Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 January 1893 — THE WORLD’S COAL SUPPLY. [ARTICLE]

THE WORLD’S COAL SUPPLY.

It Has A Limit Which Sonne Day Mast Be Reached. The coal pit is not inexhaustible. The bottom mjty not he iu sight, nor its future cleaning up be of any immediate concern, but its eventuality is none the less a predetermined fact, says the New York Journal. It may or may not be of any appreciate concern when its last contribution to human service is dumpAl in a coal bin, as in the unseen process of its manufacture and storage it has evidenced a creative design, in which the provision of fuel for man’s use was not limited to an exhaustible article. The formation of fuel was not arrested'when anthracite and bituminous coal became a mineral fact, nor did the process of formulation stop when what is known as the creative week bad its Saturday night. This may qualify but it does not annul the fact of a limit to futurecoai supplies. The world’s annual output of coal has, it is estimated, reached a total of 4820106,000 tons, and the countries contributing to that enormous total were as follows, together with the amounts they produced in 1890: Great Britain and Ireland, 128,000,000 tons; America, United States (estimated for 1891), 141,000,000 tons; Germany, 90,000,000 tons; France, 28,000,000 tons; Belgium, 20,000,000 tons; Austria, 9,000,000 tons; Russia, (1888), 6,000.000 tons; others. 9,000.000 tons. During the last twenty years there has been a marked increase in the consumption of coal, which was, no doubt, commensurate with increased industrial activity. Thus, comparing European countries alone, the average annual output for the period of 1890-91 was upward of 62,000.000 tons greater than during the previous decade, and that the interest bade fair to be maintained, so that the world's consumption of coal would soon reach 500,000,000 tons per annum, if it had not already done so. In an investigation made by a royal commissioner as to the ascertainable sources of coal in Great Britain, it was ascertained that not more than 146,778,000.000 tons were available at depths not exceeding 1.000 feet from the surface, a reserve which, at the present rate of in - n-ease of population and of coal consumption, would be practically exlausted in less .han 300 years, * The law of limit in this, as in all jther mineral products is, of course, without exception. It is simply a inference in tonnage. Industrial activity, to which, under present conditions, the use of coal is indispensable for steam and power purposes, is aot only multiplying the demands of jonsumption, but has a widening area of use, to which the map of the two hemispheres is the only limit. We cannot add a pound of coal to aature’s deposits or build an addition so the planetary cellar, but it is pos-> üble to economize a product in the ase of which civilization has been igaorantly wasteful.