Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 119, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1918 — World’s Dependence on Coal. [ARTICLE]

World’s Dependence on Coal.

Our ehtire modern civilization rests on coal and its ally, petroleum. These are the principal sources of mechanical energy. The scientific method has advanced so far that it is conceivable at least that new sources of energy might be tapped. Power might imaginably be gotten directly from the sun. It might become practical to use the motion of the sea and the wind. Chemistry might discover something remotely akin to radium which would do man’s work. But without epochal discoveries and inventions the world as we now know it is Indissolubly dependent upon coaL