A NEW SOURCE OF POWER 



948 



of subbituminous coal, a grade above 

 lignite and probably of little use for 

 steaming purposes, but efficient in the 

 gas producer. Texas has 23,000,000,- 

 000 tons of lignite, utterly worthless, 

 according to the Survey tests, except in 

 a gas plant, where it develops more 

 energy than West Virginia's highest- 

 grade coal. Even Louisiana and Missis- 

 sippi, which are surely never thought of 

 as coal States, have an area of over 16,000 

 square miles underlain with lignites. In 

 considering some of these large coal 

 areas, it is something of a shock to find 

 that the great "coal trust," which owns 

 the entire anthracite field in Pennsyl- 

 vania, has only 480 square miles of coal 

 land. On the coal map issued by the 

 Geological Survey, this hard-coal field 

 appears as an infinitesimal patch. 



Summarizing the Geological Survey 

 figures, the total area in the United 

 States underlain by lignite and subbitu- 

 minous coal — coal mostly of little if any 

 value in steam plants, but of great effi- 

 ciency in gas producers — is 246,245 

 square miles, or over 150,000,000 acres, 

 and its tonnage is 1,393,423,000,000 

 short tons. 



The tonnage of the lignite is calcu- 

 lated on the basis of about 1,800 tons 

 per acre, one foot deep. Thus, if an 

 acre is underlain with, say, two 4-foot 

 seams, it will contain 14,400 tons of 

 lignite. A square mile would contain 

 9,216,000 tons. In the tonnage estimates 

 of the lignite fields, under the regula- 

 tions of the Interior Department no 

 account is taken of the deposits below 

 1,000 feet. If the estimates included the 

 lignite found down to the 3, 000- foot 

 depth, as they do in the higher-grade 

 coal, the tonnage would be immeasurably 

 increased. It is interesting to note, in 

 this connection, that the deepest mine in 

 the world — in Belgium — in which coal is 

 mined, approximately 4,000 feet below 

 surface, is a lignite mine. 



ai^aska's large lignite deposits 



Mention of Alaska's lignite deposits 

 should not be omitted. About one-half 

 of the Territory's coal is believed to be 



lignite, and, while there is not sufficient 

 information upon which to base even an 

 approximate estimate of the total ton- 

 nage of the various fields, it is probable 

 that the reserve of lignite may be 500,- 

 000,000,000 or more tons. 



To better comprehend the extent of 

 this new resource, discovered in fact 

 through the gas producer, the amount of 

 coal already mined in the United States 

 may be compared with the estimated re- 

 serves. Since mining first began the 

 total amount of coal produced and the 

 amount wasted in mining has been, to 

 January i, 1910, approximately 12,000,- 

 000,000 tons, which is a little more than 

 one-half of what yet remains under- 

 ground in the little 480 square miles of 

 the anthracite field. The 1909 produc- 

 tion was about 450,000,000 tons, with 

 perhaps a recovery of 60 per cent — 40 

 per cent being lost in mining — or a total 

 exhaustion of 750,000,000 tons last year. 

 This is just fifteen-hundredths of one per 

 cent of North Dakota's easily accessible 

 lignite. 



VAEUE OF PEAT 



The improvement of the gas-producer 

 plant has also brought into the field 

 another natural resource heretofore con- 

 sidered of little if any fuel value, namely, 

 peat. The knowledge of the area and 

 tonnage of our peat deposits is incom- 

 plete ; but they are very great, both in 

 the United States and Alaska. 



It is significant, too, that the regions 

 in the United States that have peat beds 

 of workable size and depth are found to 

 lie almost entirely outside the territory 

 in which the coal fields and supplies of 

 other natural fuels are known to exist 

 in abundance. The Geological Survey's 

 estimate of twelve billion (12,000,000,- 

 000) tons of air-dry fuel as the product 

 of the peat beds of the country, exclusive 

 of Alaska, is believed to be an ultra- 

 conservative one. Peat beds occur 

 throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Mich- 

 igan, New York, New England, New 

 Jersey, Florida, in the eastern part of 

 the Dakotas, barely infringing upon the 

 lignite beds ; northern Iowa, Illinois, 

 Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 



