November 19, 1916.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

1035

have been active. The general tone has become
stronger, and prices have advanced. A brisk state
of affairs is to be found throughout Lancashire and
Derbyshire. The supply has been quite inadequate
to meet the heavy enquiry. The Yorkshire markets
are much in the same position; buyers here also find
the greatest difficulty in obtaining sufficient supplies.
At Cardiff matters have gone from bad to worse,
the stormy weather having delayed tonnage, the
shortness of which was already acute. In the
circumstances it is not surprising that stocks are
accumulating on the sidings, and more pits have
been idle. Shipment of best Admiralty coal is now
permitted. Prices are nominal. Little change of
note has taken place in the Scottish coal trade, which
on the whole is fairly brisk.

The executive of the Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain met Lord Derby on Wednesday and raised
objection to the recruiting notice recently issued by
the Home Office. His lordship explained that
miners who enlisted and returned to work would in
no way lose their civil rights The executive
yesterday interviewed the Home Secretary on the
matter, and the latter promised to give it his
consideration.

A meeting of London coal merchants on Wednes-
day decided to adopt the prices set forth in the
scheme recently issued in the Board of Trade circular
for limiting retail prices of coal.

Mr. R. Smillie, on Wednesday, at a meeting of
the Miners’ Federation, announced that experiments
were being conducted, by a Home Office committee,
on the use of stone dust to prevent coal dust explo-
sions. A report on the subject, he stated, was
presented to the committee last week by Dr. Haldane.

Lord Coleridge, the independent chairman of the
Coal Conciliation Board for the Federated area,
referred back to the Board the application of the
miners for a 5 per cent, wage increase. The advance
was agreed to by the Board yesterday.

Mr. Brace, Under-Secretary of the Home Depart-
ment has stated that the Government is determined
to deal with freights and tonnage so as to lower food
prices and regulate coal supplies.

Prof. W. A. Bone gave an address on the impor-
tance of fuel economy before a meeting of the North
Staffordshire Institute of Mining and Mechanical
Engineers on Tuesday.

An important judgment affecting the respective
responsibilities of colliery manager and under-
manager has been given in the Hamilton Court by
Sheriff Shennan.

Judgment has now been given in the Lancashire
Chancery Court in the case of Heyes v. Bromilow,
Foster and Company Limited, which raised an
important question as to subsidence due to colliery
workings.

An interesting discussion, on the use of gas
producers at collieries for obtaining power and
by-products from unsaleable fuel, took place at a
meeting of the Midland Institute of Mining, Civil
and Mechanical Engineers, on Tuesday.

Lord St. Aldwyn, independent chairman of the
South Wales Conciliation Board, has granted the
owners’ application for a 5 per cent, reduction in wages.

On Monday next Sir G. Askwith will act as inde-
pendent chairman to the Scottish Coal Conciliation
Board, to decide the miners’ claim for increase in
wages of 18f per cent, on the 1888 basis.

That the home export coal trade
Coal Exports, should find itself somewhat out of
at Home joint on account of the war was, of
and Abroad, course, inevitable. But few would
perhaps have realised how wide-
spread is the disorganisation, even in countries far
removed from the seat of active hostilities. This is
forcibly illustrated by the present conditions pre-
vailing in remote Australia. Thus, in the case of
the Scottish Australian Mining Company, whose
half-yearly meeting was held last week, it is stated
that profits have fallen from Is. 3d. per ton to below
zero, the collieries having experienced since the war
period a loss of about 5d. per ton. This is attributed
mainly to restricted tonnage and high freights, and
the loss would probably have been greater but for

the increased home consumption caused by the
extension of manufactures of war material in
Australia.

By way of contrast, let us now examine the position
of Germany. That country has normally a large
export trade, amounting to nearly 25 per cent, of her
total production. Germany, in fact, ranks as the
fourth coal-exporting country of the world, being
only surpassed by Great Britain, exporting about
33 per cent., Belgium nearly 32 per cent., and
Australia about an equal proportion of the total
output. To Germany, therefore, coal exports are in
times of peace a highly valuable source of profit.
The bulk of this trade is overland to France,
Austria, Switzerland, Holland, and other European
countries. At the present time a large proportion of
thisjtrade is in abeyance from various causes, some of
which are less obvious than others. It is instructive
to examine one of these in greater detail. Switzer-
land relies almost entirely upon German coal for
industrial purposes, and Germany, with her
characteristic thoroughness in subordinating every
interest to the war, is said to be refusing to supply
coal to the Swiss factories. It is reported that
forty-two of these factories, including chiefly aniline
dye and cement works, have thus been cut off
from further coal supplies, ostensibly because
Switzerland supplies aniline dyes to Great Britain.
Efforts, also, have beer made by Germany to use
coal as a means of overcoming her necessities brought
about by the blockade of her ports, and strangula-
tion of her over-sea communications. In this way
she has pressed for “compensatory” goods from
Switzerland and iron ore from Sweden. Probably
some amount of success has been achieved in these
directions ; but the method has its limitations, and
it will probably be found, when figures are available,
that Germany’s coal exports, which, previous to the
war, had reached somewhere between 40 and 50
million tons annually, have now shrunk to an
appreciable extent.

