legislation of a violent kind. All we would do is to put a fairly high tax upon all bituminous coal from which the smoky elements had not been with- drawn. The result of this would be that, though people who were idle might still go on using raw and smoky coal, it Would become much more expensive for them to do so than to burn coalite or semi-coked coal. There would be nothing unfair in this. The State would in effect say to the householder : " By using smoky coal you will put us, the municipality, and your neighbours to a very great expense in the way of washing and cleansing and renewing things destroyed by sulphurous fumes. Still, it is a free country, and we shall not forbid this. We shall merely say that if you persist in polluting the air you must pay for the privilege—i.e., make good the injury you are doing to your neighbours by paying a special tax." The result would, of course, very soon be that the semi- coked coal would beat the raw coal out of the market. When people found it paid not to pollute the air with smoke they would cease to do so. The game would not be worth the candle, or rather the smoke ! But we feel confident that, though this sounds like an imposition of a slight extra expense upon the already burdened rate- payer, it would not be so for very long. If encouragement were thus given to companies to lay down plant for low tem- perature carbonization, it would very soon be found that coalite could be produced at raw coal rates owing to the value of the by-products. Such products include benzol or other forms of inflammable motor spirit which can be used for light or power. It has been calculated, indeed, that if all the bituminous coal in the country were semi- coked before use as fuel, there would be enough motor spirit available to drive all the cars in the country. In a word, by giving up polluting the air, we should become independent of foreign sources of supply in the matter of petrol—a very important matter for the future, if not., indeed, for the present.
To put it in another way, every day we pollute the atmosphere with oily smoke which, if properly treated, might be worth many millions as a motive force. Beyond this, we should get an excellent fuel for cooking, and even for house heating, in places where gas stoves and gas heaters are not available. The by-products would keep our home oil stoves burning. Oil stoves such as the " Valor Perfection " can now be used with great economy and great efficiency in country houses. The present writer knows a house where a " Valor Perfection Stove " with four burners is doing all the cooking necessary for a household of sixteen or seventeen people, and doing it far better than did the former dirty and expensive kitchen range—not an ancient or pre-Adamite kitchen range, but one of the newest and most scientific varieties.
By extracting our mineral and combustible oils from coal, we should not only be helping to get further supplies for driving our motor-cars and other engines, but also material for warming our houses and cooking our food. In other words, by shepherding people into the use of the low temperature system of carbonization we should effect a very large yearly saving in money and energy. Miss Marion Fitzgerald and Mr. Simon calculate, indeed, that the loss to the nation by burning raw coal is something between twenty and thirty millions a year. In addition to this we must add the amount caused. by extra washing and cleaning. If that in Manchester is one million a year, it may very well be put at forty millions sterling through- out the United Kingdom. Then, as we have said, there is the loss in household labour, which is probably as great. So if we put the total loss caused by using raw coal' at one hundred millions a year we shall be well within the mark. But the extra cost which would have to be incurred by turning bituminous coal into different forms of coalite, or glorified coke, would, we feel sure, be far less than this.
Let us turn from these rather abstract calculations to the more practical side of the question. We believe that, owing to the dearness of domestic labour, we shall find that in ten or twelve years from now the normal town house will be entirely run by gas or electric fires, except, say, for one grate, in which coalite or wood will be burnt. In houses in the country where no gas is available, cooking and a good deal of the warming will be done by oil stoves. But, again, there will be one, or perhaps two, luxury fires of wood or coalite. The actual fuel bill will probably be higher than it is now, though not very much ; but the reduction in the service bill will be very large. The house with only one open fire and a kitchen run on oil will require a great deal less domestic service than the present house. Again, domestic service run on these conditions will be distinctly more popular. Carrying about coal scuttles and going down on your knees to light fires is not a thing which per se attracts the adolescent female or male.
There will be yet another saving caused by refusing to use raw coal and depending instead on gis and oil. Houses with only one, or at most two, chimneys, and those not kitchen chimneys equipped with expensive ranges, will cost a good deal less to build. A plain room with a big oil stove makes an excellent servants' hall and kitchen combined. In a rural working-man's house the oil- stove goes far to solve the old problem of whether there should be a parlour as well as a kitchen.
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