6 BULLETIN 102, PART 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
industry and commerce, and is used in American homes that can not 
afford anthracite. Vast quantities of coal lower in grade than 
bituminous, such as lignite and peat , 1 occur in many parts of the 
United States, but these as yet are practically untouched. 
Coal as now used fulfills three distinct and unrelated functions. It 
furnishes industrial power, material for the manufacture of coal 
products, and domestic heat . 2 About two-thirds of the coal con- 
sumed in the United States goes into the production of power which 
is divided almost equally between the industries and the transporta- 
tion systems; about one-sixth is used as a raw material for making 
substances employed industrially, such as metallurgical coke, upon 
which the iron industry depends, and gas, nitrogen compounds, 
benzol , 3 tar, and coal-tar products. One-sixth approximately is 
employed for heating homes and other buildings. It will be observed, 
then, that the combined industrial requirements outweigh the needs 
of the home five to one. 
This threefold function of coal involves the element of competi- 
tion, which is latent in normal times, but becomes effective in periods 
of stress. War conditions in America have lately developed in acute 
form the inevitable consequence of this competitive tendency, a 
shortage of fuel for domestic heating . 4 Industrial users of coal are 
strong and preponderant; they can meet a growing cost by passing 
it on to the consuming public in the form of higher prices; and in 
cases of shortage they are normally given precedence in distribution. 
Domestic users of coal, on the contrary, are scattered and weak; in 
general they must accept what is left after the wants of industry 
are satisfied. The home, therefore, is forced to pay a price developed 
by the industrial demand, or else, if the price be artificially fixed, 
suffer more than its relative share of the shortage which the expanded 
demands of industry create. This condition is not peculiar to the 
present situation, though never before, of course, so gravely manifest; 
it is inherent in our present system of fuel utilization, which if un- 
changed may be expected to display a repetition during every future 
period of industrial quickening. Moreover, the growth of industrial- 
ism, by increasing the industrial consumption in respect to the domes- 
tic, will serve to make the danger progressively more serious. 
The competitive tendency that now obtains between the three 
main uses of coal is not justifiable on the basis of the character of 
coal itself. On the contrary, these functions, at present antagonistic, 
are fundamentally complementary, and they can be made so in 
practice to their common advantage, in respect both to yielding 
1 Peat is not strictly a coal in the commercial sense, though it represents one of the first stages in coal 
formation. 
2 Coal, of course, is used for other specific purposes, but these are of secondary importance. 
8 Benzol is the light oil often included in the term coal-tar. 
< This shortage, indeed, has been so great as to extend into industry also. 
