Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/546

 Our Annual Coal Drama

Each winter we have a coal shortage. What causes the trouble? Can we cure it?

By Lloyd E. Darling

���In the March number Popular Science Monthly discussed the taking over of the railroads by the Government, and the prob- able effect of the action on the coal situation. This article deals particularly with the coal shortage itself, its causes and effects. — Ekiitor

��Actors in Our Annual Coal Drama — Parti.

These are the actors who go across our stage each winter. Many figures you will doubtlessly recognize. Up in the corner the sturdy miner goeth to work. Sometimes he comes back injured. Likewise do the many trainmen and others who have to do with the carrying of the coal to the consumer. They have been especial- ly battered up this winter. These are typefied by the lower figure. In the center, the coal operator himself. He may be plump and prosperous as shown, or wan and lean, depending on how business goes. Beside him is one of his trusty business-getters. And beyond them are our railroads, harassed, and upset by such devils as congestion, car-shortage and freezing weather

��WE'VE had a coal shortage this winter — a severe coal shortage. Railroads have been tied up, people have suffered, legal holidays have been declared, troubles of all kinds have developed. Certainly all our troubles are not due to the war alone. We have had coal shortages before, and no wars to bother us.

How do we get ourselves into such a predicament every winter? Who or what is to blame? Is there a way out?

On the opposite page we present a diagram recently prepared by Chester C. Gilbert, Curator of Mineral Technology, United States National Museum. It indicates comparative coal supplies of all regions in the world. This diagram demonstrates one point: No matter how

��many "coal-shortages" we have now, or will have in the future, they are not and cannot be due to a lack of coal in the ground.

Geologists estimate that the Nation has between four and five trillion tons of coal within its boundaries yet unmined. What then is the reason it is so hard to get coal into a man's bins? Diamonds have hardly been more "scarce" than has coal.

The map on page 535 is interesting. It shows the hard and the soft-coal areas of this country. If you are a householder, what kind of coal was it you used this winter? Was it hard coal ; or Pocahontas, perhaps? If hard coal, look where it had to come from! Way up in eastern Pennsylvania. If Pocahontas, it was

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