• PRESENT WASTAGE 337 



personal knowledge of one well in West Virginia from which 12,000,000 

 feet of gas escaped daily in producing only four barrels of oil, and this 

 spectacle of wasting the heating value of 12,000 bushels of coal daily, 

 together with the power to deliver itself free of charges for transportation 

 to Pittsburg's factories, was at that time not an isolated case, but only 

 one of hundreds. During this riot of waste one of these great gas com- 

 panies put into its lines in West Virginia nearly 100,000,000 cubic feet 

 of gas daily and delivered in Pittsburg much less than half that quantity, 

 the larger portion having escaped into the air through the defective 

 joints of cheap and imperfect pipe-line construction. An enormous waste 

 of gaseous fuel is still an incident of oil production in Pennsylvania, as 

 well as in Ohio and West Virginia, and will probably so continue to the 

 end of the chapter, largely because a few influential citizens of Pennsyl- 

 vania, Ohio, and New York always oppose any attempt to prevent this 

 crime against these commonwealths. A great portion of this wasted gas 

 in West Virginia and Ohio was safely stored by nature, under immense 

 pressure, in the immediate pathway of this barren coal zone, and there 

 can be no doubt that its heating value, if properly utilized, would have 

 much more than replaced the missing coal beds, and thus to that extent 

 delayed the end of cheap fuel in the Pittsburg district. 



Danger of Catastrophes 



The recent awful catastrophe at Marianna is most disquieting to think- 

 ing minds. Disquieting, not alone for the frightful loss of precious lives 

 from the ranks of the brave toilers in a most dangerous occupation, in 

 which the men of skill are all too few, but also for the dread suspicion 

 which arises concerning the future of deep mining in this richest zone of 

 coal. Harwick, Ellsworth, Naomi, Monongah, Darr, Marianna are all 

 within the regions of great deposits of natural gas. Can it be possible 

 that in such situations this volatile substance, released from its long- 

 prison by the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled to the deeply buried 

 reservoirs of gaseous fuel, has permeated these mines in large quantity 

 through the ever-present fissures of the earth's stony crust? 



At the White House conference of governors, called last May by our 

 illustrious President to take stock of the fast disappearing natural re- 

 sources of the nation, and to advise with him concerning ways and means 

 to conserve the same, your speaker called attention to this "sword of 

 Damocles," an ever-impending peril to deep mining over the oil and gas 

 areas, and to the unknown waste of coal and precious lives that may pos- 

 sibly result therefrom. At least three-fourths of the entire area of Pitts- 

 burg coal remaining unmined in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia 

 is within this dangerous zone. Of the thousands of oil and gas wells 

 drilled in this great area stretching from the Pittsburg region southwest- 



