Part 28

The Royal Commissioners estimate that the North-American coal-fields contain an untouched coal area equal to seventy times the whole of ours. Further investigation is likely to increase rather than diminish this estimate. An important portion of this vast source of supply is well situated for shipment, and may be easily worked at little cost. Hitherto, the American coal-fields have been greatly neglected, partly on account of the temptations to agricultural occupation which are afforded by the vast area of the American continent, and partly by the barbarous barriers of American politics. Large amounts of capital which, under the social operation of the laws of natural selection, would have been devoted to the unfolding of the vast mineral resources of the United States, are still wastefully invested in the maintenance of protectively nursed and sickly imitation of English manufactures. When the political civilization of the United States become sufficiently advanced to establish a national free-trade policy, this perverted capital will flow into its natural channels, and the citizens of the States will be supplied with the more highly elaborated industrial products at a cheaper rate than at present, by obtaining them in exchange for their superabundant raw material from those European countries where population is overflowing the raw material supplies.

When this time arrives, and it may come with the characteristic suddenness of American changes, the question of American versus English coal in the English markets will reduce itself to one of horizontal versus vertical difficulties. If at some future period the average depth of the Newcastle coal-pits becomes 3000 feet greater than those of the pits near the coast of the Atlantic or American lakes, and if the horizontal difficulties of 3000 miles of distance are less than the vertical difficulties of 3000 feet of depth, then coals will be carried from America to Newcastle. They will reach London and the towns on the South Coast before this, that is, when the vertical difficulties at Newcastle plus those of horizontal traction from Newcastle to the south, exceed those of eastward traction across the Atlantic.

As the cost of carriage increases in a far smaller ratio than the open ocean distance, there is good reason for concluding that the day when London houses will be warmed by American coal is not very far distant. We, in England, who have outgrown the pernicious folly of “protecting native industry” will heartily welcome so desirable a consummation. It will render unnecessary any further inquiry into the existence of London “coal rings” or combinations for restricted output among colliers or their employers. If any morbid impediments to the free action of the coal trade do exist, the stimulating and purgative influence of foreign competition will rapidly restore the trade to a healthy condition.

The effect of such introduction of American coal will not be to perpetually lock up our deep coal nor even to stop our gradual progress towards it. We shall merely proceed downwards at a much slower rate, for in America, as with ourselves, the easily accessible coal will be first worked, and as that becomes exhausted, the deeper, more remote, thinner, and inferior will only remain to be worked at continually increasing cost. When both our own and foreign coal cost more than peat, or wood, or other fuel, then and therefore will coal become quite inaccessible to us, and this will probably be the case long before we are stopped by the physical obstacles of depth, density, or high temperature.

As this rise of value must of necessity be gradual, and as the superseding of British by foreign coal, as well as the final disuse of coal, will gradually converge from the circumference towards the centres of supply, from places distant from coal-pits to those close around them, we shall have ample warning and opportunity for preparing for the social changes that the loss of the raw material will enforce.

The above-quoted writer, in the “Edinburgh Review,” expresses in strong and unqualified terms an idea that is very prevalent in England and abroad: he says that, “The course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power is directed by coal. That wonderful mineral, of the possession of which Englishmen have thought so little but wasted so much, is the modern realization of the philosopher’s stone. This chemical result of primeval vegetation has been the means by its abundance of raising this country to an unprecedented height of prosperity, and its deficiency might have the effect of lowering it to slow decline.”

*** “It raises up one people and casts down another; it makes railways on land and paths on the sea. It founds cities, it rules nations, it changes the course of empires.”

The fallacy of these customary attributions of social potency to mere mineral matter is amply shown by facts that are previously stated by the reviewer himself. He tells us that “the coal-fields of China extend over an area of 400,000 square miles; and a good geologist, Baron Von Richthofen, has reported that he himself has found a coal-field in the province of Hunau covering an area of 21,700 square miles, which is nearly double our British coal area of 12,000 square miles. In the province of Shansi, the Baron discovered nearly 30,000 square miles of coal with unrivaled facilities for mining. But all these vast coal-fields, capable of supplying the whole world for some thousands of years to come, are lying unworked.”

