48 Kansas Academy of Science. 



the production of coal in the United States was approximately 

 400 million tons. Of this amount 8 million tons actually did 

 some good; the rest was wasted, and wasted at an enormous 

 expense outside of the mere intrinsic value of the fuel. If we 

 figure the cost of mining and marketing coal at two dollars 

 per ton, the loss represented by the handling of 392 million 

 tons of wasted coal amounts to the tidy sum of 784 million 

 dollars, or almost enough to run the United States govern- 

 ment for a year. This is over and above the value of the coal. 

 The actual power value of the coal lost may be illustrated by 

 another example. Take a pound of coal — a lump, say, as large 

 as a man's fist. If all of the energy of the lump could be in- 

 stantaneously liberated the force would be sufficient to lift its 

 own weight about two thousand miles into the air. If the 

 490 million tons which are now nonproductive of useful work 

 could all be made available, it would produce 585 million horse- 

 power for a year, twenty-four hours a day. In other words, it 

 would produce all the power used in the United States for 

 twenty years at the present rate of consumption. 



For natural gas and petroleum, the other two great sources 

 of power, the showing would be somewhat better. 



Consider now all the loss of life at the mines and in trans- 

 portation, the cost and discomfort of polluting the atmosphere 

 and spoiling structures with smoke, and we begin to get some 

 conception of our enormous inefficiency in dealing with this 

 matter. Our future historian, commenting on the useless 

 waste of life and property in an era like the French Revolu- 

 tion, may have some uncomplimentary things to say about our 

 industrial revolution. 



After this discouraging statement of waste and inefficiency, 

 we can appreciate more fully the fact that real progress in 

 improving our methods has been made in the last quarter of a 

 century, and in the last decade the progress has amounted to 

 as much, perhaps, as in the whole previous period of develop- 

 ment. 



In the earlier designs of prime movers the efforts of in- 

 ventors were directed mainly to making the wheels go around — 

 no small task in itself — and the attendant waste of fuel was 

 looked upon as more or less unavoidable, or not considered at 

 all. The old wooden water mill wasted fifty times as much 

 water as it used, but it sawed the logs, ground the corn, and 



