COAL FIELDS. 267 



all progressive nations, in proportion to their utilization of fossil power. . 

 The increase of wealth in the United States during the present century 

 is vast beyond all expression or conception. It is easy to show how 

 vital a factor in it all, transportation through the stored power of coal 

 has always been. 



Never before has such extreme inequality prevailed in the distribu- 

 tion of wealth, as in this century. The individual fortunes of our day, 

 mainly gathered in the last forty years, exceed all that have been known 

 before, and render the standards of comparison that the world has used 

 for the last two thousand years, ridiculously inadequate. 



The secret of this amazing increase of wealth, is to be found in the 

 steam engine or rather in the coal which feeds it. A pound of good 

 coal used in a>good engine stands for the work of six horses for an hour ; 

 a ton of coal, for the work of 1300 horses, for a day of ten hours. 

 There are lines of railroads under a single management, whose locomo- 

 tives comsume 10,000 tons of coal in a da}'. But 10,000 tons of coal 

 stand for the work of 1.3,000,000 horses, working ten hours a day. 



It is considerations like these that set coal before us in its proper 

 light. It is because we find in it the chief representative and the main 

 accumulation of the stored power of the sun that we are bound to set 

 so high an estimate upon it. We are unable to see how the world can 

 maintain the astonishing rate of progress which has been established 

 within the last fifty years, if our coal resources' are cut off or materially 

 reduced. But coal is not a mineral of indefinite amount, like limestone 

 or sandstone or clay. On the contrary, its stocks are sharply limited. 

 This fact, taken in connection with those already named, lays upon us 

 the imperative obligation to make every pound of it go as far as it can, 

 do all the work of which it is capable. Our practice cannot, however, 

 bear examination from this point of view. We are guilty of the 

 grossest and most reckless waste in all our dealings with coal, in min- 

 ing, in marketing, and in utilization. The treatment that this precious 

 form of wealth is receiving at our hands is a disgrace to our civilization. 

 A few examples will set the facts before us, as they are found in our 



own State. 



In one Ohio coal field a seam of coal is found that expands for a 

 limited area, from four or five feet, to ten or twelve feet in thick- 

 ness, but the upper or added portion of the expanded seam, though 

 excellent coal, is somewhat inferior to the lower portion. If all of the 

 thicker seam is sent out, the product of the mine is discredited to some 

 extent, in comparison with the output of mines in which the thinner 

 phase only is mined. The result is that the upper portion of the thick 

 seam is often left in the mines, hopelessly lost to human use. The rejected 

 portion is in reality better coal than the best that is produced in the 

 entire coal fields of some of our western States. This lamentable result 

 is due to the conditions of marketing coal that prevail. 