If “the course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of power” were directed by coal, then China, which possesses 33·3 times more of this directive force than Great Britain, and had so early a start in life, should be the supreme summit of the industrial world. If this solid hydrocarbon “raises up one people and casts down another,” the Chinaman should, be raised thirty-three times and three tenths higher than the Englishman; if it “makes railways on land and paths on the sea,” the Chinese railways should be 33·3 times longer than ours, and the tonnage of their mercantile marine 33·3 times greater.

Every addition to our knowledge of the mineral resources of other parts of the world carries us nearer and nearer to the conclusion that the old idea of the superlative abundance of the natural mineral resources of England is a delusion. We are gradually discovering that, with the one exception of tin-stone, we have but little if any more than an average supply of useful ores and mineral fuel. It is a curious fact, and one upon which we may profitably ponder, that the poorest and the worst iron ores that have ever been commercially reduced, are those of South Staffordshire and the Cleveland district, and these are the two greatest iron-making centres of the world. There are no ores of copper, zinc, tin, nickel, or silver in the neighborhood of Birmingham, nor any golden sands upon the banks of the Rea, yet this town is the hardware metropolis of the world, the fatherland of gilding and plating, and is rapidly becoming supreme in the highest art of gold and silver work.

These, and a multitude of other analogous facts, abundantly refute the idea that the native minerals, the natural fertility, the navigable rivers, or the convenient seaports, determine the industrial and commercial supremacy of nations. The moral forces exerted by the individual human molecules are the true components which determine the resulting force and direction of national progress. It is the industry and skill of our workmen, the self-denial, the enterprise, and organizing ability of our capitalists, that has brought our coal so precociously to the surface and redirected for human advantage the buried energies of ancient sunbeams, while the fossil fuel of other lands has remained inert.

The foreigner who would see a sample of the source of British prosperity must not seek for it in a geological museum or among our subterranean rocks; let him rather stand on the Surrey side of London Bridge from 8 to 10 A.M. and contemplate the march of one of the battalions of our metropolitan industrial army, as it pours forth in an unceasing stream from the railway stations towards the City. An analysis of the moral forces which produce the earnest faces and rapid steps of these rank and file and officers of commerce will reveal the true elements of British greatness, rather than any laboratory dissection of our coal or ironstone.

Fuel and steam-power have been urgently required by all mankind. Englishmen supplied these wants. Their urgency was primary and they were first supplied, even though the bowels of the earth had to be penetrated in order to obtain them. In the present exceptional and precocious degree of exhaustion of our coal treasures, we have the effect not the cause of British industrial success.

If in a ruder age our greater industrial energy enabled us to take the lead in supplying the ruder demands of our fellow-creatures, why should not a higher culture of those same abundant energies qualify us to maintain our position and enable us to minister to the more refined and elaborate wants of a higher civilization? There are other necessary occupations quite as desirable as coal-digging, furnace-feeding, and cotton-spinning.

The approaching exhaustion of our coal supplies should therefore serve us as a warning for preparation. Britain will be forced to retire from the coal trade, and should accordingly prepare her sons for higher branches of business,—for those in which scientific knowledge and artistic training will replace mere muscular strength and mechanical skill. We have attained our present material prosperity mainly by our excellence in the use of steam-power; let us now struggle for supremacy in the practical application of brain-power.

We have time and opportunity for this. The exhaustion of our coal supplies will go on at a continually retarding pace—we shall always be approaching the end, but shall never absolutely reach it, as every step of approximation will diminish the rate of approach; like the everlasting process of reaching a given point by continually halving our distance from it.

First of all we shall cease to export coal; then we shall throw up the most voracious of our coal-consuming industries, such as the reduction of iron-ore in the blast-furnace; then copper-smelting and the manufacture of malleable iron and steel from the pig, and so on progressively. If we keep in view the natural course and order of such progress, and intelligently prepare for it, the loss of our coal need not in the smallest degree retard the progress of our national prosperity.

If, however, we act upon the belief that the advancement of a nation depends upon the mere accident of physical advantages, if we fold our arms and wait for Providence to supply us with a physical substitute for coal, we shall become Chinamen, minus the unworked coal of China.

