768 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol- XLIV. No. 1144 



Nor is the increase in value of anthracite 

 lands any less striking. At the beginning 

 of the last century, as stated by Mr. Norris. 

 the great bulk of these lands were patented 

 by the State of Pennsylvania for $2 to $4 

 an acre; in the middle of the century the 

 price of the best land rose to $50, and in 

 1875 even to $500. Now $3,000 an acre has 

 been paid for virgin coal land, and little 

 is on the market at that. In considering 

 these increases in land values, the effect of 

 interest and taxes must not be overlooked. 

 The bituminous coal industry is a mod- 

 ern institution compared with the mining 

 of anthracite, and much of the bituminous 

 <coal land was acquired by the operating 

 •companies during the last twenty years for 

 little if anything more than its surface 

 ■value. To-day there are large areas of 

 bituminous coal-bearing lands that, because 

 they are undeveloped and without rail- 

 roads, can be purchased at a low price, 

 but little or no anthracite land is on the 

 market, and little has changed hands for 

 years. The present average resource cost 

 of bituminous coal is not much over 5 cents 

 a ton, or about 4 per cent, of the average 

 selling value at the mine. In the Poca- 

 hontas region and the Pittsburgh district 

 the royalties are much higher, but these, like 

 others that might be cited, are exceptions- 

 one due to coal of special quality, and the 

 other to location — factors which, inciden- 

 tally, are exactly those that have assisted in 

 making the resource cost of anthracite 

 what it is. 



Should you be interested in summing up 

 all these various costs and striking a bal- 

 ance between labor's share and capital's 

 'return, you would find that the mine 

 worker, the trainman, and the wagon driver 

 together receive fully half of the price of 

 the anthracite delivered at your house, and 

 the same three classes of labor receive not 

 less than half the price paid by the aver- 



age consumer for the cheaper soft coal. In 

 a similar manner the average return on the 

 capital invested in land, mining plant, 

 railroads and coal yard may be roughly 

 calculated, with the result that landlord, 

 bondholder and stockholder of coal com- 

 pany and railroad together receive about 

 $1.15 from the ton of anthracite and only 

 50 to 75 cents from the ton of bituminous 

 coal, and of either of these amounts the 

 mine operator's share is only a small 

 fraction. 



It is not the purpose of this analysis of 

 costs to offer any cure-all for the high price 

 of coal, yet some comment on the facts pre- 

 sented may possess value. At least certain 

 lines of approach can be pointed out as not 

 very promising. For example, any one 

 who is at all cognizant of the trend in 

 priee of labor and material can see little 

 hope of relief in lower costs for these items. 

 Furthermore, observation of the advances 

 made in mining methods in the last decade 

 ■or two affords slight warrant for belief in 

 any charge of wasteful operation. As con- 

 sumers of coal we might do well to imitate 

 the economy now enforced by the pro- 

 ducers in their engineering practise. In 

 the northern anthracite field machine min- 

 ing in extracting coal from 22- and 24-inch 

 beds, and throughout the anthracite region 

 the average recovery of coal in mining is 

 65 per cent., as against 40 per cent, only 

 twenty years ago. Nor are the bituminous 

 operators any less progressive in their con- 

 servation of the coal they mine. 



Yet it must be remembered that conser- 

 vation of a natural resource, though it will 

 undoubtedly be of direct economic benefit 

 in the future, is not essentially a cheapen- 

 ing process; in fact, these increased re- 

 coveries of coal have in large part become 

 possible only because of a higher market 

 price. And, following further this line of 

 thought, we may say that the increased 



