Some economists think that all this means that our production
is now chiefly for home consumption and cannot last. On the other hand, it is said—though the figures are too recent and too partial to be a sure guide—that new foreign markets are being captured which have a look of permanence. If the revival in a few of the heavy industries could spread throughout that class, the combination of revived staple trades and growing new trades should create in time such pros- perity as has not been known before. We cannot expect to recapture all the conditions of the heyday of the nineteenth century, when we exported coal all over the world loecause.it was the necessary source of industrial power. Other sources of energy—if not the best, at all events good enough—have been discovered abroad, and so far as we can see the real hope for the coal-mining industry is the application of science which will extract the by-products of coal. This, together with " rational,- ization," may give it new life.
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