power : its significance and needs. 
19 
surning public . 1 The need for advance was also not generally appre- 
ciated, inasmuch as there was plenty of fuel, transportation diffi- 
culties had not loomed up, coal products could be purchased from 
Germany, nitrate could be imported from Chile, and, in general, the 
whole matter of coal was taken for granted. 
Hence industry had no particular incentive for entering into a 
new field which, while large, was intangible; moreover industry, 
under the old order, faced decided limitations in its recognized ina- 
bility to construct a proportionated demand for the whole range of 
prospective products. On the other hand, the public, which was 
actually paying the cost of the inadequacy, but under a disguised 
heading, did not see its concern in the matter, nor was public inter- 
est represented by machinery charged with acting on popular behalf ; 
public utilities commissions, the nearest approach to such machinery, 
were notoriously w T eak and shallow; the Federal Government, lack- 
ing the pressure of public opinion, did not take up the issue. So 
the course of progress was short-circuited, and the tremendous possi- 
bilities in our unrivaled coal resources remain to-day practically 
untouched. The industrial progress of this country has been sus- 
tained by the mining of an ever increasing quantity of coal, until 
the very bulk of the total has become a critical weakness in this 
country’s industrial life. 
Such is the situation. The utilization of coal is extravagantly 
wasteful from beginning to end, the wastefulness is a matter of 
uniform practice not subject to improvement through avenues of 
individual enterprise, and, contrary to general notions, it is the 
public at large, not industry itself, which stands the loss from the 
shortcomings in the situation and which is, therefore, primarily con- 
cerned in its betterment. 
The public is concerned because it pays the bill rendered by present 
wastefulness and will reap the gain accruing from any progress 
toward competency. The net advantage will not merely represent 
the margin of value now lost, but in addition will include the border 
of advance added by the multiplication of values over those calcul- 
able from the standpoint of the present. The total gain can not be 
expressed in terms of exact figures; indeed, it is in no sense a fixed 
quantity, but entirely dependent upon the length to which the 
future carries the matter from its present chaotic stage. But apart 
1 In the realm of industry, where wastefulness is a matter of scattering individual 
practice, the industrial offender pays the direct penalty of loss ; hut where wastefulness 
is a matter of uniform practice and is the rule, the whole burden of loss falls upon the 
consuming public. Ordinarily, the stimulus of competition works automatically to 
undermine inadequacy and prevent its permanent establishment in uniformity of practice. 
But if natural obstacles in the path of industrial enterprise render individual activities 
powerless to proceed in any other than the - wasteful direction, nothing operates to 
prevent the rule of incompetence from becoming a stabilized convention. 
