Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

n considering. Heretofore we have been dealing with resources that can be renewed, the soil by proper management, the forests by re

. To-day the position of nations may almost be measured by its production and use. Iron and coal form the foundation of our prosperity. The value of each depends upon the amount and nearn

bstitutes for minerals will be devised long before the supply is exhausted. This may be true, and in a way the future must take care of itself, but until new

re under the most solemn obligation to take only our part of the store, and leave the rest untouched and unspoiled for those who are to come after us. When we consider what these mineral resources have done for our country in the last fifty years, when we realize

r-loads of freight out of every hundred carried by our railroads are made up of mineral products. More than a m

s out of every hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver, thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eigh

es or losses in the mining, handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than $1,500,000 per da

t be manufactured without their aid. Almost every particular of modern life would be changed if we no longer had plenty of fuel. Its use means its immediate and complet

s country was in 1814, when twenty-two tons of anthracite, or hard coal, were mined in Pennsylvania. An increasing amount was mined each year, but until 1821 the

round so that it could never be recovered. Within the next ten years as much was produced as in the entire seventy-five preceding years, and in this period 3,000,000,000 tons we

s during the entire history of our country up to that time, and the rate of consumption is still increasing. In 1907 the amount mined was about 450,000,000 tons. Counting on a continuance of the same rate of increase, in 1917 it will be 900,000,000 tons a year, and if the same conditions shou

childhood of Benjamin Franklin and others prominent in our early history; and if this nation could look

years ago (about the time of the Civil War) we were using an amount equal to a little more than a quarter of a ton for every man, woman an

coal it is able, with present methods, to reclaim from an acre of coal land, the estimate is made that this Pittsburg field will be exhausted in ninety-three years. A li

waste, and increase to continue, the coal supply will be exhausted by the year 2015 A. D., but taking into account the probable improvements in its use, the year 2027 A. D

as impossible for them to build roads up the steep cliffs, so some method of getting the coal down to the valleys had to be devised. Buffaloes roamed the western plains in countless millions, and were

skins, which sold for a few cents, for their horns, for a supply of steak, or for mere sport; and then one day people woke up to find that the buffalo had disappeared, not in one settlement only, as they had

coal, carries with it a deep lesson as to what will happen to the coal itself, even within the present century, unless

he first serious loss of our coal occurs at th

it might be used if it could be marketed near the mines and sold as low-grade coal. In the past there has been almost no market for it, and if it were either in the roof or bottom of the coal bed, it has been left unmined. If mixed with pure coal, the

r coal is wasted at the mines simply because steam-engines instead of gas-producer engines have been employed. If in the future installation of power this fact is taken i

ighest grade coal. In many mines, also, a roof of coal a foot or more in thickness must be left because the material above the coal is not solid enough to prevent cave-ins. When the mine is abandoned and closed these pillars and roofings remain untouched, because removing them constitutes one of the greatest dangers to

ew years. Much of this slack, which is the best grade of coal in a pulverized form, is left inside the mines. These wastes in abandoned roofing, pillars,

timbers of wood instead of these smaller pillars of coal. They also mine as near the top of the seam of coal as can be done safely, and so regulate the blasting that much less slack is made than by the heavy discharges. These chang

to conserve the coal below. This company claims to have lost but one life in ten years, and to save seventy-five per cent. of its coal. This is a striking illustration of

f cake being represented by the coal and the icing between by these "rock-partings," as they are called. In rich fields, there are from three to ten of these rich layers or beds of coal, one above another. It often happens that the thickest and best layer is the l

tons of coal in doing the same work that is performed by English locomotives with one ton. This difference is said to be due to different construction of the engines themselves, and to more careful stoking, or firing. Our locomotives use 100,000,000 tons per year, and by even the best methods known a large proportion

These old style ovens consume all the coal with the exception of the fixed carbon which is left behind as coke. At the prices which prevailed in 1907, the value of the by-products wasted in bee-hive coke-ovens was a lit

der to dispose of their gas and other by-products. Here the cost of transportation must be added to that of the coal, but the products are marketed near by instead of at a distance, as in the case of the bee-h

rgy of coal; only one-fifth of one per cent., that is, one-five hundredth of the value

er, as a by-product. The electric power-house thus becomes a central heating plant to supply stores, offices, and residences. Another system being tried abroad, though scarcely past the experimental stage in this country, establishes great electric p

power, and to careless stoking, and is largely preventable. As we have shown, gas-engines are a far more economical form of producing power than are s

laundry work, making the air difficult to breathe, and shutting out the daylight itself. Every residence adds its mite, but the factories and public buildings are the wor

and that by using smoke consumers they not only prevent all the evils of the smoke nuisance but save fully half of the value of their co

es with the drafts so disposed that much of the heat is wasted. Every factory owner should learn (from the government r

nsumed before certain articles can be cooked, the heat remaining after the meal is prepared, are wastes that it seems impossible to prevent, though wise management will prevent undue waste even here. Fireless cookers, an invention of recent years, go far toward solving the problem of was

tch. They are commonly used not only in households, but for locomotives and ships, in several European countries, especially Germany; but in this country the cost of makin

er. Coal is only a form of energy that came originally from the sun. The same causes that produced coal still exist. Scientists tell us that coal is still being made, but it will take thousands of years to perfect it.

ne called a heliophore, in which, by means of the sun's rays, the temperature was raised to 6000 degrees F., and a cube of iron placed in it melted like a snowball. The sun helps to raise the tides and some day the

to its rays, the equal of 7,500 horse-power working continually. If the extra energy not needed for the growth of plants a

r which now goes to waste, and which, if employed, would, as we have seen, give us 30,000,0

power. At Muscle Shoals, on the Tennessee River, there is now developed 188,000 horse-power, second only to Niagara-and if the waters were conserved, the figures would reach 1,084,000 horse-power on the three rivers. This m

larger amount. It will be seen that four tons out of five mined in this state will be needed to produce by steam the power that is go

01,000 tons per year, how long would it take the people of the United States to do something to try to stop such a waste? Yet what else

es. Wherever water-power is going to waste, coal is being used to take its

as destroyed by fire. It was not rebuilt, but some distance from the stream a new steam mill was built, the motive power of which was natural gas. When, after a few years, the natural gas was all gone, the miller began to use coal, and h

rtage. There is enough coal in the ground, if used rightly, to last for ages to come. But because we have wasted vast quantities of it in the past, and are still wasting it, so that if the same conditions continue we can distinctly see t

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Mineral Resource

the U. S. in 1908. Adva