70 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 811 



ures; we must promptly and adequately 

 inform the miners and active mine officials 

 of the results of such investigations and in- 

 quiries ; we must revise our laws and regu- 

 lations along rational lines, in accordance 

 with the best information thus obtained; 

 and we must look to a proper enforcement 

 by the states of such laws and regulations. 

 We must also go to the tap-root of the evil 

 — that is, we must improve the economic 

 conditions on which this great industry is 

 based. We must seek the needed improve- 

 ments — not simply through one or two of 

 these remedial measures, but through each 

 and every one of them. 



Our coal industry in its phenomenal 

 growth has nearly doubled during each 

 succeeding decade of the past eighty years. 

 It has had to do more than keep pace with 

 our increasing population; for, while it 

 supplied less than one ton of coal per 

 capita to the American people in 1870, it 

 has had to supply nearly six tons per 

 capita during 1907. Its growth has been 

 too rapid for systematic development; and 

 the industry to-day represents a great host 

 of scattered, warring, discouraged ele- 

 ments, without organization or coopera- 

 tion. 



If the rapidly increasing rate of coal 

 production and waste of the past eighty 

 years should continue for another century 

 and a half — which is possible though 

 hardly probable — the end of the next cen- 

 tury would see the end of the supply of 

 coal now considered available for use. 

 The nation must perpetuate this ^pply by 

 lessening the waste, and by more efficient 

 use. 



In this industry are now employed more 

 than 700,000 miners, who work at some 

 6,000 different mines, and produce annually 

 nearly 500,000,000 tons of coal. Not only 

 is the nation increasingly dependent upon 

 this coal for its heat and light and for 



power for its varied manufacturing indus- 

 tries; but this coal and other mineral 

 products now contribute about 65 per cent, 

 of the total freight tonnage of the country ; 

 and the coal and steel are the essential 

 factors in all our transportation facilities. 



The economic conditions upon which 

 coal mining is based in this country are so 

 fundamentally bad, and the evil conse- 

 quences are so far-reaching as to both 

 time and extent, and are so essentially na- 

 tional in character, that this subject de- 

 mands the earnest consideration of our 

 best statesmen, as well as of our best engi- 

 neers, whether with the federal or state 

 governments or in the employ of private 

 corporations. 



In spite of the rapid growth in our de- 

 mand for coal in Alabama and in the 

 United States, the normal productive ca- 

 pacity of our coal mines, if operated con- 

 tinuously, would exceed this demand, and 

 a ruinous competition exists not only be- 

 tween the operators in the same field, but 

 between the operators of one field against 

 those in another field or in another state 

 where different mining laws and regula- 

 tions are in force. 



This competition is, first of all, driving 

 out of the business the small operators, ex- 

 cept where they find protection under local 

 freight rates, and is forcing even the larger 

 operator to mine coal under conditions 

 which he can not approve, but from which 

 he finds no escape. If he and his fellow 

 operators endeavor to "get together" and 

 place the price of coal at the mine on a 

 reasonable basis, they may go to jail unde'r 

 either a federal or a state statute; and, as 

 the only alternative, each must live (or 

 succumb) by underbidding the other, 

 which he can do only through following 

 the wasteful and unsafe mining methods 

 which prevail in this country to-day, in 



