88 
Annual Report of the 
The effective horse-power required, 76, to which add for a contin¬ 
gent 50 per cent, making 114 indicated horse-power, operated by 
one superintendent, two foremen, four engineers, two firemen and 
twenty laborers, at a daily cost for wages for 182 days, from April 
10th to November 10th, of $65, or $11,700. Fuel, oil and waste, per 
day $10, or $1,820 per annum. Repairs $5 per day, or $910 per 
annum. Interest on investment of $1,200 for one year at 10 per 
cent. Wear and tear and depreciation of machinery, 20 per cent. 
$3,600 per annum, or 250,000 tons of prepared, condensed peat, cost 
$18,600, or 74 cents per ton, or adding 220 per cent, to the cost for 
contingencies, and it will cost 25 cents per ton. 
I invite and request a most rigid and careful investigation of this 
process, as I feel assured that it is based upon accurate, well defined 
and practical daily mechanical results, and in no respect a greater 
tax upon the credulity of intelligent men, than the locomotive, har¬ 
vester or threshing machine, whose first projectors were by sheer 
force of their honest, intelligent convictions, induced to give ex¬ 
pression to their deductions. 
Regardless of criticism, or fear of successful contradiction, I present 
to the citizens of Wisconsin, evidence that peat fuel is the only 
cheap, abundant and available substitute for wood or coal that can 
be. secured in the near future, and. this convention, as represent¬ 
ing the people, cannot mistake the overwhelming importance of 
cheap fuel, a question involving considerations touching the very 
germ of all progress, wealth and civilization. Prejudice nor ignor¬ 
ance cannot undertake to controvert the logic of facts, and they 
show an aggregate sum of public and private interests involved, 
that dwarfs all questions of tariff or transportation. The possibili¬ 
ty of preparing 150 million tons of fuel from the waste bogs and 
swamps of the state should command the attention of this conven¬ 
tion, saving to the state $5 per ton, or in 50 years $750,000,000, 
from the cost of imported coal ; and enforcing thereby the law of 
accumulation in the re-growth of forests, for the same period, then 
equal to 7,000,000 acres, worth for fuel alone $700,000,000. An ag¬ 
gregate accumulation of available wealth of $1,450,000,000, which 
is distributed broad-cast to every consumer of fuel. Every farmer 
can by the same men, using the same power, with the same ma¬ 
chinery as used for grain threshing, convert the peat of the bogs 
into fuel, for every farm, hamlet or settlement, in this state, at less 
