GENERAL SUMMAEY. 149 



hands of business enterprise; as an agent for social service, for the 

 common good, its attainments lie chiefly in prospect. Economic 

 procedure is an establishment of precedent; it is the method whereby 

 technology is brought to the development of resources; it tends to 

 become standardized, whereas technology is constantly advancing; 

 it is far more inflexible than technology; in the realm of energy 

 usage it is far out of adjustment with the resource facts and the 

 status of technology. There needs to be better coordination be- 

 tween resources, technology, and economic procedure. The eco- 

 nomic procedure whereby energy is brought into play in the United 

 States is mainly a product of a period when the nature of the energy 

 resources were imperfectly knov,Ti and the technology of energy 

 employment was crudely developed. 



The employment of the energy resources involves three progressive 

 stages — production, transportation, and utilization. We may ex- 

 amine coal, oil, and water power in turn in respect to their status 

 under each of these heads. 



The production of coal ^ is wasteful because of the abmidance 

 of the resource. This has led to excessive competition, overdevelop- 

 ment of the resource, and the offering of coal at the mine at a price 

 unduly low. Under these circumstances only easy-to-mine coal 

 can be extracted at a profit. In consequence, also, improvements 

 in methods of mining are slow of introduction and means for storing 

 coal have not been developed. The supply of labor is not equal to 

 the capacity of the developed mines, hence a labor shortage alvvays 

 develops in periods of prosperity, when the demand for coal suddenly 

 increases. Since less than 1 per cent of our coal supply has been used, 

 it is hard to arouse any interest in wastes resulting from inadequate 

 methods of coal production. 



Transportation is the weakest link in our coal supply. Coal is 

 over a third of the country's freight; the mining of coal is dependent 

 upon an unbroken movement of coal cars past the mine mouths; 

 the number of coal cars has never been equal to the full capacity of 

 the developed coal mines. With every period of industrial prosperity 

 a car shortage is bound to result. Moreover, as result of the size and 

 industrial status of this country, the railways have a sufficient 

 responsibility without the carriage of coal. The haulage of much of 

 the coal respresents waste effort since the energy can be extracted 

 in the coal fields and transmitted over wires in the form of electricity. 



Present utilization of coal involves a very low recovery of the energy 

 content and an almost total loss of the commodity values present. 

 This, of course, necessitates the production, transportation, and 

 distribution of a much larger quantity than would otherwise be 

 required; concentrates the whole cost, in respect to the consumer, 



' The statements of this paragraph do not refer to anthracite, the mining of which is satisfactory. 

 79968°— 19 Bull. 102, vol. 1 11 



