DOMESTIC FUEL. 19 



LOW-GRADE COALS AND BY-PRODUCT PRACTICE. 



Although the whole coal problem has been approached from the 

 point of view of effecting advances in utihzation that will tend pri- 

 marily to the advantage of the householder, the plans outlined may 

 be extended to meet an appreciable portion of the requirements of 

 industry; in fact, their success even requires a certain coordination 

 with the fuel needs of industrial activities. As already pointed out, 

 development of artificial anthracite will give an excess of gas over 

 present domestic wants which must be consumed, in part, in power 

 generation now dependent upon raw coal. Artificial anthracite 

 itself would be suitable for steam raising and therefore offer to 

 industry the same advantages that it holds for the home, including 

 the possibility, if fully used, of maldng our cities and railways com- 

 pletely smokeless. The adequate development of artificial anthra- 

 cite, in coordination with a large coal-products industry, may be 

 expected to create a competitor for raw coal that would gradually 

 put it out of use; for there is no insuperable reason why the fuel 

 portion of coal should not be widely available at less cost than raw 

 coal. The alternate plan of complete gasification of coal, with by- 

 product recovery as carried out in municipal public utility plants, 

 would of course offer abundant gas for industrial use in manufac- 

 turing centers, enabhng the wasteful steam engine to be replaced by 

 the more efficient internal combustion engine; while at the mine a 

 similar procedure, under private control, could be made to supply 

 gas for nearby distribution or convertible at once into electrical 

 energy, susceptible of effective transmission within a radius of two 

 hundred miles. Electrical energy, indeed, is now being generated at 

 the mine mouth in some of the more populous coal-mining regions, 

 with the difference that the coal is not gasified but is used in the raw 

 state under steam boilers; offering the objection, therefore, of inade- 

 quate recovery of energy and commodity values. 



In Europe, with the necessity for economies in fuel consumption, 

 far greater advances in the utilization of coal have been attained 

 than in the United States. And these advances, it may be observed, 

 are such as to lend the encouragement of successful experience to 

 the changes in coal utilization demanded by the needs of our own 

 situation. The status of the British gas industry has already been 

 adverted to as higher than that of the corresponding activity in the 

 United States; while the by-product coaldng of coal, as is well 

 known, has been carried further in Germany than elsewhere, resulting 

 in the strong position attained by that country in the manufacture 

 of dyestuffs, chemicals, and explosives. Noteworthy progress abroad 

 centers also around the development and use of producer gas, the 



