THE EXHAUSTION OF COAL.
FOR the next hundred years it will not be advisable to send coals to Newcastle. But certainly less than three hundred and sixty years hence, the shares of a company with that object in view may be quoted at a premium. Doubtless most of us recollect the cold shudder which ran through the nrktion in 1866, when Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Mill, drawing their principal arguments and figures from Professor Jevons' work, "On the Coal Question," told us that we had better set our house in order, and that landlords ought to encourage paying off the National Debt. Coal was running down at a rapid rate. Professor Jevons said our stores were destined to all intents and purposes to be exhausted in 110 years (taking the Commissioners' estimates); and it seemed probable that, like a steamer whose coal-bunkers get empty in mid-ocean, and whose crew take to the boats, England was one day to be abandoned by all but landowners. The labours of the Com- inissioners,—who, by the way, have done their work in admirable style, and who have pursued their investigations in a manner which is almost as good a lesson in inductive logic as Dr. Wells' famous inquiry into the causes of dew—do not show that these fears were the phantoms of an arithmetical imagination. There are a few hard, gritty facts at the bottom of the predictions of evil, and among such facts, showing that all is not well with us, are these :—Taking into account the difficulty of working steadily in an at- mosphere much above blood-heat, and setting off the fact that the deepest mines are generally the driest, and, owing to that circumstance, the most suitable for working, and the probability of our being enriched with inventions and expedients for cooling the air of mines by such means as "the long-wall" system, the possibility of carrying work- ings to a depth of four thousand feet may be assumed. Of course, this opinion is hazarded with a good deal of doubt. The deepest colliery shaft in England, that of Rosebridge, near Wigan, is only 2,376 feet from bank to "sump ;" and the temperature and difficulties of mining below that depth are wrapt in obscurity. All that can be safely said is that at a depth of 3,240 feet with present appliances the temperature would rise to 980, or blood-heat, and with existing ventilating apparatus most men cannot labour hard and steadily in that at- mosphere. The more important subject of investigation, however, was the amount of coal procurable at a reasonable depth,—say at 4,000 feet.
The committee charged with the obtaining of this in- formation reported that, making allowances for waste, there are accessible, or may be so, 90,207 millions tons, —in other words, that every householder in Britain has po- tentially got about 38,000 tons in his coal-cellar. It is to be carefully observed, however, that these figures concern solely the coal-fields lying above the Permian, Old Red Sandstone, and other contiguous formations. And another task which engaged a separate committee was to ascertain what amount of coal could be found at a depth of 4,000 feet under the Permian formation. The result which they report is, that they think 56,273 millions of tons may be dug out of these deposits at a depth of 4,000 feet. Altogether, then, there are probably 146,480 millions of tons available for use, which at the present rate of consumption and increase of consumption would last only 110 years. But assuming—and some calculations made by Mr. Price Williams make the assumption apparently reason- able—that the maximum consumption of coals per head has been reached, and that the annual increase in consumption per head will in future follow a diminishing ratio, there would be coal enough to last for 360 years. Suppose, however, that every year the consumption increased by three million tons ; our stores would run out in 276 years. In short, we may say that the two extreme estimates given by the Com- missioners are 360 years and 110 years, always provided that 4,000 feet proves to be, as it seems to be, the lowest depth to which we can go. Some will be of opinion that the most curious feature of this remarkable report is that it is the first example in history of
national policy extending its vision beyond a generation or two. That the State of the present day, that we of the nineteenth century should be at all interested in what may come to pass some hundreds of years hereafter,—why, there is not another instance of the like forethought in all the annals of the world. Fancy Queen Elizabeth's subjects bothering their heads about the subjectsof Queen Victoria and yet it is that, or something• like that, which we to-day are doing. We are moral people, we people of the nineteenth century, thus having an eye to the welfare and warmth of our children to the tenth generation. We may make such a reflection on perusing this report without. vanity or egotism. It must be admitted that the estimates are vitiated by inadvertence to the probabilities relating to foreign consumption ; and we think that there is also a fallacy allowed to be interwoven with some of the calculations, from its being assumed that population would tend to decrease pretty rapidly when the difficulties of procuring a supply of coal were really felt. In these circumstances of pressure, emigration would, of course, set in ; and in Mr. Price leVilliams' assumption that the population of Great Britain may in A.D. 2231,, the year of exhaustion, amount to 131 millions, there. seems to enter a fallacy. Population does increase at its present rate chiefly because our manufactures, dependent on coal, flourish ; and it is a fallacy, therefore, to suppose that population would augment at anything like its old rate, while coal, a necessary condition of manufactures, was be- coming scarcer and dearer. In short, coal is the cause causans of our dense population, and some of the calculations seem to us to take the effect for the cause. On the other hand must be set the fact that the figures given by the Commissioners would be misread, if it was assumed that for 360 years we should go on as comfortably as we now do. Much of the coal included in the returns, be it remembered, could be profitably excavated only at a high price ; and the mineral advantages which we now possess over other countries might disappear in a century. We are pulling, so to speak, at an elastic band ; but ob- serve that every additional inch we stretch it, the task
is harder. It is a vulgar fallacy to fancy that we can stick to the island until the last scuttleful of fuel is thrown on. the fire.
Professor Jevons has traced some of the economical effects of exhaustion of coal, or, to use a more accurate and practical term, the appreciation of coal. They would very much resemble those which economists predict will come to pass in virtue of Ricardo's law of rent. In fact, this would be only an instance and application of his theory ; and it is a curious proof of the shortcomings of this law that it should prove more valuable as regards coal than land. The returns on capital falling, it would tend to move elsewhere. Labour, finding no adequate compensation, would follow. Only the landowner with the
burthen of a vast debt would remain. Not only would our pre-eminence in 'manufacture pass away, but the causes which conspire to make England the great entrepot of the world would disappear also. What, for instance, is the great obstacle to the large quantity of tea now shipped to Russia going straight to Odessa via the Suez Canal ? Why is it at least as remunerative to send the tea to England, to be reshipped to the ports of Northern Russia ? Because the trader gets at Odessa nothing which the Oriental cares to have—because we can send the tea ships back with Manchester goods which the Chinaman likes. And, of course, if coal grew dear, our " pull " over our neighbours in this respect would vanish. Altogether the depreciation of gold would prove in its remotest consequence but an insignificant economical fact compared with the decided depreciation of coal ; and there is no blinking the fact that England may one day go out,—her sons fled away to other countries, herself barren and empty. At all events, what economists call the stationary state seems not so distant as it did before this report was published.
Previous page
