THE SECRET OF THE . COAL SITUATION BY ALFRED C. Bossom.
[Mr. Bossom, who is an Englishman, is one of the best-known architects in America, and is famous for his generous interest in public affairs.]
LABOUR, capital, middleman—not one of these is the- fundamental cause of England's coal situation. - It is coal itself !
With present methods, nationalization, subsidization, or control directly by mine-owners or workers would be equally unsatisfactory. The real trouble is coal ; and as this is one of England's main assets, and a great basis of employment, it behoves us to give it a little careful thought to it. During the last fifty years new fuels have come upon the world's markets and are rivalling coal. As coal superseded wocd, so have oil and water-power made inroads upon the colliery. Thus it must be recognized as practically final that certain once important coal markets have been -lost to Great Britain. This condition will continue to develop unless those interested in British coal at once set about a drastic though in no way un-. attainable readjustment of the industry.
Instead of uniting against the new fuels and sources of power Capital and Labour have fought each other. Each has tried to compel the other to change its economic policy. If the coal industry is ever to come into its own again it must make coal more desirable than it is now, As to wages, it is a question if it would not be desirable actually .to increase them, provided the ultimate cost of co al benefited by doing so. Labour must produce coal at less cost. This means greater concentration of effort by the actual miner, and the introduction of every bene- ficial mechanical mining contrivance that the ingenuity of man can devise.
To-day, in West Virginia, along the banks of the James. River, in the United States, mechanical mining is common, in many instances almost doing away with much of the riskiest and therefore the most expensive of mining operations. There are innumerable labour-saving and time-saving devices employed in the large operation mines of the States. Much of the anthracite in the Pennsylvania regions is mined by machinery, and of the 564,156,917 tons of bituminous mined in 1928 about 67 per cent. was dug by power machines. Anyone visiting the great hard coal mines near Scranton, Pennsylvania, or the soft coal regions of the Hocking Valley, in Ohio w ill see these mechanically operated appliances. Powerful drills worked by compressed air make the holes to receive the explosives ; the cars which bear away the " black diamonds " are electrically operated ; and the processes of sorting and washing are conducted by automatic con- trivances of all kinds. At the National Coal Association, in Washington, D.C., or at the expositions of mechanical appliances held in Huntington, West Virginia, may be seen appliances which are revelations to those accus- tomed to the old style hand-mining.
There was some opposition to labour-saving appliances in the States, but it was short-lived. It was a repetition.
of the famous condition prevailing at the time of the introduction of the cotton gin, when it was erroneously imagined that machinery would displace vast numbers of toilers, whereas it so developed the industry that within a short time it added materially to the number who gained their livelihood from cotton. Next, owners must draw to their aid all the improved methods of mechanical stoking, the higher combustion. furnaces, and the conversion of coal, perhaps at the mouth of the mine itself, into electricity. Such old-fashioned methods as carting coal in railway trucks often hundreds. of miles from mines to electric generating stations is obviously both wasteful and expensive in the extreme. The space occupied by lump coal is vastly more than that occupied by pulverized coal. The waste from coal used in its original mined form for stoking is infinitely more than in converted pulverized forms. For example, the railroad running out of Detroit, Michigan, under the control of Henry Ford, less than three years ago used to allow 112 tons for pulling its train of 78 freight cars to Napo- leon, Ohio. By improved methods of stoking the same work is now done with 41 tons. This example demonstrates that if English coal in the past was able to beat competition when following age-old methods, by improved processes approximately one-third of the material would achieve the same result. The fact is that those connected with this industry have largely stood still and injured themselves instead of all getting together to improve methods of production and teach the world at large new, better and cheaper methods of using English coal.
This lack of action has been capitalized by the oil pro- ducers and the exploiters of water-power. The far-seeing members of these newer groups have foreseen that the time must return when those vitally interested in coal would wake up. This was borne in upon me when I designed the twenty-nine storey headquarters for the Magnolia Petroleum Company, of Dallas, Texas, an oil company which grew from a corporation of $2,500,000 capital in 1910 to one to-day of $180,000,000 capital. It made its gigantic development out of the handling of oil and had its headquarters' skyscraper in the centre of the oil-producing country of Texas. It was decided to design the engine room of that mammoth building with a view to a time when coal or lignite (brown coal) would again become cheaper than oil. The engines or boilers in the building can be readily converted to the use of coal. Also finely pulverized coal can be combined with certain grades of oil and most beneficially used. This so-called colloidal fuel was employed with much success during the War.
If all these factors are carefully considered, the prospect for English coal is far more promising than it seems. But if the warning, is not heeded it will be only a matter of time before the present troubles of the industry will be as nothing to the calamities that will befall it.
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