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



The question naturally arises, why this preponderant inadequacy 

 in coal utilization? This is no simple matter to explain: the reply 

 that the individual user, whether an industry, a community, or a 

 householder, finds it cheaper to consume raw coal than to dispose 

 separately of its various values is true, but superficial. That pro- 

 cedure is not cheaper for the users in the aggregate; also there is 

 no lack of technological knowledge requisite to fuller recovery 

 of the values in coal. The shortcoming, then, can not be due to 

 lack of desirability or to lack of technique. The default must be 

 credited against economic conditions. And since the United States 

 in the past has possessed no activities engaged in shaping and stimu- 

 lating industrial developments, tlie responsibilitj'^ reduces itself to 

 the fact that industrial enterprise has not seen fit to go into the 

 matter. Either the opportunity has not been apprehended or indus- 

 trial enterprise, cognizant of the situation, has not been interested. 

 The latter is undoubtedly the true explanation.^ For this lack of 

 industrial initiative a blend of several factors is responsible. In the 

 first place, America has been full of opportunities for volume pro- 

 duction, and consequently business enterprise has not been forced 

 by the stress of narrowing industrial opportunities to turn to the 

 far more complex field of multiple, or by-product, production; only 

 where the opportunities afforded in this direction were outstand- 

 ing and marked has the inducement been responded to.^ Secondly, 

 any given project, on contemplating the prospect, faced a situation in 

 which the establishment of production would yield by-products, the 

 consumption of which required other industries which in turn 

 would contribute other products calling for still further activities; 

 hence a project at the source would undoubtedly see their contem- 

 plated output ranging off into hypothetical regions not yet estab- 

 lished; while a project, viewing the matter further out, would 

 regard its proposed position as bearing some resemblance to an island 

 in a sea of nondevelopment. The requisite reach of coordination 

 was evidently not self- accredited on the part of industrial enter- 

 prise. Then, again, the field has opened up fully only of late, so 

 that the full measure of the opportunity has not been long standing. 



In addition to these considerations, there has been no competitive 

 spur to action. The loss represented in the wasteful consumption of 

 raw coal was not felt by any given industry, since the practice was 

 universal and the cost under this head was a more or less uniform 

 item which was shifted in its entirety to the shoulders of the con- 



1 Industrial enterprise has been interested to the extent of bringing multiple production 

 into about half of the coke Industry, but here the opportunities are particularly favorable. 

 'As In the case of by-product coking, petroleum refining, etc. 



