22 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



these coals are not suitable for transportation like ordinary coal. 

 Efforts toward burning them in powdered form, with the effect of 

 gaseous fuel, or of compressing them into briquets have met with 

 some success, but their greatest possibilities are afforded through 

 complete gasification in gas producers,^ or by carbonization with 

 by-product recovery. The Bureau of Mines has demonstrated in 

 respect to the last that 1 ton of air-dried lignite may be made to 

 yield 8,000 to 10,000 cubic feet of gas, 17 pounds of ammonium 

 sulphate, 1 gallon of oil, 50 pounds of tar, and one-half to two-thirds 

 ton of carbon residue convertible into briquets approaching the value 

 of antriracite.^ Thus may even coals lowest in rank be raised to 

 meet the social needs for smokeless fuel and economy.^ 



THE PRODUCTION OF COAL. 



While the greatest improvements, with most teUing consequences, 

 are possible and necessary in the utilization of coal; the conditions of 

 coal production are likewise not best adapted to the nature of the 

 resource and offer opportunities for advantageous changes. Passing 

 over anthracite, because it is not inherently a necessity and because, 

 moreover, its production is effective both as to engineering practice 

 and coordination of operations, we find that the mining of bituminous 

 coal is so widely scattered and loosely cooperative that the aggre- 

 gated activities are to be looked upon as an "industry" only in 

 respect to their common purpose.* The country's most basic resource, 

 indeed, is produced through the medium of a thousand disintegrated 

 units, working without concert and under conditions of destructive 

 competition. 



Bituminous coal mining as an industry is beset by conditions 

 which are the occasion of present wastefulness and the justification 



I A few producer-gas plants are in service in the lignite areas. A specific instance of the applicability 

 of suction gas-producers would be in connection with the motor boats in service along the Alaskan coast 

 which now use gasoline brought from California, but instead might employ the low-grade coals so plentiful 

 in parts of the Alaskan coastal region. The present attempts at fuel economy seem superficial, when 

 the real points of wastefulness are held in mind. 



s "There seems little doubt but that the briquetting and the production of gas from lignite can in the 

 near future be put on a commercially satisfactory basis." Babcock, E. J., Economic Methods of Utilizing 

 Western Lignites: Bull. 89, Bureau of Mines, 1915, p. 65. 



' We may profit by the words of a distinguished British engineer and chemist, the late V. B. Lewes, 

 who writes of the coal of England: 



"Among the factors that lead to the commercial supremacy of a country by far the most important is 

 the command of fuel or other source of power; and England's position in the past has been governed largely 

 by her coal fields, which in little more than a century raised her to the forefront as a commercial power. 

 The very abundance of our coal suppUes was a source of weakness, as it led to outrageous waste, polluted 

 our atmosphere to a criminal extent, and so encouraged uneconomical methods of using it as seriously to 

 deplete our available stock, the result of which has been the increase in price during the last few years, 

 and the certainty that the future will see further advances but no fall to the old rates. The day of cheap 

 coal has gone, never to return." 



« The coal industry in i ts operations is more comparable to the brickmaking industry than, for example, 

 to the iron industry. 



