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



from the prospect of future gain, the maintenance of the situation 

 as it now stands is actually costing money. There is no apparent 

 reason why fully coordinated development should not look toward 

 a fairly complete recovery of at least the leading by-products^ in 

 coal, and this prospect would definitely entail the doubling, if not 

 the trebling, of the fuel efficiency derivable. This means that our 

 present annual coal output could be made to more than double its 

 service, or, accepting the current service requirement as a standard, 

 that less than half the output can do the present work and in addi- 

 tion make heavy contributions to the supply of fertilizers, motor 

 fuel, and chemical products. The aggregate loss, on the basis of 

 this very modest estimate, runs well above a billion dollars a year, 

 or over $10 for each inhabitant of the United States. (See Table, 

 p. 113.) Of such measure is the average man's pecuniary interest in 

 the full utilization of coal. 



Improvement in coal utilization, then, can not be relied upon to 

 come from industrial stimulus alone, but must be brought into effect 

 as the result of public interest in the matter. The means for start- 

 ing toward this accomplishment are set forth in Part 1, as lying in 

 the direction of enlarged municipal gas plants, which will handle 

 all the coal needed by the community with the production of solid 

 fuel, gas,^ and the by-products, ammonia, benzol, and tar. 



Tfirough the principle of multiple production, therefore, coal can 

 be forced to render up its full quota of service. This is a new 

 economic force, one scarcely recognized as yet as a principle which 

 may be constructively applied. Yet the principle of multiple pro- 

 duction has been gaining headway for years, and by means of it the 

 multiplying needs of man are being met from practically a station- 

 ary range of raw materials. The role of multiple production is 

 rapidly enlarging; it represents a principle that must come into 

 play more and more to relieve the strain falling upon natural re- 

 sources and transportation. Through the agency of chemical knowl- 

 edge it serves to create a divergence of products, each the starting 

 point of a. second diverging series. The principle of multiple pro- 

 duction is peculiarly applicable to coal and oil; only by the use of 

 this principle, brought into effective action under the guidance of 

 a constructive economic policy, can adequate value be extracted from 

 these power materials.^ 



1 Nitrogen, benzol, and tar. 



2 Or the energy may be separated from the commodity values wholly in the form of gas. 

 s The whole matter of multiple production, a term of broader significance than the 



more familiar one of by-product production, is discussed in detail in Parts 1 and 2 of 

 this paper. The coming in of multiple production as an economic force will cause a 

 revision in some of the popularly accepted ideas of economics, especially as regards the 

 operation of the " law of supply and demand," as the reactions in the neighborhood of 

 multiple production are different from those occasioned by volume production. 



