CARBON—-LITTLE 249 
boiler plant is a good index of its efficiency of operation. It varies 
from 5 per cent in small inefficient plants to 15 per cent or more in 
large plants operated at high efficiency. Under such conditions there 
is a saving of 60 per cent in the fuel cost of heat energy in the large 
plant. This and similar considerations constitute the argument for 
superpower systems. 
In its consideration of the fuel problem the general public is 
chiefly influenced by two factors—the cost of fuel and the smoke 
nuisance. The exasperations due to both are doubtless familiar to 
all. Within a few weeks anthracite, in small lots, has sold in New 
York for as much as $48 a ton, while for years many of our cities 
have been immersed in a Stygian atmosphere, depressing as viewed, 
unhealthful when breathed, and defiling to all with which it comes 
in contact. In Pittsburgh the soot deposit per square mile varies, 
according to the Mellon Institute, from 600 to 2,000 tons per year. 
One jumps to the conclusion that this is wholly due to outpour- 
ings from industrial plants, but in Chicago it was found that 57 
per cent of the nuisance was caused by domestic fires and the fur- 
naces in apartment houses. 
There have been many proposals for the relief of these deplor- 
able. conditions, and those that are of promise involve the initial 
processing of coal with the recovery of by-products and delivery to 
the consumer of a smokeless fuel, which may be coke or gas or an 
artificial anthracite. The whole fuel situation is, in fact, in a 
state of flux, and revolutionary developments are impending. 
Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the gas industry. 
GAS 
Gas has been well described as cleanly, smokeless, sootless, dust- 
less, ashless, instantaneous, flexible, controllable. It is in all these 
respects an ideal fuel as millions of householders and thousands of 
industrialists in the districts fortunate in the possession of natural 
gas well know. Gas as fuel possesses form value—the ability to 
serve—in very high degree. It is, therefore, not surprising that its 
development has been consistent and progressive since William Mur- 
dock first lighted his Redruth home by gas in 1779. The first gas 
company in the United States was organized in 1816 to light the 
streets of Baltimore, but within the last five years the use of gas 
in Baltimore has been greater than in the preceding century. In 
the country as a whole the production of manufactured gas has 
doubled within the last ten years, and to-day the invested capital 
in the gas industry approximates $4,000,000,000 and its annual 
production exceeds 400,000,000,000 cubic feet. Imposing as these 
figures are, the industrial use of gas has just begun, and the in- 
