146 The Coal Famine. - April, 



reflect that they are bringing misery and want to thousands 

 of poor men's homes ? To what extent the increased price 

 of coal is bearing on the resources of the community at 

 large is a question to which Sir W. Armstrong has attempted 

 to give a reply. In a recent address to the North of England 

 Institute of Mining Engineers, he states that the rise in 

 price may be estimated as equivalent to a tax on coal to the 

 extent of 44 millions sterling.* To manufacturers who 

 consume on their works from 100 to 300 tons per week, the 

 difference in price may represent the difference between 

 profit and no profit, or even loss ; and already we hear of 

 factories about to be closed and iron furnaces " blown out," 

 while strikes and dear coal have driven many branches of 

 trade away from their original sites. t 



Anyone arriving on our shores, and unacquainted with the 

 course of events of the last few years, would naturally con- 

 clude that the long-threatened exhaustion of our coal-mines 

 was actually impending; or, at any rate, that the quantity of 

 fuel in the under-ground cellars had become so far diminished 

 that the quantity available for supply had materially fallen 

 off. As a matter of fact, our position is now very much 

 what we should expect it to be if one-half of our available 

 supply was exhausted. If, however, our visitor were in- 

 formed that the coal is as plentiful as ever, that the diffi- 

 culties of mining are not materially increased as compared 

 with the last few years, that miners are numerous, and the 

 mines on the whole only a little deeper than when coal was 

 20 shillings a ton in London, he might well be excused if he 

 received such a statement with incredulity. 



And yet such is in reality the case. The researches of 

 the Royal Commissioners on Coal-Supply have fully demon- 

 strated that there is sufficient coal within workable depth to 

 supply the wants of the population of these countries for 

 several centuries, even with an annual increase calculated 

 on the rate of increase of past years. On the basis of a 

 diminishing ratio of increase, Mr. Price Williams, whose 

 views are quoted with approval by the Commissioners,! 

 calculates that the annual consumption at the end of a 

 century would amount to 274 millions of tons, and that the 

 total quantity of available coal, as estimated by the Com- 

 missioners themselves, would last for 360 years. Another 



* Nature, No. 171, p. 271. 



t It was recently stated, at a meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Com- 

 merce, that the rise in the price of coal may be considered to represent an 

 increase of one halfpenny per pound in the price of cotton. In Lancashire 

 the rise is less severely felt than in some other places. 



+ Report, vol. i., p. xv. 



