Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/229

Rh The property of indicating the presence of very minute quantities of gas in a room is claimed for an instrument recently described by C. von Jahn, in the "Revue Industrielle." This is a porous cup, inverted and closed by a perforated rubber stopper. Through the perforation in the stopper the interior of the cup is connected with a pressure-gauge containing colored water. It is claimed that the diffusion of gas through the earthenware raises the level of the water in the gauge so delicately that the presence of one half of one per cent of gas may be detected by it. Other instruments of a slightly different character are credited by their inventors with most sensitive power of indicating gas-leakages, but their practical efficiency remains to be demonstrated. An automatic cut-off for use outside of houses in which natural gas is consumed has been invented, but this writer knows nothing of either its mode of action or its effectiveness.

The great economic question, however, connected with the use of natural gas is, How will it affect the industrial interests of the country? There are grounds for the belief that a sufficient supply of natural gas may be found in the vicinity of Pittsburg to reduce the cost of fuel to such a degree as to make competition in the manufacture of iron, steel, and glass, in any part of the country where coal must be used, out of the question. Such a condition of affairs would probably result in driving the great manufacturing concerns of the country into the region where natural gas is to be obtained. That may be anywhere from the western slope of the Alleghanies to Lake Erie or to Lake Michigan. And, if the cost of producing iron, steel, and glass can be so cheapened by the new fuel, the tariff question may undergo some important modification in politics. For, if the reduction in the cost of fuel should ever become an offset to the lower rate of wages in Europe, the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, who have long been the chief support of the protective policy of the country, may lose their present interest in that question, and leave the tariff to shift for itself elsewhere. It should be remembered that natural gas is not, as yet, much cheaper than coal in Pittsburg. But it may safely be assumed that it will cheapen, as petroleum has done, by a development of the territory in which it is known to exist in enormous quantities. It is quite possible that, instead of buying gas, many factories will bore for it with success, or remove convenient to its natural sources, so that a gas-well may ultimately become an essential part of the "plant" of a mill or factory. Even now coal can not compete with gas in the manufacture of window-glass, for, the gas being free from sulphur and other impurities contained in coal, produces a superior quality of glass; so that in this branch of industry the question of superiority seems already settled.

Having said thus much of an industry now in its infancy but promising great growth, I submit tables of analyses of common and of the natural or marsh gas, the latter from a paper recently prepared by a