Read Ebook: Conservation Through Engineering Extract from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior by Lane Franklin K

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The plea for constructive policies contained in the report of the Secretary of the Interior to the President deserves a hearing also by the engineers and business men who are developing the power resources of the country. The largest conservation for the future can come only through the wisest engineering of the present.

The conditions under which the utilization of natural resources is demanded are outlined by Secretary Lane, and it will be noted that the program recommended calls for the cooperation of engineer and legislator. To bring this power inventory to the attention of the men who furnish the Nation with its coal and oil and electricity, this extract from the administrative report of the Secretary of the Interior is reprinted as a bulletin of the United States Geological Survey.

CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING

In an age of machinery the measure of a people's industrial capacity seems to be surely fixed by its motive power possibilities. Civilized nations regard an adequate fuel supply as the very foundation of national prosperity--indeed, almost as the very foundation of national possibility. I am convinced that there will be a reaction against the intense industrialism of the present, but as it must be agreed that the race for industrial supremacy is on between the nations of the world, America may well take stock of her own power possibilities and concern herself more actively with their development and wisest use.

THE COAL STRIKE.

The coal strike has brought concretely before us the disturbing fact that modern society is so involved that we live virtually by unanimous consent. Let less than one-half of 1 per cent of our population quit their work of digging coal and we are threatened with the combined horrors of pestilence and famine.

It did not take many hours after it was realized that the coal miners were in earnest for the American imagination to conceive what might be the state of the country in perhaps another 30 days. Industries closed, railroads stopped, streets dark, food cut off, houses freezing, idle men by the million hungry and in the dark--this was the picture, and not a very pleasant one to contemplate. There was an immediate demand for facts.

How much coal is normally mined in this country?

What is its quality?

To what uses is it put?

Who gets it?

How much less could be mined if coal were conserved instead of wasted?

What better methods have been developed for using coal than those of ancient custom?

Who is to blame that so small a supply is on the surface?

Why should we live from day to day in so vital a matter as a fuel supply?

What substitutes can be found for coal and how quickly may these be made available?

This is by no means an exhaustive category of the questions which were put to this department when the strike came. And these came tumbling in by wire, by mail, by hand, from all parts of the country, mixed with disquisitions upon the duty of Government, the rights of individuals as against the rights of society, the need for strength in times of crisis, calls for nationalization of the coal industry, for the destruction of labor unions, for troops to mine coal, and much else that was more or less germane to the question before the country.

Many of these questions we were able to answer. But if coal operators themselves had not carried over the statistical machinery developed during the war, we would have been forced to the humiliating confession that we did not know facts which at the time were of the most vital importance.

In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of coal; that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, produce annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground; that 35 per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 years we have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 tons per annum; that if last year's coal were used as construction material it would build a wall as huge as the Great Wall of China around every boundary of the United States from Maine to Vancouver, down the Pacific to San Diego and eastward following the Mexican border and the coast to Maine again; and that this same coal contains latent power sufficient to lift this same wall 200 miles high in the air, according to one of our greatest engineers .

Such facts are surely startling. They serve to stimulate a certain pride and give us a great confidence in our industrial future; yet they are not as immediately important, when the mines threaten to close, as would be a few figures showing how much coal we have in stock piles and where it is! And months since we called upon Congress to grant the money that we might secure these figures, but no notice was taken of the urged requests until, late in the summer, a committee of the Senate awoke to this need and indorsed our petition.

NATIONAL STOCK TAKING.

The Government should have a more complete knowledge of the coal and of other foundation industries than can be found elsewhere, and we should not fear national stock taking as a continuing process. It is indeed the beginning of wisdom. The war revealed to us how delinquent in this regard we had been in the past. One day when the full story is told of the struggle of the Army engineer to meet war emergency demands, and this is supplemented by the tale of the effort made by the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board, it will be realized more seriously than now how little of stock taking we have done in this generous, optimistic land.

When any such undertaking is proposed, however, it at once appears to arouse the fear that it is somehow the beginning of a malevolent policy called "conservation," and conservation has had a mean meaning to many ears. It connoted stinginess and a provincial thrift, spies in the guise of Government inspectors, hateful interferences with individual enterprise and initiative, governmental haltings and cowardices, and all the constrictions of an arrogant, narrow, and academic-minded bureaucracy which can not think largely and feels no responsibility for national progress. Needless to say this fear should not, need not be. The word should mean helpfulness, not hindrance--helpfulness to all who wish to use a resource and think in larger terms than that of the greatest immediate profit; hindrance only to those who are spendthrift. A conservation which results in a stalemate as between the forces of progress and governmental inertia is criminal, while a conservation that is based on the fuller, the more essential use of a resource is statesmanship.

