232 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



national free-trade policy, this perverted capital will flow into its natu- 

 ral channels, and the citizens of the States will be supplied with the 

 more highly elaborated industrial products at a cheaper rate than at 

 present, by obtaining them in exchange for their superabundant raw 

 material from those European countries where population is over- 

 flowing the raw material supplies. 



When this time arrives, and it may come with the characteristic 

 suddenness of American changes, the question of American versus 

 English coal in the English markets will reduce itself to one of hori- 

 zontal versus vertical difficulties. If at some future period the aver- 

 age depth of the Newcastle coal-pits becomes 3000 feet greater than 

 those of the pits near the coast of the Atlantic or American lakes, 

 and if the horizontal difficulties of 3000 miles of distance are less 

 than the vertical difficulties of 3000 feet of depth, then coals will be 

 carried from America to Newcastle. They will reach London and the 

 towns on the South Coast before this that is, when the vertical diffi- 

 culties at Newcastle plus those of horizontal traction from Newcastle 

 to the south, exceed those of eastward traction across the Atlantic. 



As the cost of carriage increases in a far smaller ratio than the 

 open ocean distance, there is good reason for concluding that the day 

 when London houses will be warmed by American coal is not very 

 far distant. We, in England, who have outgrown the pernicious 

 folly of " protecting native industry," will heartily welcome so desir- 

 able a consummation. It will render unnecessary any further in- 

 quiry into the existence of London " coal rings" or combinations for 

 restricted output among colliers or their employers. If any morbid 

 impediments to the free action of the coal trade do exist, the stimu- 

 lating and purgative influence of foreign competition will rapidly 

 restore the trade to a healthy condition. 



The effect of such introduction of American coal will not be to per- 

 petually lock up our deep coal, nor even to stop our gradual progress 

 toward it. We shall merely proceed downward at a much slower 

 rate, for in America, as with ourselves, the easily accessible coal will 

 be first worked, and as that becomes exhausted, the deeper, more 

 remote, thinner, and inferior will only remain to be worked at con- 

 tinually increasing cost. When both our own and foreign coal cost 

 more than peat, or wood, or other fuel, then and therefore will coal 

 become quite inaccessible to us, and this will probably be the case 

 long before we are stopped by the physical obstacles of depth, den- 

 sity, or high temperature. 



As this rise of value must of necessity be gradual, and as the super- 

 seding of British by foreign coal, as well as the final disuse of coal, 

 will gradually converge from the circumference toward the centres of 

 supply, from places distant from coal-pits to those close around 

 them, we shall have ample warning and opportunity for preparing 

 for the social changes that the loss of the raw material will enforce. 



The above-quoted writer, in the Edinburgh Review, expresses in 

 strong and unqualified terms an idea that is very prevalent in Eng- 

 land and abroad : he says that " The course of manufacturing su- 

 premacy of wealth and power is directed by coal. That wonderful 

 mineral, of the possession of which Englishmen have thought so 

 little, but wasted so much, is the modern realization of the philoso- 

 pher's stone. This chemical result of primeval vegetation has been 

 the means by its abundance of raising this country to an unprece- 



