PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, 539 
We gather, then, that the estimates formed in 1898 are in the main correct, 
and the wheat problem must become one of urgency at no distant date, 
although actual shortage of food is a long way oif. What is of more imme- 
diate significance to the geographer is the element of change, of return to 
earlier conditions, which is emerging even at the present time. If we admit, 
as I think we must do, that the days of increase of extensive farming on new 
land are drawing to a close, then we admit that the assignment of special 
areas for the production of the food-supply of other distant areas is also 
coming to its end. The opening up of such areas, in which a sparse popula- 
tion produces food in quantities largely in excess of its own needs, has been 
the characteristic of our time, but it must give place to a more uniform dis- 
tribution of things, tending always to the condition of a moderately dense 
population, more uniformly distributed over large areas, capable of providing 
the increased labour necessary for the higher type of cultivation, and self- 
supporting in respect of grain-food at least. We observe in passing that the 
colonial system of our time only became possible on the large scale with the 
invention of the steam-locomotive, and that the introduction of railway systems 
in the appropriate regions, and the first tapping of nearly all such regions on 
the globe, has taken less than a century. 
Concentration in special areas of settlement, formerly chiefly effected for 
military reasons, has in modern times been determined more and more by the 
distribution of supplies of energy. The position of the manufacturing district 
is primarily determined by the supply of coal. Other forms of energy are, no 
doubt, available, but, as Sir William Ramsay showed in his Presidential 
Address at the Portsmouth meeting in 1911, we must in all probability look to 
coal as being the chief permanent source. 
In the early days of manufacturing industries the main difficulties arose 
from defective land transport. The first growth of the industrial system, 
therefore, took place where sea transport was relatively easy; raw material 
produced in a region near a coast was carried to a coalfield also near a coast, 
just as in the times when military power was chiefly a matter of ‘natural 
defences,’ the centre of power and the food-producing colony had to be 
mutually accessible. Hence the Atlantic took the place of the Mediterranean, 
Great Britain eventually succeeded Rome, and eastern North America became 
the counterpart of Northern Africa. It is to this, perhaps more than to any- 
thing else, that we owe our tremendous start amongst the industrial nations, 
and we observe that we used it to provide less favoured nations with the 
means of improving their system of land transport, as well as actually to 
manufacture imported raw material and redistribute the products. 
But there is, of course, this difference between the supply of foodstuff (or 
even military power) and mechanica] energy, that in the case of coal at least 
it is necessary to live entirely upon capital; the storing up of energy in new 
coalfields goes on so slowly in comparison with our rate of expenditure that it 
may be altogether neglected. Now in this country we began to use coal on a 
large scale a little more than a century ago. Our present yearly consumption is 
of the order of 300 millions of tons, and it is computed’ that at the present 
rate of increase ‘the whole of our available supply will be exhausted in 170 
years.’ With regard to the rest of the world we cannot, from lack of data, 
make even the broad assumptions that were possible in the case of wheat 
supply, and for that and other reasons it is therefore impossible even to guess 
at the time which must elapse before a universai dearth of coal becomes im- 
minent; it is perhaps sufficient to observe that to the best of our knowledge 
and belief one of the world’s largest groups of coalfields (our own) is not likely 
to last three centuries in all. 
Here again the present interest lies rather in the phases of change which 
are actually with us. During the first stages of the manufacturing period 
energy in any form was exceedingly difficult to transport, and this led to 
intense concentration. Coal was taken from the most accessible coalfield and 
used, as far as possible, on the spot. It was chiefly converted into mechanical 
energy by means of the steam-engine, an extremely wasteful apparatus in small 
units, and hence still further concentration; thus the steam-engine is respon- 
1 General Report of the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies, 1906. 
