IHE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF COAL. 727 
THE SUPPLY OF COAL. 
PROF. D. E. LANTZ. 
The attachments made by the American Forestry Association to the effect 
that our forests are suffering rapid destruction and that in a very limited number 
of years our timber supply will be exhausted, must have caused alarm in the 
minds of many people who live remote from the coal supply. Then, too, the 
mass of mining and commercial statistics, published from time to time at our 
great centers of coal distribution, must have increased the apprehensions as to 
the sufficiency of the fuel supply of the world. 
But now comes the recent report of the U. S. Geological Survey with many 
consolatory figures on the coal supply of this country and Europe. This shows 
us that the enormous increase in the consumption of coal does not threaten an 
immediate failure in the world's supply. 
The report places the area of the productive coal fields of this country at 
192,000 square miles. That of Great Britain is put at 12,000 square miles. 
Exclusive of China, the entire production of the world is estimated at 360,890,- 
000 tons. Of this aggregate. Great Britain furnished 154,000,000 tons, Germany 
furnished 61,000,000 tons, and our own country 92,000,000 tons, two-thirds of 
which was bituminous coal. 
During the last twelve years, the annual product of the mines in the United 
States has increased 50,000,000 tons; but we have as yet touched only the sur- 
face of our coal resources. It is probable that the area of our coal fields is 
greatly underestimated. A producing capacity of 3,000,000 tons per square 
mile would be a small estimate of our supply. At this estimate, with an annual 
consumption of 360,000,000 tons, it would require 120 square miles a year to 
supply the world ; and the coal in the United States alone would furnish this 
supply for 1600 years. 
But the report does not include China, Borneo, Japan, and other countries 
whose coal statistics are not available. In China, several provinces contain grea^ 
coal areas. Hoo-Nan alone has 2,700 square miles of anthracite coal fields. 
German scientists estimate that there is coal enough in China to supply the 
entire world for some hundreds of millions of years. Even England has coal 
enough to supply her own needs for three hundred years. In view of all this, it 
does not at present seem necessary to feel anxious about the supply of fuel in this 
or any other country. 
But Kansans are more directly interested in obtaining their fuel supply 
cheap. Here at Manhattan, anthracite coal sells at $14 a ton. At the mines 
in Pennsylvania it costs less than a fourth of this sum. The expense of transpor- 
tation more than quadruples the original cost. The semi-bituminous coal of 
Colorado costs us from $7 to $10 a ton. It may be consoling to learn that there 
