334 I. C. WHITE SHORTAGE OF COAL IN APPALACHIAN FIELD 



Putnam counties, as we may see by inspection of the coal map of the 

 West Virginia Geological Survey. The same thing happens to this coal 

 in southeastern Ohio, so that it is practically absent from Monroe, Wash- 

 ington, eastern Athens, much of Meigs, and Gallia. 



These facts have been brought to light principally by the oil-well drill- 

 ers in the search for petroleum and natural gas. The great Burning 

 Springs-Yolcano anticlinal of West Virginia, which along its highest 

 crest in Wirt, Wood, and Pleasants counties brings up to daylight suc- 

 cessively the Monongahela, Conemaugh, and Allegheny series, right across 

 the center of the Appalachian field, confirms the story of the drill, since 

 near Petroleum station, where all the measures from the top of the 

 Monongahela series down to the Pottsville are exposed to view, only one 

 coal bed is visible, and it is only four feet thick, impure, and split into 

 two practically worthless divisions by 6 to 8 feet of slate. Your speaker 

 has personally examined the rock materials brought up b} 7 the sand pump 

 while the drill was passing through the Allegheny beds in several wells 

 from the region of Pittsburg southwestward across western Pennsylvania, 

 West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, and on to the Big Sandy river at the 

 Kentucky line in Wayne county, with the result that over a belt having 

 a width of 40 to 50 miles at the Pittsburg end, and practically the same 

 on the Big Sand} 7 , and swelling out to 100 miles or more near its center 

 at the longitude of the Little Kanawha, river, there is practically no com- 

 mercial coal, as we know that term now, in the entire Allegheny series. 



Extent of Keduction of the productive Areas 



The effect of this barren zone on West Virginia's productive coal area 

 is to reduce it from 17,000 square miles, as usually given in statistical 

 tables, to only about half that size, and the tonnage, as recently estimated 

 by Mr M. E. Campbell, of the United States Geological Survey, from 

 231,000,000,000 to only about 60,000,000,000 tons of first-class available 

 fuel, after providing for the necessary waste in mining, or less than one- 

 half of Mr Campbell's estimate for that state. 



The 112,000,000,000 tons of bituminous coal originally existing in 

 Pennsylvania and 86,000,000,000 in Ohio, as estimated by Campbell, are 

 also both much too great, on account of this barren zone in these states. 

 It is quite certain that Pennsylvania will not furnish much more than 

 40,000,000,000 tons and Ohio probably not more than 25,000,000,000 

 tons of commercial bituminous coal ; so that the three great coal states of 

 the northern Appalachian field, namely, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West 

 Virginia, will together produce only about 125,000,000,000 tons of good 

 coal and probably 50,000,000,000 tons of an inferior grade, instead of the 

 much larger quantity indicated by Mr Campbell's figures, which are evi- 



