Page:Onward Sweep of the Machine Process (ca 1917).pdf/29

Rh world's output of coal will be affected by the advent of the Diesel motor as a power and heat-producing means, it is safe to say that coal miners will lose their best weapon in the struggle against the oppressing class by it.

When the Diesel motor has supplanted the steam engine of the private and municipal plants, also of railways and steamships, the necessity of coal will be no more of such an imperative nature as it is today. Coal will then occupy but a secondary position in modern industries.

Therefore, the future strikes of the coal miners will not have the same compelling strength and important consequences as they have at present. No more will it be possible to stop the country's railroads, to shut down factories and to cripple the world's commerce by tying up the steamships as it has been attained lately during the coal miners' strike in Great Britain.

The same is the case with the railroad men. A well-organized railroad strike has the same, if not a stronger, effect than a miner's strike; the coal is of no use in front of the mines, the railroad men must first bring it to the place where it is needed. The coal traffic is indeed the chief item of railroad transportation, at least this is so in the United States. Not even a combined strike of the miners and the railroad men will have a reasonable fraction of the fundamental effect that a strike of either has today. The reason for this is that the oil for the Diesel motors undoubtedly will be conveyed to the industrial centers and to the sea coast through pipe lines, as it is largely done nowadays.

More power is spent through the plow than in all the factories in the world. The toil of turning the cultivated face of the earth once each year by the plow consumes more power than all the railways, street cars and automobiles combined. For every single acre of land, a man with plow and team must traverse a distance of