16 BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
Meanwhile the demand is increasing at the rate of some 50 million 
tons each year. 1 The expansion in new consumption, then, may fairly 
be expected to offset any curtailment in bulk that betterment of pro- 
cedure may permit. The best that may be hoped for is a check in the 
growth of the coal burden under which organized transportation is 
already staggering. To let this burden freely continue to increase, 
trusting the outcome to luck, is to court all kinds of trouble, if not dis- 
aster ; yet, even with best effort, there is little prospect of a diminish- 
ing requirement. 
It would appear, therefore, that at best we must continue to deal 
with over a half billion tons of coal. This figure, then, may be taken 
as representing the minimum of actual demand that must fall upon 
transportation, the minimum of tonnage whose full utilization in con- 
sequence is called for. Primarily this enormous amount of coal is 
now consumed in order to gain the energy contained in it, all else being 
disregarded. But coal is something more than energy in material 
form ; it is also a source of many valuable mineral products. Indeed, 
it is a veritable treasure house of values, in this regard far surpassing 
any other type of mineral substance. 2 Upward of a thousand coal 
products are in use to-day, some of them filling needs less conspicuous 
but every bit as vital as that for fuel. And the development is still in 
its infancy. A few years ago and few of these products were known. 
Chemical vision can see no limit to the further unfoldment in pros- 
pect. The boundary to this field is like the horizon, always in sight 
but never to be reached. There can be no full utilization of coal 
which fails to take these matters into account. 
At the present time a very small proportion of the coal consumed is 
adequately used. Putting to one side anthracite, which has an energy 
value merely 3 and therefore yields a reasonable service in its crude 
state, and counting off about one-twelfth of the bituminous coal, the 
portion subjected to by-product recovery in connection with the manu- 
facture of coke, we find that there still remains each year in round 
numbers a half billion tons of coal which are consumed in the raw con- 
dition with a total loss of the commodity values and an incomplete 
recovery of the energy. The sum total of this loss represents the 
margin between present attainment and full utilization, and may be 
presented in tabular form, as follows: 
1 It is estimated that the needs of 1918 will call for nearly 100 million tons in excess 
of the production of 1917, hut the current rate of increase is probably exceptional. 
2 With the possible exception of petroleum. 
3 Its commodity values were lost in the course of its strenuous geological history. 
