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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVII. No. 1217 



line from Kipling, which runs, ' ' Yours is the 

 earth, and everything that's in it." This 

 must be the explanation, therefore, if we 

 seem to discuss some topics where the chem- 

 ical connection is hut dimly discernible or 

 possibly lost entirely. 



In the first place then, let us discuss the 

 fuel problem, that is to say coal : 



It has seemed to take a war situation to 

 shake us into a realization of the funda- 

 mental and elementary fact that coal trans- 

 portation must be evenly distributed 

 throughout the year and not left to the 

 congested conditions of the winter months. 

 We talk aibout a fuel famine due to car- 

 shortage. It is not a shortage of coal cars 

 that troubles us — ^but rather a shortage of 

 the thinking process in connection there- 

 with. What indeed is a car shortage 1 You 

 say it is the opposite of having cars enough. 

 Now if we mean, by an adequate railway 

 equipment, enough cars to serve the mines 

 and move the coal to accord with the ab- 

 normal demand of the winter months, no 

 railroad in this country now has, or ever 

 can afford to have, such an equipment. Mr. 

 C. G. HaU in 1914, while Secretary of the 

 International Railway Fuel Association 

 made an estimate to the effect that if we 

 were to take only five of the leading coal- 

 moving roads of Illinois and Indiana and 

 calculate the additional equipment they 

 would need in order to fully serve the 

 mines and meet the current consumption of 

 the winter months, these five roads would 

 require 250 additional locomotives and 30,- 

 000 cars representing, together with the 

 necessary additional trackage and yard 

 equipment, an expenditure of approxi- 

 mately $75,000,000. This would represent 

 for this small group of railways alone, a 

 fixed charge in the way of interest, amount- 

 ing to nearly $4,000,000 per annum, with 

 the extra equipment standing idle and non- 

 productive for eight months of the year. 



Indeed, he goes further and estimates that 

 the railways of the country already have 

 in service coal cars over and above the 

 number that would be necessary if the same 

 tonnage could be handled at an even rate 

 throughout the year, and such excess equip- 

 ment represents an investment, even under 

 existing conditions, of over $105,000,000. 



But aU of these features were in evidence 

 before the present war. They still exist in 

 even more pronounced degree, with a num- 

 ber of added features. We talk of eating 

 less wheat so that our Allies may have more 

 bread, but we ought also to have put in our 

 coal supplies last August so that in January 

 the war necessities and the fuel needs of 

 our Allies might have a better chance at the 

 coal pile. I am just in receipt of a letter 

 from one of my colleagues who left the lab- 

 oratory about four months ago. It was 

 written in Paris and I quote a sentence or 

 two: "We have plenty to eat but the 

 amount of radiation allowed is very small. 

 If I had as much coal here as I had in my 

 cellar at home I would be arrested for 

 hoarding. Coal is actually $70.00 per 

 ton." The jwint of the whole matter is 

 this : We must learn the art of storing coal. 

 It is not the railroads alone that are con- 

 cerned. The miners and coal operators are 

 equally involved. Under the present sys- 

 tem the mines are operated on an average 

 about 200 days in the year. Such a system 

 must have a demoralizing effect upon labor, 

 so that many serious social as well as eco- 

 nomic and financial questions are involved. 



And where now does the chemist come 

 in? I was passing through a neighboring 

 town about the middle of last September 

 and saw along the railway tracks a coal pile 

 of about 30,000 tons, burning too fiercely to 

 be quenched or moved and as a result the 

 entire lot was a total loss. Other similar 

 fires have been reported, among them the 