To know what we have and what we can do with it--and what we should not do with it, also!--is a policy of wisdom, a policy of lasting progress. And in furtherance of such a policy the first step is to know our resources--our national wealth in things and in their possibilities; the second step is to know their availability for immediate use; the third step is to guard them against waste either through ignorance or wantonness; and the fourth step is to prolong their life by invention and discovery.

COAL AS A NATIONAL ASSET.

Next to the fertility of our soil, we have no physical asset as valuable as our coal deposits. Although we are sometimes alarmed because those deposits nearest to the industrial centers are rapidly declining and we can already see within this century the end of the anthracite field, if it is made to yield as much continuously as at present, yet it is a safe generalization that we have sufficient coal in the United States to last our people for centuries to come. An extra scuttleful on the fire or shovelful in the furnace does not threaten the life of the race, even if some Russian or Chinese of the future does not resolve the atom or harness the hidden forces of the air. Whatever fears other nations may justifiably have as to their ability to continue in the vast rush of a machine world, there can be no question of our ability to last.

The present strike, however, makes quite clear, perhaps for the first time, that it is not the coal in the mountain that is of value, but that which is in the yard. And between the two there may be a great gulf fixed. Therefore, we are put to it to make the best of what we have. We turn from telling how much coal we use to a study of how little we can live upon and do the day's work of the Nation. And this is, I believe, as it should be. Indeed I feel justified in saying that the problem of this strike is not to be solved in its deeper significances until we know much more about coal than we know now, and this especially as to the manner in which it is taken from its bed and brought to our cellars.

PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY.

This transfer is effected by a kind of carrier chain, the links of which are the operator, the miner, the railroad, and the public. We choose, to please ourselves, the link in this chain upon which we place the responsibility for its failure to work; but before indulging ourselves in abuse of arrogant coal barons or dictatorial labor unions, it may lie as well to ask whether we of the public are not responsible in some part for this failure to function. I do not refer now to the failure of society to provide methods of industrial mediation or other adjustment of such labor difficulties. My question is, whether or not the public is at all at fault when a nation wealthy beyond all others in coal finds itself with so small a supply on hand when a strike comes--but a few days removed from the gravest troubles. The answer, to my mind, turns upon the manner in which we have done business.

We have been content to go without insurance as to a coal reserve. Each day has brought its daily supply. There was no thought of railroads stopping or mines closing down, so that large storage facilities have not been provided, and, indeed, we would rebel at paying for our coal the added cost of caring for it outside its native warehouse. We have not thought in terms of apprehension, but, as always, in the calm certainty that the stream of supply would flow without ceasing. In some way there would be coal into which we could drive our shovels when the need was felt.

No wonder, therefore, that we are rudely disturbed when one link in the carrier chain from coal-in-place to coal-in-the-furnace breaks. It simply is one of those things which doesn't happen. And not having happened sufficiently often to give us fear, we have had no thought that we should provide against it. It is a most heterodox thing to say, but we may find that a bit more foresight on the part of the public would certainly have made less sudden the present crisis. Let us look, for instance, into the matter of the coal miners' year and see if it is not fixed in some degree by the habit of the public in its purchasing.

THE MINERS' YEAR.

The record year, 1918, with everything to stimulate production had an average of only 249 working days for the bituminous mines of the country. This average of the country included a minimum among the principal coal-producing States of 204 days for Arkansas and a maximum of 301 for New Mexico. In such a State as Ohio the average working year is under 200 days. In 1917 the miners of New Mexico reached an average of 321 days, and in the largest field, the Raton field, it was actually 336--probably the record for steady operation.

This short year in coal-mine operation is due in part to seasonal fluctuation in demand. The mines averaged only 24 hours a week during the spring months. The weekly report of that date showed that 80 per cent of the lost time was due to "no market" and only 15 per cent to "labor shortage," while "car shortage" was a negligible factor. In contrast with this should be taken the last week before the strike, when the average hours operated were 39 and "no market" was a negligible item in lost time, while "car shortage" was by far the largest item. It follows that the short year is a source of loss to both operator and mine worker and is a tax on the consumer.

With substantially the same number of mines and miners working this year as last, the accumulative production for the first 10 months of this year is 100,000,000 tons less than that mined in the same period last year. This 25 per cent loss in output means that both plant and labor have been less productive, and, in terms of capital and labor, coal cost the Nation more this year than last. For in the long run both capital and labor require a living wage.

