LOW TEMPERATURE DISTILLATION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sus,—My name has been mentioned in the controversy that is being carried on in your columns between Mr. M. F. Bernhard and " Managing Director," and I should very much like to know to what process Mr. Bernhard refers by the name of " Low Temperature Distillation." It is all very well for Mr. Bernhard to claim that the Government ought to have spent £20,000,000 on the " reconstruction of the Coal Industry" by means of the erection of distillation plants—but suppose they did not turn out, when erected, to be a commercial proposition I We know a good deal about Low Temperature Carbonization and have the authority of the Secretary for Mines for saying that it has not yet reached the commercial stage. Will Mr. Bernhard adduce evidence in support of his statement that Low Temperature Distillation has done so ? Where are the plants in operation on a commercial scale ? Where is the balance-sheet of expenditure and receipts ?
Mr. Bernhard implies that the coal trade is not properly _tun. That is a statement which it is easy to make, but which
will not be perhaps so easy to prove before the Royal Com- mission. But what right has he to add the further implication that the Ministry of Mines concurs in this expression of opinion? He also implies that the colliery owners as a body have been lacking in initiative in not erecting Low-Temperature plants all over the country. I have the authority of the Mining Association for saying that, much as they would welcome any system of treating coal that would produce, on a com- mercial scale, the results claimed for the Low Temperature Carbonization processes that have been brought to their notice, and hopeful as they are that something may yet come of them, the colliery owners are of opinion and are so advised by their technical experts, that these claims are mostly " non proven." One or two processes are in a separate category and are receiving special consideration. Nevertheless, if Mr. Bernhard will make some little research into the history of these processes, he will find that there is generally a colliery owner concerned in them—very possibly because the particular process suits his own class of coal.
Will Mr. Bernhard now support his bald statement with
evidence ?—I am, Sir, &c., PHILIP GEE. 40 King Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 2.
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