THE COAL QrESTION. 8l 



there is something as importact as the amount of coal for future 

 supply, and that is the price at which coal can continue to be 

 offered. We must therefore glance at the causes on which price 

 may be imagined to depend. We may put these under the heads 

 of annual requirements and foreign competition. Professor 

 Jevous argues that so long as our prosperity holds, our population 

 must continue to increase, and every increase of population 

 necessitates a multiplied increase in the consumption of coal ; the 

 large consumption of coal necessitates deepening the mines ; this 

 largely increases the expense of the coal, and hence of all costs 

 of living in this country. From that follows increased emigration 

 to America. I^ow the coal of America is so vastly beyond ours 

 in amount, and so near the surface and so easily worked, that 

 when the population is a little thicker there, it will probably 

 undersell our coal, and the bulk of the iron and coal trade must 

 go over to America, he argues, and with it finally our population. 

 "What we have possibly to look forward to then, according to 

 him, is for some time a continued increasing prosperity of our 

 country, with increasing trade and increasing consumption of 

 coal; but subsequently such a rate of prices as will be prohibitive 

 against raising our deeper supplies, while capital and labour will 

 take themselves off to the larger and cheaper stores of coal 

 elsewhere. 



I hold Professor Jevons' argument unanswerable so far, that 

 continued prosperity entails a constant increase of population; an 

 increasing population requires increasing amounts of corn for 

 food; this corn has to be brought from foreign countries, and is 

 paid for by the manufactured goods, — iron and other staples of 

 our trade; all these depend upon and mean increased coal 

 consumption, besides the increased domestic demand for an 

 increasing population. 



It is well known that many of the best seams are getting 

 worked out over the areas of less than two thousand feet deep ; 

 yet the deepest coal mine in England is only two thousand four 

 hundred and forty-five feet : it was sunk to win a seam of special 

 fine quality, which bears a fancy price in the market. With the 



Q 



