82 THE CUAL QUESTION. 



present prices these deep pits would not pay for ordinary seams. 

 It is said that a pit over two thousand feet deep adds thirty per 

 sent, at once to the expenses. Before deep pits can be generally 

 sunk, prices must rise considerably. A rise in price exposes us 

 to be undersold if there is any country where coal is likely 

 to be cheap. We must therefore glance at the chief coal 

 producing countries. The merest rules .of ordinary prudence 

 compel this. 



It is by ]no means the case that England is the only coal 

 producing country in Europe. 



France has several detached fields, and raises about one-ninth 

 what we do in England; but the inland carriage is so high that 

 we undersell the French coal all along the coast. The fact' that 

 our coal fields are mostly on the sea-shore is one of the great 

 items in our favour. 



Belgium raises almost as. much; the price there is high — about 

 twenty shillings a ton at the pit's mouth; and of course it must 

 progress like our own. 



Frussia contains some very valuable fields; they are far richer 

 than [^any of our English fields as far as thickness of coal is 

 concerned, but most of it is so deep that it will never be 

 available. However, there seems to be about forty million tons 

 within reachable depths. 



Silesia contains a field which is said by geologists of reputation 

 to contain fifty million tons within depths that have been already 

 worked elsewhere, about one-third of the whole supply which the 

 Commissioners give for the United Kingdom: it will therefore 

 outlast all but our best coal-fields. 



The resources of Eussia are uncertain, but it is said that there 

 is coal over an area of twenty thousand square miles * The area 

 of our proved British coal-fields being a little over five thousand, 

 five hundred square miles. 



But it is when we turn to the United States, that we see, 

 perhaps, the coal-fields of the future. It is probable the main 

 coal and iron trade of the world must eventually be concentrated 



* Coal and coal-mining, by "W. W. Smyth, p. 86. 



