DOMESTIC FUEL. 9 



are fundamentally complementary, and they can be made so in 

 practice to their common advantage, in respect both to yielding 

 cheaper products to all interests as well as to imparting a stability 

 and elasticity to the supply that will better enable it to weather 

 periods of stress. In the ideal utilization of cosH, the domestic and 

 commodity uses will be completely complementary, while the power 

 use will supplement the other two. Each will benefit from the others, 

 and no one can be adequately developed without the participation 

 of the other two. The means whereby this advantageous coopera- 

 tion may be effected are feasible and within the reach of an immediate 

 start toward realization. 



Even with the utmost accomplishment in the direction of full, 

 coordinated utilization of coal, however, there will still remain the 

 dominant claim of power generation, involving by its size an undue 

 tax upon the transportation facilities of the country. This persisting 

 characteristic of present usage, with all its potency for evil conse- 

 quences, can be alleviated through the development of a power 

 resource more mobile than coal, which will relieve the railroads of 

 part of their coal-hauling responsibility. Such a resource is at hand 

 in the form of hydroelectric power, as yet hardly touched in this 

 country; and the bearing upon the coal situation, and especially 

 upon its transportation aspects, that a proper utilization of this 

 source of power would have, is treated in Part 3 of this paper.^ 

 The adequate development of water-power would not only relieve 

 an unnecessary reliance upon our transportation systems, but it 

 would also reduce the power use of coal to a portion more amenable 

 to smooth coordination with the parts employed in the coal-products 

 industries and the home. 



The point of logical attack upon the coal problem, then, centers 

 in the home, for here lies the greatest weakness in the present system 

 of coal utilization. It is in the home that conditions are the most 

 discomforting in times of stress, that trouble, whether it be of high 

 price or actual shortage, has the least chance of remedy by industrial 

 enterprise. The problem, too, finds its closest contact with the 

 individual in the affairs of everyday life; and its complexities may 

 be reduced to their simplest expression in terms of this point of view. 

 But it should be clear that although the line of advance may start 

 with changes that benefit the individual user of coal, the course of 

 progress brings no less advantage to the field of industry. The 

 whole matter, however, concerns the individual directly and fore- 

 most; he will be the gainer or loser according to whether or not he 

 sees fit to interest himself in the means for effecting the progress 



» See page 103. 



