Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/547

 Popular Science Monthly

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��UNITED iSTATES

(bitumimous)

��NORTH AMERICA

��mined in the West Virginia region. If you live in Nebraska, or North Dakota, or still farther away, this map brings home to you the long dis- tance that coal had to come.

If you are a manufacturer, how many hun- dred miles has your coal trav- eled this win- ter? Manufac- turers around Chicago de- mand coal from southern Illi- nois and from West Virginia. Closer at hand is a plentiful supply. Like- wise Iowa will not have Iowa coal, if it can help it. Those in the mountain re- gions of the West are none too well satis- fied with their own supply. In the East, they're such connoisseurs that only the choicest fuel beds are touched. The railroads are cluttered with the cross- ing and recrossing of coal trains from all these conflicting sources of supply. Smith wants coal from Jones* region; Jones

��UNITED STATES (ASTHRACITr)

��WORLD

��Courtesy United States National Museum

Comparative coal supplies of all regions in the world. Nick in the small cube shows hard coal we've used. Soft coal cube has hardly been scratched yet

��must have it from Smith's. Woe results. Transportation Causes Trouble

Our annual "coal shortage" is not a coal shortage; it's a transportation difficulty. And bound up with this, are our archaic meth- ods of using coal. To avoid smoke and sooty flues and poor steaming effects, a large share of our boilers and furnaces will take only c o m p a rati vely Even then they or five per coal's actual thieves work- to comb the good coals.

��good grades of coal, get only about four cent, or less of the energy. To keep these ing at all, owners hm)e country for reasonably It's their extremity that is one big factor in our coal difficulties. Many owners think their present plants effici- ent. They can well think again. If a

���Actors in Ovir Annual Coal Drama- Here the scene shifteth. No longer are we concerned with the producing end of the business. Above sundry com- mission men, wholesalers and brokers lock arms. To the right is the establishment of the local dealer. In the lower corner standeth he, himself. And below — below — is a certain gentleman with his pockets stripped. His knees are bent, and his toes turned far, far inward. He is the ulti- mate consumer — yourself. You recognize him, do you not?

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