Smoke. 605 



of tons .... at the end of a hundred years the 

 consumption would be 415,000,000 tons per annum, 

 and the now estimated quantity of coal available for 

 use would represent a consumption of 276 years.' l I 

 offer no positive opinion on this subject, but I suspect 

 the first view is likely to be nearer the truth than the 

 last. 



However this may be, it is certain that some day or 

 other our coal must be practically exhausted, but so 

 many things may happen ere that time that it is 

 doubtful if even we, the trustees of the future, need to 

 concern ourselves very much about the matter. Per- 

 sonal prudence, selfishness, or the love of money, will 

 not be hindered by anxiety about people who are to 

 live hundreds of years hence, and great part of Eng- 

 land will still .continue smoky as long as coal lasts 

 in quantity, or at all events till the laws are enforced 

 against the production of unnecessary smoke. All the 

 centre of England is thick with it, floating from every 

 coalfield, and from all the dependent manufacturing 

 towns. The heaths and pastures of Derbyshire and 

 Yorkshire between the two great coalfields are blackened 

 by smoke, and even in the rainiest weather the sheep 

 that ought to be white-wooled are dark and dingy. 

 Every coalfield in England as it happens, is a centre 

 of pollution to the air. But this does not affect the 

 manufacturing population of these districts excepting 

 in a sanitary, and therefore in a moral, point of view, 

 and this state of affairs is too apt to be considered un- 

 avoidable in the present state of economics and unscien- 

 tific practice, though it is not so of necessity. 



What will be the state of Britain when all the coal 

 is gone ? The air at all events will be purified, and the 

 1 ' Keport of the Coal Commissioners,' pp. 16 and 17. 



