216 REPORT — 1875. 



On tlie Progress of the Coal Question. 

 By Professor W. Stanley Jetons, F.E.S. 



The purpose of this paper is to conipcare statistical facts concerning the recent 

 progress of the output of coal with various predictions and theories which had 

 been published on the subject in the previous fifteen years. The quantity of coal 

 raised in the United Tiingdom in the year 1873 amounted to the enormous weight 

 of 127,000,000 tons, according to the mineral statistics of Mr. Hunt. Professor 

 Hull, in his valuable work on the English Coal-fields, had questioned the power of 

 the coal-fields to admit of a much greater drain in any one year than 100,000,003 

 tons, at which rate he believed the supply would be suflicient for eight centuries. 

 Facts now entu-ely negative the hypothesis of anj' such fixed limit. 



Sir W. Armstrong, in his Presidential Address of 1863, put forward his cele- 

 brated calculation, that the produce of coal was advancing by a uniform arithmetic 

 annual addition of 2^ millions of tons, at which rate the coal in the country, as 

 then estimated, would last only 212 years. According to this law of increase the 

 produce in 1873 ou^ht to be 119 millions, which is 8 millions h-ss than the truth, 

 the increase in the interval being at least 41 millions, instead of 33 millions, as it 

 would be according to Sir W. Armstrong's method of calculation. The annual 

 average addition to the output is now nearly 3^ millions of tons, instead of 2f mil- 

 lions ; but the true law cannot really be that of arithmetic increase, which^ if 

 followed backwards, would lead us to zero about the year 1830. 



The true law of increase is that of a geometrical series, with the average annual 

 ratio of 31 per cent. According to this law, as described in the ' Coal Question' 

 in 1865 (1st ed. p. 213, 2ud ed. p. 240), it was calculated that the produce of 

 coal in 1871 would be about 117-9 millions. According to JSL-. Hunt s statistics 

 it proved to be actually 117,352,028 tons. Ou the same "method of calculation the 

 produce of 1873 would be about 126-3 millions ; and the actual quantity raised, as 

 already stated, exceeds this by about 700,000 tons. In spite of the extraordinary 

 rise of price of coal in the years 1872 and 1873, the law of geometric increase is 

 thus remarkably verified. 



In the Report of the Royal Commission on Coal some calculations of Mr. Price 

 Williams are put forward, in which the average consumption (apart fi-om expor- 

 tation) of coal per head of the population is assumed as rising from 3-9636 tons in 

 1871, to 4-4200 tons in 1881, 4-5786 tons in 1891, and so on, to a maximum of 

 4-6526 tons in 1941. But, according to this method, the consumption (not includ- 

 ing coals exported) of the year 1873 would be nearly millions less than the 

 truth. Mr. Price Williams believed that the rate of increase of consumption of 

 coal per head had passed its maximum, and was declining, whereas the most recent 

 statistics show that between 1869 and 1873 the advance was more than double 

 that in the interval 1805-69. The whole theory of Mv. Williams rested upon 

 the assumption that there was a continuous decease in the rate of increase of the 

 population, whereas his own tables showed that this increase was, in the last 

 decade (1861-71), 11-736 per cent, compared with 11-197 per cent., that of the 

 decade 1851-1861. 



It is further pointed out that the remarks of the Commissioners upon the " Coal 

 Question " proceed from an entire misapprehension of the arguments given in that 

 book. No one asserted that the production of coal in Great Britain ever would 

 rise to the higher quantities given by the geometric law of increase. The true 

 conclusion drawn was, " that 2cc cannot hmc/ maintain our jiresenf rate of increase of 

 consumption ; that %oe can riever advance to the hir/Jier amounts of consumjition sup- 

 posed. But this onlij means that the check to our prof/ress must become 2>ercej)tible 

 within a century from the present time." 



In the year 1872 the price of coal rose in many places to a height two or three 

 times its previous highest amount. This rise was in some respects exceptional, but 

 was mainly due to tlie increased demand which, in spite of the enormous price, 

 advanced 5 per cent, per annum. The great increase in the number of collieries 

 produced by the extraordinary demand, will no doubt render the price more mode- 

 rate for some time to come ; but the coal famine of the years 1872-73 may be 

 regarded as the first twinge of the scarcity which must come, and it has taught us 

 that coal has now become the first necessary of life in this kingdom. 



