3^4 



The Review of Reviews. 



y hj:o,^farh .'vi \Ldtott ana Fry. 



Mr. Enoch Edwards, M.P. 



President of the Miners' Federation of 

 Great Britain. 



rkot^>!^>aph ty\ \L.N.A. P/iolt'griifh !'}■] [Elliott and J- ry. 



Sir Thomas Ratdiffe Ellis. Mr. D. A. Thomas. 



Secretary of Mining Association and Chairman of the Cambrian Combine of 



Federated Coalowners' Association. 



Coalouners. 



hv converted into gas at the bottom of the pit. Shafts 

 would be sunk to feed the fire which would convert 

 the coal into gas in situ. It is difficult to conceive 

 the l)urning of coal in the seam. It must still, I sup- 

 pose, be worked by hewers and fed to the gasworks at 

 the bottom of the pit. By this means the cost of 

 lifting and handling coal would be minimised. It is 

 douiitful whether the transfer of the gasworks from 

 the pit's mouth to the bottom of the pit would be 

 justified from an economical point of view. But that 

 coal will be converted into gas at the pit's mouth 

 there is little reason to doubt. This will revolutionise 

 the railways, which at present have to haul 250 

 million tons of coal per annum. They would still 

 handle the coals exported, but there would no longet 

 be any demand for coal wagons for home consumption. 

 The substitution of gas for coal w'ould be an immense 

 saving. Seventy-si,\ thousand tons of soot are said 

 to be thrown every year into the atmosphere of 

 London. A million and a half gas stoves are now in 

 use, and their number is likely to increase. London 

 in time may be as smokeless as Paris used to be when 

 .Mr. Gladstone, surveying the \'ille Lumiere from the 

 heights, lamented there was so little smoke. Gas can 

 be made from oil as well as from coal. At present 

 King Coal reigns supreme in the gasworks. But his 

 reign is threatened. In Newcastle, of all places in the 

 world, they are preparing to substitute oil for coal as 

 the source of their gas .supply. 



The most formidable engine for the destruction of 

 King Coal's sovereignty is the Diesel engine. 1 

 referred to the arrival of the Sclaiidia last month as 

 the little cloud no larger than a man's hand which 

 threatened with destruction the sovereignty of coal. 



Dr. Diesel wrote to me, pointing out that I took too 

 alarmist a view of the case. Her engine can be worked 

 efficiently with any kind of oil, and he predicts that 

 its general adoption will enable us to extract twice as 

 much power out of coal as we are able to evoke at 

 present. " I double the power product of the world," 

 says Dr. Diesel. This means that, instead of raising 

 267 million tons of coal per annum, we could generate 

 all the power w(j need liv raising 140 million tons. In 

 that case 50 per cent, .of the million miners who have 

 been holding up the country will find their occupation 

 gone. 



The Diesel engine, which promises to prolong the 

 life of our coalfields from 175 to 350 years, was first 

 built in 189S. It has since then been improved and 

 developed. Thousands of Diesel engines are now at 

 work all over the world. It is a motor engine which 

 is self-igniting. It can be worked with any kind of 

 oil except petrol. When all our coal is done, we can 

 work it with earth-nut oil, castor oil, blubber, or any 

 otIuT kind of oil. But Dr. Diesel thinks it will for 

 some time to come depend chiefly upon tar oils, or 

 oils extracted from coal tar. He told the London 

 Institute of Mechanical lingineers last month that 

 tar and tar oils are from three, to five times better 

 utilised in the Diesel engine thAn coal in the steam 

 engine. What will happen in the future, possibh- in 

 the near future, is that in place of the colliery village 

 inhabited by the miners, a small industrial town will 

 spring up roimd every pit mouth. The coal, instead 

 of being i>ut into trucks and carried all over the country, 

 will be at once converted into coke, gas, and coal tar. 

 Chemical works will spring up at the pit's moirth for 

 extracting the aniline dyes and other by-products 



