;{} CONSEEYJitl'ON THROUGH ENGINEERING. 



iU<Ai\iBfe^'c9iild- be, mined if coal were conserved instead of 

 wasted ? 



What better methods have been developed for using coal than 

 those of ancient custom? 



Who is to blame that so small a supply is on the surface ? 



Why should we live from day to day in so vital a matter as a 

 fuel supply? 



What substitutes can be found for coal and how quickly may these 

 be made available? 



This is by no means an exhaustive category of the questions which 

 were put to this department when the strike came. And these came 

 tumbling in by wire, by mail, by hand, from all parts of the country, 

 mixed with disquisitions upon the duty of Government, the rights of 

 individuals as against the rights of society, the need for strength in 

 times of crisis, calls for nationalization of the coal industry, for the 

 destruction of labor unions, for troops to mine coal, and much else 

 that was more or less germane to the question before the country. 



Many of these questions we were able to answer. But if coal 

 operators themselves had not carried over the statistical machinery 

 developed during the war, we would have been forced to the humiliat- 

 ing confession that we did not know facts which at the time Avere of 

 the most vital importance. 



In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United 

 States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of 

 coal ; that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, pro- 

 duce annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground ; 

 that 35 per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 

 years we have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 

 tons per annum; that if last year's coal were used as construction 

 material it would build a wall as huge as the Great Wall of China 

 around every boundary of the United States from Maine to Van- 

 couver, down the Pacific to San Diego and eastward following the 

 Mexican border and the coast to Maine again; and that this same 

 coal contains latent power sufficient to lift this same wall 200 miles 

 high in the air, according to one of our greatest engineers (Stein- 

 metz). 



Such facts are surely startling. They serve to stimulate a certain 

 pride and give us a great confidence in our industrial future ; yet they 

 are not as immediately important, when the mines threaten to close, 

 as would be a few figures showing how much coal we have in stock 

 piles and where it is ! And months since we called upon Congress to 

 grant the money that we might secure these figures, but no notice 

 was taken of the urged requests until, late in the summer, a committee 

 of the Senate awoke to this need and indorsed our petition. 



