640 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



KEPORT OF THE ECONOMIC CEOI.OdlST 



By DR. ISAAC A. HARVEY 



In 1906, having noted in the newspapers some discussion and con- 

 troversy relative to the coal supply in the United States, I shortly 

 wrote to the Philadelphia Press an estiuiate of the entire amount of 

 coal in the several states of the Union, based on the latest reports 

 of the National Geological Survey, and such additional data as I 

 had acquired from other sources. 



The estimate of the entire area of coal in the United States as 

 published prior to 1906 was 270,000 square miles, and I ventured 

 to increase the same to 450,000 or 500,000 square miles by adding a 

 reasonable per cent, to the figures in the several states and terri- 

 tories, so that my final figures of the amount of coal were about 

 three trillion tons, which at the persent rate of production and con- 

 sumption and with allowances for a certain increase in demand, 

 proportionate to the years past, would last as long as the world 

 has been in existence according to the Mosaic records. 



Some time last year, Mr. Carpenter, the noted reporter and cor- 

 respondent of the Philadelphia Press interviewed Prof, Smith, now 

 Director of the United States Survey, and derived from him a com- 

 putation or general view of the coal in the United States and simi- 

 lar to my own figures as sent to the Press. His calculation was the 

 same in substance as mine and intimated that the body of coal 

 in the United States might last as long as the world has stood. I 

 admit that such a computation seems fabulous and unreal, but as 

 the several coal seams in forty or more of our counties in this State, 

 if laid flat as one workable seam, would more than cover the en- 

 tire State; so, also the various coal areas in the United States, if 

 arranged in the same position and as one good workable seam of 

 four feet or more in thickness, would very much more than cover 

 or equal the area of the entire nation and all its dependencies. 



Going to Arizona and Senora, Mexico, in 1889, for Mr. Dodge, 

 of New York, I made some examinations for copper and coal ami 

 with the data so obtained ventured the prediction, that, within ai 

 generation, Arizona would exceed Michigan in its product of cop- 

 per, being mostly found in low grade ores and yielding variously 

 from five to ten per cent, of this metal. This result has been realized! 

 as the records show. Prior to this trip, the coal in Arizona was con- 

 sidered an unknown quantity and no figures had ever been given 

 by the United States Survey, the several efforts at local development 

 on the Apache Reservation, and incidentally elsewkere, failing to- 

 afford any encouragement of workable deposits or smj satisfactory 

 guarantee that Arizona would ev6r show any available-; Ibasim for coal 

 p'peratiojas or proQuctioii tbaf: Tvo'uld justify develop m^gjt;. oij 'giving. 



