Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 December 1892 — The Waste of Coal. [ARTICLE]

The Waste of Coal.

A writer in an English journal computes that when a steamship propelled by engines of 12,000-horse power carries 500 passengers across the Atlantic, each of those passengers has at his service the equivalent of twenty-four horses working day and night throughout the voyage. To this must be added the labor of a vmble army of employes—the crew, officers, stewards and miscellaneous servants —and, taking the sum total into consideration, the writer referred to cannot be blamed for pronouncing the present a highly extravagant age. Twenty-four horses is certainly a luxurious team for a single individual; yet that is what his . share of the coal consumption represents when a swift steamer of the modern type conveys him from New York to Liverpool. And remembering the further fact that when the earth has given up its long-hidden hoard of coal there is no more to be had at any price—for coal Is not growing while men are burning it—the lesson is an obvious one that some economy ought to be practiced in this regard. Obvious, but perfectly futile. There being, ft may be safely assumed, coal enough to keep the present generation going, however vapidly and voluptuously it may live and move, nothing is more certain than that it will use its resources to the utmost. Posterity must take what coal is left. But possibly posterity may find a more excellent way, and leive the remnant of coal, if there ik to geologists and antiquarians.l