Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1899 — Seven Hundred Years of Coal. [ARTICLE]

Seven Hundred Years of Coal.

According to the most authentic history of the coal trade, last year marked the seven hundredth anniversary of the use of coal as fuel. Taking the most moderate estimate of the antiquity of man. and considering the fact that the coal was always here, it apipe&re that we were' a long time in availing ourselves of this most valuable asset which nature placed at our disposal. Many civilizations flourished and died out without its use, and It may be said that its potentialities, as a factor in the progress of mankind, were never realized fully until the present century. Up to Its dawn, aside from the warming of the body and the cocking of food, little importance was attached to the fuel question. For these purposes a few fagots or billets of wood sufficed. But In time we discovered that In the fire there was a giant a thousand times more powerful than the fabled monsters of antiquity.