Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1888 — About Coal. [ARTICLE]

About Coal.

The Pennsylvania output is nearly two-thirds that of the entire Union. Excluding colliery corsumpticn. the total output for 1886 was 107,682,209 short tone; of this Pennsylvania furnished 61,857,110 tons, 86,696 475 anthracite and £6 160,735 bituminous. Next to Pennsylvania comes Illinois with 9,246 435 tons, and Ohio with 8,435.2)1; lowa and West Virginia are about on thalevel, with something over 4.0C0 (00 tons each. After Indiana with 3.000,000 and Maryland with 2,517 577 tons, no State produced as much as 2 000,000 tens. It is worthy of note as showing that we are still in the mere infancy of cur product on, that only 8 2‘6 501 ehoit tone were produced during 1886 in what is called the Western coal field, stret thing from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, tbe best of it, by the way, being mined in tbe Indian Terriumry; - yet the coal area there is greater than that of any other coal field in the United States. The coals are of great variety, and underlie a fertile agricultural country destined in time to bear an enormous population. Its rapid increase must necessarily stimulate tbe developement of local mines. The sobering this winter in various parts of the West for lack of coal ought to and undoubtedly will lead to the opening of mines nearer home than the present sources. Tbe fact that Colorado produced in 1886 1 364,338 tons and Kansas 1 Territory 531,580 shows that considerabe progress has been made already in this direction, though there figures can only be regarded as the faintest foreshadowing of what the product of the Western coal field will be one of these days- As for the Rocky Mouota'n region, withits enormous deposits, the geologists have done nothing more than guess at tbe "krea in which workable coaTbeds will be fonn d, an d their surmise is so me w hat between 200,000 and 300,000 square miles.