Of our own export trade there is not much to add
to what has already been said on a previous occasion
in these columns. The position has hardly been
improved by the recent Orders in Council, and we do
not yet see in what way Mr. Runciman proposes to
redeem his promise. There appears to be some’
nervousness on the part of the Government with
respect to the supply of tonnage for shipping grain,
and, in consequence, the free chartering of tonnage
threatens to be even more hampered than before.
In the meantime freights are still enormously high.
The rate for shipping coal to Port Said, for instance,
has been quoted at over 50s. per ton, which is
more than seven times the average rate before the
war. Moreover, it is difficult to see how any
improvement can be effected. Ship owners, in the
meantime, have little cause for complaint. Time
charter rates are advancing by leaps and bounds, and
tonnage owners can now make fabulous sums by this
means. When vessels can command from 17s. to
23s. per month per ton displacement, when requisi-
tioned for Government service, there will be liftle
dissatisfaction with the terms, especially as the
ante-war rate was about 4 s. only.

One result of these conditions has been a con-
siderable increase in what may be termed speculative
shipping. Old boats, some of which had passed out
of active service, are now being placed on the market
to earn a share of these enormous profits. In so far
as scarcity of tonnage can be relieved in this way,
there seems to be but little objection to this process,
but the total effect cannot be very considerable.
Coal shippers, therefore, will continue to look for
whatever relief is possible to Government action as
promised by the President or the Board of Trade.

At a time when our financial strength depends so
largely upon exports, it seems disappointing to find
these curtailed by what looks like an extravagant
and wasteful use of shipping. Our coal shipments
normally represent more than 10 per cent, of the
total value of our exports, and it would appear to be
important, on economic grounds, to maintain
this branch of our foreign trade to its full extent,
especially now that our manufacturing industries are
somewhat restricted by munition requirements. It
is not, perhaps, always realised what a large part

coal exports play in our foreign markets. According
to Italian statistics, for example, out of about
£24,000,000, representing the value of imports from
Great Britain in 1913, nearly £20,000,000 represents
the value of raw materials, such as coal. Few would
complain of the curtailment of coal exports where
the home supply is insufficient. It is, above all
things, essential that we should retain what is
necessary for naval and military purposes. But
stagnation is intolerable. Coal must be kept moving
from the pit bank if work is to go on, and this can
only be done by a better organisation of available
tonnage.

,	It is a debatable point to what

Coal and	extent the present generation should

Posterity, govern its policy in accordance with
the claims of posterity. “What,”
said the humorist, “has posterity done for us?”
Yet few would deny that our obligations to future
generations are real and serious; for, otherwise,
where is the motive for the patriotism of the soldier,
who gives his life for his country, knowing full well
that he is fighting not for himself but for his
successors ? Dr. Dugald Clerk has recently discussed
this question of the claims of posterity from an
engineer’s standpoint. In giving the Thomas
Hawksley lecture for the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers, he dwelt at some length upon what has
come to be known as the Coal Question. He there
made a statement of considerable gravity—viz., that
we could do with half our present consumption of
coal. Indeed, he calculates that even 60 per cent,
of our annual coal bill could be saved by putting
into practice all the known means of economy. Thus,
he reminds us of the fact that 30 per cent, of our
factory coal could be saved by the use of gas
generators and engines, 8 per cent, of our domestic
consumption could be saved by improved methods
of heating and cooking. He urges, that more use
might be made of the exhaust steam from steam and
internal-combustion engines. Large central stations
with gas generators and high-efficiency gas engines
would in some way be made available for the supply
of steam heating and cooking, and would enable
10 million tons of coal to do the domestic work now
requiring 36 million tons. All such economies as
these appear to'reduce themselves to one single
proposition—the utilisation of waste heat. It is, of
course, a mere platitude to state that a reduction of
waste energy would increase the duration of our
fuel supplies. What we require from the engineer
is clear guidance as to practical methods for effecting
these economies. This, Dr. Clerk gives, and he
shows plainly how these economies might be possible
under ideal conditions.

Dr. Clerk is an admitted authority on the internal-
combustion engine. No one will deny the advantages
of this method of power production. It obviates
many of the heat losses inherent in the steam engine,
and converts into work about twice as much of the
heat energy of the fuel as in the best steam plant.
We need for power purposes at the present time in this
country for factory use something like 10| millions
of horse-power, that is excluding the demands of
railways and shipping, which very nearly double our
requirements. These figures are based on the results
of the first Census of Production, which gave the
total power of industrial engines used in Great
Britain and Ireland in 1907 as 10,578,475-horse
power, of which nearly nine-tenths were produced
from steam engines. The importance of our coal
supplies is thus vividly shown. Out of the total
19 or 20 million horse-power required for our modern
industrial civilisation in this country, without coal
we could only obtain about 4 million. It is interesting
to note that these figures represent about 1-horse
power per person employed in our manufacturing
industries.

Dr. Clerk also gave some interesting details as to
the future of the internal-combustion engine, which
he believes to have nearly reached its limit of size
and efficiency. But other developments are possible,
and there can be no doubt that the resources of
engineering development in connection with energy
conversion are by no means exhausted. If it is true
that at the present time we could halve our coal