Conservation Through Engineering Part 1

Conservation Through Engineering.

by Franklin K. Lane.

NOTE.

The plea for constructive policies contained in the report of the Secretary of the Interior to the President deserves a hearing also by the engineers and business men who are developing the power resources of the country. The largest conservation for the future can come only through the wisest engineering of the present.

The conditions under which the utilization of natural resources is demanded are outlined by Secretary Lane, and it will be noted that the program recommended calls for the cooperation of engineer and legislator. To bring this power inventory to the attention of the men who furnish the Nation with its coal and oil and electricity, this extract from the administrative report of the Secretary of the Interior is reprinted as a bulletin of the United States Geological Survey.

CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING[1]

By FRANKLIN K. LANE.

In an age of machinery the measure of a people's industrial capacity seems to be surely fixed by its motive power possibilities. Civilized nations regard an adequate fuel supply as the very foundation of national prosperity--indeed, almost as the very foundation of national possibility. I am convinced that there will be a reaction against the intense industrialism of the present, but as it must be agreed that the race for industrial supremacy is on between the nations of the world, America may well take stock of her own power possibilities and concern herself more actively with their development and wisest use.

THE COAL STRIKE.

The coal strike has brought concretely before us the disturbing fact that modern society is so involved that we live virtually by unanimous consent. Let less than one-half of 1 per cent of our population quit their work of digging coal and we are threatened with the combined horrors of pestilence and famine.

It did not take many hours after it was realized that the coal miners were in earnest for the American imagination to conceive what might be the state of the country in perhaps another 30 days. Industries closed, railroads stopped, streets dark, food cut off, houses freezing, idle men by the million hungry and in the dark--this was the picture, and not a very pleasant one to contemplate. There was an immediate demand for facts.

How much coal is normally mined in this country?

By whom is it mined?

What is its quality?

To what uses is it put?

Who gets it?

How much less could be mined if coal were conserved instead of wasted?

What better methods have been developed for using coal than those of ancient custom?

Who is to blame that so small a supply is on the surface?

Why should we live from day to day in so vital a matter as a fuel supply?

What subst.i.tutes can be found for coal and how quickly may these be made available?

This is by no means an exhaustive category of the questions which were put to this department when the strike came. And these came tumbling in by wire, by mail, by hand, from all parts of the country, mixed with disquisitions upon the duty of Government, the rights of individuals as against the rights of society, the need for strength in times of crisis, calls for nationalization of the coal industry, for the destruction of labor unions, for troops to mine coal, and much else that was more or less germane to the question before the country.

Many of these questions we were able to answer. But if coal operators themselves had not carried over the statistical machinery developed during the war, we would have been forced to the humiliating confession that we did not know facts which at the time were of the most vital importance.

In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of coal; that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, produce annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground; that 35 per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 years we have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 tons per annum; that if last year's coal were used as construction material it would build a wall as huge as the Great Wall of China around every boundary of the United States from Maine to Vancouver, down the Pacific to San Diego and eastward following the Mexican border and the coast to Maine again; and that this same coal contains latent power sufficient to lift this same wall 200 miles high in the air, according to one of our greatest engineers (Steinmetz).

Such facts are surely startling. They serve to stimulate a certain pride and give us a great confidence in our industrial future; yet they are not as immediately important, when the mines threaten to close, as would be a few figures showing how much coal we have in stock piles and where it is! And months since we called upon Congress to grant the money that we might secure these figures, but no notice was taken of the urged requests until, late in the summer, a committee of the Senate awoke to this need and indorsed our pet.i.tion.

NATIONAL STOCK TAKING.

The Government should have a more complete knowledge of the coal and of other foundation industries than can be found elsewhere, and we should not fear national stock taking as a continuing process. It is indeed the beginning of wisdom. The war revealed to us how delinquent in this regard we had been in the past. One day when the full story is told of the struggle of the Army engineer to meet war emergency demands, and this is supplemented by the tale of the effort made by the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board, it will be realized more seriously than now how little of stock taking we have done in this generous, optimistic land.

When any such undertaking is proposed, however, it at once appears to arouse the fear that it is somehow the beginning of a malevolent policy called "conservation," and conservation has had a mean meaning to many ears. It connoted stinginess and a provincial thrift, spies in the guise of Government inspectors, hateful interferences with individual enterprise and initiative, governmental haltings and cowardices, and all the constrictions of an arrogant, narrow, and academic-minded bureaucracy which can not think largely and feels no responsibility for national progress. Needless to say this fear should not, need not be.

The word should mean helpfulness, not hindrance--helpfulness to all who wish to use a resource and think in larger terms than that of the greatest immediate profit; hindrance only to those who are spendthrift.

A conservation which results in a stalemate as between the forces of progress and governmental inertia is criminal, while a conservation that is based on the fuller, the more essential use of a resource is statesmanship.

To know what we have and what we can do with it--and what we should not do with it, also!--is a policy of wisdom, a policy of lasting progress.

And in furtherance of such a policy the first step is to know our resources--our national wealth in things and in their possibilities; the second step is to know their availability for immediate use; the third step is to guard them against waste either through ignorance or wantonness; and the fourth step is to prolong their life by invention and discovery.

COAL AS A NATIONAL a.s.sET.

Enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate how vast are the fields of coal which this country holds. It may be that any day some genius will release from nature a power that will make of little value our carboniferous deposits save for their chemical content. By the application of the sun's rays, or the use of the unceasing motion of the waves of the sea, the whole dependence of the world upon coal may be upset. That day, however, has not yet come; and until it does we may consider our coal as the surest insurance which we can have that America can meet the severest contest that any industrial rival can present. It is more than insurance--it is an a.s.set which can bring to us the certainty of great wealth, and if we care to exercise it, a mastery over the fate and fortunes of other peoples.

Next to the fertility of our soil, we have no physical a.s.set as valuable as our coal deposits. Although we are sometimes alarmed because those deposits nearest to the industrial centers are rapidly declining and we can already see within this century the end of the anthracite field, if it is made to yield as much continuously as at present, yet it is a safe generalization that we have sufficient coal in the United States to last our people for centuries to come. An extra scuttleful on the fire or shovelful in the furnace does not threaten the life of the race, even if some Russian or Chinese of the future does not resolve the atom or harness the hidden forces of the air. Whatever fears other nations may justifiably have as to their ability to continue in the vast rush of a machine world, there can be no question of our ability to last.

The present strike, however, makes quite clear, perhaps for the first time, that it is not the coal in the mountain that is of value, but that which is in the yard. And between the two there may be a great gulf fixed. Therefore, we are put to it to make the best of what we have. We turn from telling how much coal we use to a study of how little we can live upon and do the day's work of the Nation. And this is, I believe, as it should be. Indeed I feel justified in saying that the problem of this strike is not to be solved in its deeper significances until we know much more about coal than we know now, and this especially as to the manner in which it is taken from its bed and brought to our cellars.

PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY.

This transfer is effected by a kind of carrier chain, the links of which are the operator, the miner, the railroad, and the public. We choose, to please ourselves, the link in this chain upon which we place the responsibility for its failure to work; but before indulging ourselves in abuse of arrogant coal barons or dictatorial labor unions, it may lie as well to ask whether we of the public are not responsible in some part for this failure to function. I do not refer now to the failure of society to provide methods of industrial mediation or other adjustment of such labor difficulties. My question is, whether or not the public is at all at fault when a nation wealthy beyond all others in coal finds itself with so small a supply on hand when a strike comes--but a few days removed from the gravest troubles. The answer, to my mind, turns upon the manner in which we have done business.

We have been content to go without insurance as to a coal reserve. Each day has brought its daily supply. There was no thought of railroads stopping or mines closing down, so that large storage facilities have not been provided, and, indeed, we would rebel at paying for our coal the added cost of caring for it outside its native warehouse. We have not thought in terms of apprehension, but, as always, in the calm certainty that the stream of supply would flow without ceasing. In some way there would be coal into which we could drive our shovels when the need was felt.

No wonder, therefore, that we are rudely disturbed when one link in the carrier chain from coal-in-place to coal-in-the-furnace breaks. It simply is one of those things which doesn't happen. And not having happened sufficiently often to give us fear, we have had no thought that we should provide against it. It is a most heterodox thing to say, but we may find that a bit more foresight on the part of the public would certainly have made less sudden the present crisis. Let us look, for instance, into the matter of the coal miners' year and see if it is not fixed in some degree by the habit of the public in its purchasing.

THE MINERS' YEAR.

The record year, 1918, with everything to stimulate production had an average of only 249 working days for the bituminous mines of the country. This average of the country included a minimum among the princ.i.p.al coal-producing States of 204 days for Arkansas and a maximum of 301 for New Mexico. In such a State as Ohio the average working year is under 200 days. In 1917 the miners of New Mexico reached an average of 321 days, and in the largest field, the Raton field, it was actually 336--probably the record for steady operation.

This short year in coal-mine operation is due in part to seasonal fluctuation in demand. The mines averaged only 24 hours a week during the spring months. The weekly report of that date showed that 80 per cent of the lost time was due to "no market" and only 15 per cent to "labor shortage," while "car shortage" was a negligible factor. In contrast with this should be taken the last week before the strike, when the average hours operated were 39 and "no market" was a negligible item in lost time, while "car shortage" was by far the largest item. It follows that the short year is a source of loss to both operator and mine worker and is a tax on the consumer.[2]

With substantially the same number of mines and miners working this year as last, the acc.u.mulative production for the first 10 months of this year is 100,000,000 tons less than that mined in the same period last year. This 25 per cent loss in output means that both plant and labor have been less productive, and, in terms of capital and labor, coal cost the Nation more this year than last. For in the long run both capital and labor require a living wage.

The public must accept responsibility for the coal industry and pay for carrying it on the year round. Mine operators and mine workers of whatever mines are necessary to meet the needs of the country must be paid for a year's work. The shorter the working year the less coal is mined per man and per dollar invested in plant, and eventually the higher priced must be the coal. It is obvious that the 264 short tons of coal mined by the average British miner last year could not be as cheap per ton as the 942 tons mined by the average American mine worker, backed up as he was with more efficient plant. (A proud contrast!)

It would clearly appear that the coal business may be stabilized, not wholly, but in a very large measure, in some of the western fields,[3]

if the public does not regard its supply of coal as it does its supply of domestic water, which requires only that the faucet shall be opened to bring forth a gushing supply. Coal does not have pressure behind it which forces it out of the mine and into the coal yard. It rather must be drawn out by the suction of demand. And herein the public must play its part by keeping that demand as steady and uniform as possible.