Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/689

Rh petition of coal produced from the newer coal districts at a cheaper rate.

Then again the proportion which the cost of labour will in future bear to the total cost of production, the rates of carriage paid and other circumstances, will influence not only the period but the actual resources of cheap coal. And it has been further suggested to the writer, that he has in the foregoing views not given sucient importance to the competition in the foreign coal trade of the large American and other deposits which, as yet are not fully developed, a. nd that we are already meeting ths competition, and (as coal is a thing which has a tendency to raise and carry itself), the area over which we have the command, will, before fifty years, contract more rapidly than the demand in it increases, so that this will increase the tendency of the annual output to increase more slowly; and ths:t the past development represents the effect of the stimulus of the whole world's market; but in future, the market will grow more circumscribed at the same time that our responsiveness to its stimulus diminishes. This view the writer agrees with to a limited extent only. The development of Foreign coal-fields has hitherto stimulated and not retarded-our development; but when our coal area has become occupied, a higher rate of development in the Foreign coal-fields will probably ensue, and this may be the means of extending the duration of our best coals for a little longer than half a century. Assuming the foregoing observations to be an approximate indication of the probable course of future development, the writer would be disposed to estimate the maximum coal output of Great Britain at from 250 to 300 million tons per annum, and that this rate of output may be attained in twenty-five years from the present time and continued for a further period of twenty- five years.

Taking 250 million tons as the average annual output from the best of our coal resources, we should have witlin the next fifty years a total extraction of nearly twelve thousand million tons out of a total of sixteen thousand million tons estimated as now remaining unworked, of our best and thickest coal-seams existing at a moderate depth below the surface, and it is therefore reasonable to assume, in the absence of more definite data and information, that, within fifty years or thereabouts from the present time, will commence a new element in .the commercial position of this nation, namely the operation of an increase in the cost of producing the raw material of coal. This increase in the cost of