If our educational efforts are conducted after the Chinese model; if we stultify the vigor and freshness of young brains by the weary, dull, and useless cramming of words and phrases; if we poison and pervert the growing intellect of British youth by feeding it upon the decayed carcases of dead languages, and on effete and musty literature, our progress will be proportionately Chinaward; but if we shake off that monkish inheritance which leads so many of us blindly to believe that the business of education is to produce scholars rather than men, and direct our educational efforts towards the requirements of the future rather than by the traditions of the past, we need have no fear that Great Britain will decline with the exhaustion of her coal-fields.

The teaching and training in schools and colleges must be directly and designedly preparatory to those of the workshop, the warehouse, and the office; for if our progress is to be worthy of our beginning, the moral and intellectual dignity of industry must be formally acknowledged and systematically sustained and advanced. Hitherto, we have been the first and the foremost in utilizing the fossil forces which the miner has unearthed; hereafter we must in like manner avail ourselves of the living forces the philosopher has revealed. Science must become as familiar among all classes of Englishmen as their household fuel. The youth of England must be trained to observe, generalize, and investigate the phenomena and forces of the world outside themselves; and also those moral forces within themselves, upon the right or wrong government of which the success or failure, the happiness or misery of their lives will depend.

With such teaching and training the future generations of England will make the best and most economical use of their coal while it lasts, and will still advance in material and moral prosperity in spite of its progressive exhaustion.

“THE ENGLISHMAN’S FIRESIDE.”

During the investment of Paris, the Comptes Rendus of the Acadamy of Sciences were mainly filled with papers on the construction and guidance of balloons; with the results of ingenious researches on methods of making milk and butter without the aid of cows; on the extraction of nutritious food from old boots, saddles, and other organic refuse; and other devices for rendering the general famine more endurable. In like manner, our present coal famine is directing an important amount of scientific, as well as commercial, attention to the subject of economizing coal and finding substitutes for it.

A few thoughtful men have shocked their fellow-sufferers very outrageously by wishing that coal may reach 3l. per ton, and remain at that price for a year or two. I confess that, in spite of my own empty coal-cellar and small income, I am one of those hard-hearted cool calculators, being confident that, even from the narrow point of view of my own outlay in fuel, the additional amount I should thus pay in the meantime would be a good investment, affording by an ample return in the saving due to consequent future cheapness.

Regarded from a national point of view, I am convinced that 3l. a ton in London, and corresponding prices in other districts, if thus maintained, would be an immense national blessing. I say this, being convinced that nothing short of pecuniary pains and penalties of ruinous severity will stir the blind prejudices of Englishmen, and force them to desist from their present stupid and sinful waste of the greatest mineral treasure of the island.

One of the grossest of our national manifestations of Conservative stupidity is our senseless idolatrous worship of that domestic fetish, “the Englishman’s fireside.” We sacrifice health, we sacrifice comfort, we begrime our towns and all they contain with sooty foulness, we expend an amount far exceeding the interest of the national debt, and discount our future prospects of national prosperity, in order that we may do what? Enjoy the favorite recreation of idiots. It is a well-known physiological fact that an absolute idiot, with a cranium measuring sixteen inches in circumference, will sit and stare at a blazing fire for hours and hours continuously, all the day long, except when feeding, and that this propensity varies with the degree of mental vacuity.

Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation of a party of English fire-worshipers seated in a semicircle round the family fetish on a keen frosty day. They huddle together, roast their knees, and grill their faces, in order to escape the chilling blast that is brought in from all the chinks of leaky doors and windows by the very agent they employ, at so much cost, for the purpose of keeping the cold away. The bigger the fire the greater the draught, the hotter their faces the colder their backs, the greater the consumption of coal the more abundant the crop of chilblains, rheumatism, catarrh, and other well-deserved miseries.

The most ridiculous element of such an exhibition is the complacent self-delusion of the victims. They believe that their idol bestows upon them an amount of comfort unknown to other people, that it affords the most perfect and salubrious ventilation, and, above all, that it is a “cheerful” institution. The “cheerfulness” is, perhaps, the broadest part of the whole caricature, especially when we consider that, according to this theory of the cheerfulness of fire-gazing, the 16-inch idiot must be the most cheerful of all human beings.