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



our European cousins find so much profit in manufacturing and selling 

 to us ? Are not our engineers equal to the task of manufacturing a first- 

 class furnace coke without such an enormous waste of values ? Are they 

 less skillful than their German and English brothers ? 



Why should we retain the steam-engine, to consume with frightful 

 speed so much of our finest fuel, when much more power can be obtained 

 by the use of the gas engine from an equal weight of impure or low grade 

 coal ? Fortunate would it be for our future if some master genius could 

 arise in the great iron and steel industries who would at one stroke 

 arrange to relegate both the steam-engine and the beehive coke oven to 

 the junk heap of the wasteful past, like McCrea and his predecessor, the 

 gifted Cassatt, have undertaken to do with the steam locomotive on one 

 of the world's greatest railways. 



Again, why should. the Pittsburg district permit these acres of coal 

 barges, loaded with precious black diamonds, the heart of the finest coal 

 bed in the world, mined from its immediate hills, to float through its 

 gates down to other marts at a minimum profit to any one owing to enor- 

 mous losses by flood and collision, when it is absolutely certain that l>e % - 

 fore the century closes the coal from eastern Kentucky and southern 

 "West Virginia will be towed up the Ohio to replace what should never 

 have been taken away. Would it not be prudent and the part of far- 

 seeing business wisdom to let the Great Kanawha and Big Sandy coal 

 fields possess these southern markets, to which they are so much more 

 cheaply accessible, rather than sell at a small profit today what will be 

 bought back in the near tomorrow at triple or even quadruple the present 

 selling price? The coal in the Appalachian field is the only large body 

 of first-class coking fuel on the continent, and the first duty of those who 

 control the bulk of the enormous iron and steel industries of this district 

 is to conserve all that is possible of this precious fuel for that particular 

 purpose. 



Another form of wasted energy not so apparent to the eye, but which 

 in the aggregate probably amounts to much more annually than all other 

 forms of energy, both consumed and wasted, is the waste of water, which 

 the nation permits to pass unhindered to the sea, often destroying in a 

 year enough property in the Pittsburg district and between there and 

 Cairo to pay the entire cost of control and utilization. With the waste 

 and disappearance of our forests, these periodical floods are certain to 

 increase in destructiveness. Why should this now worse than wasted 

 power, all easily within the limits of electrical transmission, not be so 

 stored, controlled, and utilized that we could not only have navigable 

 rivers from Pittsburg to the Gulf the most of the year, upon which to 

 distribute cheaply the products of the mills and factories, but could also 

 thereby greatly prolong the life and growth of our famous industries ? 



