No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 363 



ago; while the "A" bed, of the widest extent of all our seems and 

 20 times the acreage of the big Tittsburg seam has only been dis- 

 covered within the last few years to be a factor of more than in- 

 cidental value in this direction, where formerly the coal was thought 

 to be entirely useless. The estimate includes, also, some import- 

 ant areas not defined by our geological map, hurriedly constructed, 

 and this additional extent of coal very much enlarges the figures or 

 amount that might otherwise be suggested. I do not venture to 

 forecast how many generations or centuries this fuel will last, but 

 the rapid increase in demand and consumption and the waste and 

 loss by injudicious and defective mining methods, present some 

 startling and ominous figures, which I cannot set forth here. 



In the last three or four years, fully one hundred million tons of 

 coal have been wasted in this State, by incapable or irresponsible 

 mining and 1 ost in abandoned operations, where "haste makes 

 waste'' and where forty or fifty per cent, of the coal was left; while 

 half the same value has been consumed or gone up in the smoke of 

 tens of thousands of coke ovens, in the by-products, that, in some 

 measure, are utilized in Europe. The dictum of the autocrats of 

 the coal trade, to their subordinates, seems to be, "take the best 

 and leave the rest," and the territory thus abandoned is practically 

 condemned, as it were. Beds of coal three to five feet thick are 

 thus left intact and, as has been said to me, millions of acres of good 

 coal "get a black eye." 



Operators oftimes complain, when buying or leasing, "we cannot 

 recover or remove more than 2-3 or 3-5 of the actual amount of coal 

 in a given property," an assertion that has not the semblance of fact 

 or reason. It has been reduced to an absurdity by an exceptional 

 few operators with whom I have talked on this subject and who 

 are not evasive for a purpose; who say, also, that they can remove 

 and have removed, ninety per cent, of the actual contents of a given 

 acreage of coal. You garner a thousand or ten thousand bushels 

 of ggiin and are you not sure of getting nearly the same amount, 

 when you sell? The State has the prerogative and authority to 

 enact law's that will restrain this species of improvidence and van- 

 dalism; for such it is. A Frenchman once said that the United 

 States wastes and destroys enough food to feed France, and I might 

 add that the United States has wasted enough timber to build a 

 thousand cities and enough fuel, coal, w'ood, gas and oil, to warm 

 half the population of northern Europe. Timber can be restored 

 by nature and the native soil, and reforestation, with the arrest of 

 prodigality and greed is probable or certain and thereby will be re- 

 stored a vast range of water power to be utilized; while gas and oil 

 may be an indefinite or j)erenuial supply; no one knows. But coal 

 beds cannot be created or renewed by man's skill or genius, or re- 

 placed, in any sense, by an equivalent in fuel; being produced in 

 the long cycles of years, which will never again respond to nature's 

 behests, or obey man's demands; so that once depleted and gone, 

 we will be bereft. Almost as wasteful as the prodigal of the ancient 

 parable. The possibilities of rational, consistent and circumspect 

 business are entirely safe and progressive within a conservative lat- 

 titude; the probabilities of unrestrained and erratic business, with 

 its waste, avarice and improvidence, are dangerous. We of this 

 generation have not been invested with the singular privilege and 



