190 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



clerical tones he rebuked the wickedness of thus wasting 

 the bounties of the Almighty. A general silence foil owed, 

 and a general sense of guilt prevailed among the revellers. 

 At the same time, and in the same room, a blazing fire, in 

 an ill-constructed open fire-place, was glaring reproachfully 

 at all the guests, but no one heeded the immeasurably 

 greater and utterly irreparable waste that was there pro- 

 ceeding. To every unit of heat that was fully utilized in 

 warming the room, there were eight or nine passing up the 

 chimney to waste their energies upon the senseless clouds 

 and boundless outer atmosphere. A large proportion of 

 the vicar's parishioners are colliers, in whose cottages huge 

 fires blaze most wastefully all day, and are left to burn all 

 night to save the trouble of re-lighting. The vicar dili- 

 gently visits these cottages, and freely admonishes where 

 he deems it necessary; yet he sees in this general waste of 

 coal no corresponding sinfulness to that of wasting bread. 

 Why is he so blind in one direction, while his moral vision 

 is so microscopic in the other? Why are nearly all Eng- 

 lishmen and Englishwomen as inconsistent as the vicar m 

 this respect? 



There are doubtless several combining reasons for this, 

 but I suspect that the principal one is the profound im- 

 pression which we have inherited from the experience and 

 traditions of the horrors of bread-famine. A score of 

 proverbs express the important practical truth that we 

 rarely appreciate any of our customary blessings until we 

 have' tasted the misery of losing them. Englishmen have 

 tasted the consequences of approximate exhaustion of the 

 national grain store, but have never been near to the ex- 

 haustion of the national supply of coal. 



I therefore maintain most seriously that we need a severe 

 coal famine, and if all the colliers of the United Kingdom 

 were to combine for a simultaneous winter strike of about 

 three or six months' duration, they might justly be re- 

 garded as unconscious patriotic martyrs, like soldiers slain 

 upon a battle-field. The evils of such a thorough famine 

 would be very sharp, and proportionally beneficent, but 

 only temporary; there would not be time enough for 

 manufacturing rivals to sink pits, and at once erect com- 