The public must accept responsibility for the coal industry and pay for carrying it on the year round. Mine operators and mine workers of whatever mines are necessary to meet the needs of the country must be paid for a year's work. The shorter the working year the less coal is mined per man and per dollar invested in plant, and eventually the higher priced must be the coal. It is obvious that the 264 short tons of coal mined by the average British miner last year could not be as cheap per ton as the 942 tons mined by the average American mine worker, backed up as he was with more efficient plant.

It would clearly appear that the coal business may be stabilized, not wholly, but in a very large measure, in some of the western fields, if the public does not regard its supply of coal as it does its supply of domestic water, which requires only that the faucet shall be opened to bring forth a gushing supply. Coal does not have pressure behind it which forces it out of the mine and into the coal yard. It rather must be drawn out by the suction of demand. And herein the public must play its part by keeping that demand as steady and uniform as possible.

HAVE WE TOO MANY MINES AND MINERS?

The problem of the miner and his industry may be stated in another way. We consume all the coal we produce. We produce it with labor that upon social and economic grounds works as a rule too few days in the year. We therefore must have a longer miners' year and fewer miners or a longer miners' year and additional markets. One or the other is inevitable unless we are to carry on the industry as a whole as an emergency industry, holding men ready for work when they are not needed in order that they may be ready for duty when the need arises. There are too many mines to keep all the miners employed all of the time or to give them a reasonable year's work. This conclusion is based on the assumption that we now produce only enough coal from all the mines to meet the country's demand, which is the fact. More coal produced would not sell more coal, but more coal demanded would result in greater coal production. With the full demand met by men working two-thirds or less of the time in the year there can not be a longer year given to all the miners without more demand for coal. This seems to be manifest. Therefore the miners must remain working but part time as now, or fewer miners must work more days, or market must be found for more coal and thus all the miners given a longer year. If we worked all of our miners in all of our mines a reasonable year, we would have a great overproduction. And to have all our mines work a longer period means that we must find some place in which to sell more coal, either at home or abroad.

Why have we so many mines working so many miners? There can be no one-word reply to this question. It penetrates into almost every social and economic condition of the country--the initiative of capital, the size of the country, the pride of localities, the intense competition between railroads, their inability to furnish cars when needed, the manner in which cars are apportioned between mines, the manner in which the railroads are operated so that movement is slow and equipment is short, and this runs into the need for new facilities, such as more yards, more tracks, more equipment, which brings us into the need for more capital and so on and on.

We have none too many mines or too many miners to supply our need if the mines are operated as at present. But we have too many to fill that need if they are operated on a basis nearer to 100 per cent of possible production.

THE LONG VIEW.

Passing from the labor phase of the coal situation to the larger aspect of our coal supply as related to the whole problem of the economical production of light, heat, and power, which Sir William Crookes has characterized as "first among the immediate practical problems of science," we find ourselves both rich and wasteful, following the primrose path, heedless of the morrow and not yet conscious that the morrow is to be a day of battle.

In the first place we treat coal as if it were a thing which was exclusively for home use, a nonexportable commodity which must be used "on the farm," whereas it should be treated with profound respect, because we know from Paris that sacred treaties and national boundaries turn on its presence. The world wants our coal, envies us for having it, fears us because of it. It is not only useful to us, but it has a cash value in the markets of the world. Therefore it should be saved.

In the next place we treat coal as if it were all alike, not selected by nature for specific uses; whereas we should choose our coal with as scientific a judgment as we choose our reading glasses. There is coal for coke and coal for furnaces and coal for house use and coal adapted for one kind of boiler and a different kind of coal for a different kind of boiler. Therefore we should discriminate in coal.

And again we have shown little willingness to dignify coal by seeking to draw out by improved mechanical processes all the stored content of heat in this lump of carbon. Instead we content ourselves by giving it a mere pauper touch, driving off the greater volume of its value into the air. This is a task for the mechanical engineer.

Then, too there is the problem of using coal in the form of steam or in the more exalted form of electric current. The lifting, bobbing lid of James Watt's teakettle did not speak the last word in power. We are only beginning to know how we may move on from one form of motive power to another. The wastefulness of steam power as contrasted with electric power is a real challenging problem in conservation by itself.

And then we naturally ask, Why this long haul over mountains and through tunnels and across bridges and along streets and into houses, by railroad, truck, and on the backs of men, when at the very pit mouth, or within the mine itself, this same coal might be transformed into electricity and by wire served into factories and homes 100, 200, 300 miles from the mine? Why burden our congested railroads with this traffic? Why strew our streets with this dirt? This may be a practicable thing, a wise thing; it deserves study if coal is worth conserving.

Are there no substitutes for coal which we can use and can not export? This question immediately raises the water-power possibilities of our land, of which only the most superficial study has been made. Sell coal and use electricity would appear a thrifty policy.

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