THE COAL aUESTION. 83 



there. The area of the United States fields is about thirty-five 

 times that of Great Britain. In the Pennsylvanian field, one 

 seam from eight to fourteen feet thick is traced over fourteen 

 thousand square miles. The great thing in favour of the United 

 States fields, is the regularity and horizontality of the beds. Sir 

 C. Lyell has described how the seams may be seen cropping out 

 along the banks of the Ohio perfectly level for miles. On the 

 other hand, the great price of labour in that country prevents 

 their being worked, so that now English coal competes with 

 American successfully along their sea board — until their coal-fields 

 have been better proved, until it is shown that the thickness of 

 coal vertically is at all commensurate with the enormous area of 

 the measures, it may possibly turn out that the price will never 

 be so low as some would have us believe. Eut from all 

 appearances it seems that it will never pay English capital to be 

 exerting itself on mines over two thousand feet deep, when there 

 are such vast stores nearer to the surface in America. However, 

 the growth of population in America, and the cheapening of the 

 labour there, is what is essential before the American coal can 

 compete with ours for the present. 



If we turn to the E,eport of the Coal Commission, we find little 

 or no information on the subject, they ignore the subject of foreign 

 competition; failing to entertain a very important half of the 

 question, they really afl'ord us very little means of judging how 

 long our supremacy in coal may last. 



Thus they fail to meet Prof. Jevons' argument almost entirely. 

 They show, (supposing no competition of a cheaper coal interferes,) 

 that we have enough coal to last a very long time. But this is 

 to take for granted almost the very ^ point on which we have 

 misgivings. They give us three alternatives for the duration of 

 our coal. 



The first is framed on the relation of population to coal 

 consumption. The consumption of coal per head of population 

 increases every year, but according to the Commissioners it is a 

 diminishing rate of increase; they also calculate that though the 

 population increases annually it is also at a diminishing rate. On 



