coal: the resource and its full utilization. 
7 
cheaper products to all interests as well as to imparting a stability 
and elasticity to the supply that will better enable it to weather 
periods of stress. In the ideal utilization of coal, the domestic and 
products uses will be completely complementary, while the power 
use will supplement the other two. Each will benefit from the others,, 
and one can not be adequately developed without the participation 
of the other two. The means whereby this advantageous coopera- 
tion may be effected are feasible and within the reach of an immediate 
start toward realization. 
Even with the utmost accomplishment in the direction of full, 
coordinated utilization of coal, however, there will still remain the 
dominant claim of power generation, involving by its size an undue 
tax upon the transportation facilities of the country. This persisting 
characteristic of present usage, with all its potency for evil conse- 
quences, can be alleviated through the development of a power 
resource more mobile than coal, which will relieve the railroads of 
part of their coal-hauling responsibility. Such a resource is at hand 
in the form of hydroelectric power, as yet hardly touched in this 
country; and the bearing upon the coal situation, and especially 
upon its transportation aspects, that a proper utilization of this 
source of power would have, is the subject of a separate paper, to 
follow this . 1 The adequate development of water-power would not 
only relieve an unnecessary reliance upon our transportation sys- 
tems, but it would also reduce the power use of coal to a portion more 
amenable to smooth coordination with the parts employed in the coal- 
products industries and the home. 
The point of logical attack upon the coal problem, then, centers 
in the home, for here lies the greatest weakness in the present system 
of coal utilization. It is in the home that conditions are the most 
discomforting in times of stress, that trouble, whether it be of high 
price or actual shortage, has the least chance of remedy by industrial 
enterprise. The problem, too, finds its closest contact with the 
individual in the affairs of everyday life; and its complexities may 
be reduced to their simplest expression in terms of this point of view. 
But it should be clear that although the line of advance may start 
with changes that benefit the individual user of coal, the course of 
progress brings no less advantage to the fields of industry. The 
whole matter, however, concerns the individual directly and fore- 
most; he will be the gainer or loser according to whether or not he 
sees fit to interest himself in the means for effecting the progress 
1 Power: Its significance and needs. Bull. 102, Pt. 5, U. S. National Museum (in preparation). In this 
paper it will be shown that the transportation of the portion of coal used for power generation, engaging 
as it does one-third of the freight capacity of the country, involves an unsound proportion that must be 
lessened by taking advantage of the undeveloped water-power resources of the country. This will give 
a source of power without substance and independent of the ordinary channels of transportation. 
