February 11, 1916.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

271

During last month the quantity of coal, coke, and
manufactured fuel exported from the United Kingdom
was 3,383,099 tons, the value being £3,222,250,
as compared with 3,769,598 tons, valued at
£2,580,262, in January 1915, and 6,088,971 tons,
valued at £4,295,303, in January 1914.

The average value of coal, coke and manu-
factured fuel exported from the United Kingdom
during January was 19s. 0 5d. per ton, as compared
with 13s. 8’2d. in January 1915, and 14s. l’3d. in
January 1914.

Of the total exports of coal during January, the
mean value of the large coal exported was 20s. 9-7d.;
through-and-through (unscreened), 16s. 11 8d.; and
small coal, 16s. 8*3d. The average value of all
kinds of coal exported was 18s. 7'09d., an increase of
4-7d. as compared with the previous month. Other-
wise divided, it fetched the following :—Steam coal,
18s. 6‘9d. ; gas coal, 16s. 4Td. ; ‘anthracite,
25s. 6’5d. ; household, 20s. 4’5d. ; other sorts,
17s. 0 4d. The average value of the coke exported
was 29s. 8-6d. per ton, and of the manufactured fuel
21s. 6-5d. per ton.

A meeting of the North of England Institute of
Mining and Mechanical Engineers will be held
to-morrow (Saturday) at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

A general meeting of the Mining Institute of
Scotland will be held at Edinburgh, to-morrow
(Saturday), when Mr. II. Briggs will read a paper
entitled “A Device for the Rapid Estimation of
Oxygen and Blackdamp in Mines.”

The annual meeting of the Canadian Mining
Institute will be held at Ottawa, on March 1, 2 and 3.

Fo facilitate the supply of fuel to the industries
connected with the war, eleven district coal and coke
supplies committees and a Board of Trade central
committee has now been appointed.

Lord Muir Mackenzie, G.C.B., has been appointed
independent chairman of the South Wales and Mon-
mouthshire Coal Conciliation Board.

Judgment has now been delivered by the Court of
Appeal in the case arising out of the Tonypandy
colliery strike riots in 1910.

A paper, dealing with the coal fields of North-
West Europe, was read by Prof. Stainier, on
Tuesday, before the Manchester Geological and
Mining Society.

“Bellite No. 1” has been added to the list of
permitted explosives in coal mines.

There is at the present time a great
Sidelights deal of mutual recrimination with

On the	regard to the shipping position.

Shipping British ship owners, neutrals, and
Problem.	Allies, as well as the Board of

Trade and the Transport Depart-
ment of the Admiralty, have all come in for a share
of the responsibility for the present abnormal height
to which freights have risen. It is possible, also,
that whatever blame may be rightly attached to any-
one is to some extent shared by all. That the
situation is extremely difficult cannot be denied, and
there is no harm in giving careful consideration to
every view, partial or impartial as it may be, if only
this may lead to the best possible solution of the
problem, which essentially consists in making the
best use of our available facilities under the existing
circumstances.

Sir Norman Hill recently gave an extremely clear
account of the conditions that have arisen on account
of the war, in a report to the Liverpool Ship Owners’
Association, covering the first year of the conflict.
He showed that out of a total number of British
vessels of about 20,000, only about 4,500 are engaged
in foreign trade, and of these not more than 3,800
are larger than 1,000 gross tons. Excluding the
home trade, which is taken to include the European
coast between Hamburg and Brest, there are not
more than 3,600 British ocean-going traders ex-
ceeding 4,000 tons gross. Of the vessels exceeding
1,000 tons gross, in the period under review, the
Admiralty had requisitioned 800, and a further 120
were detained in enemy ports and in the Black and
Baltic Seas. In addition to these, 139 vessels were
destroyed by raiding, so that nearly 1,050 vessels of
the ocean-going class were unavailable for ordinary

commerce. Reducing this number by 100 captured or
interned German vessels brought into use, there was
a net reduction of 950 out of the 3,600 ocean-going
traders, or approximately 25 per cent. Yet we did
remarkably well with our depleted merchant fleet, the
reduction in imports being only 13 per cent.
Taking the year 1915 only, we have the figures
presented to the Liverpool Underwriters’ Associa-
tion, showing total losses from all causes of 726
vessels exceeding 500 tons gross, as compared with
about 176 losses in a normal year. But these figures
include both British and foreign vessels in nearly
equal proportions. In the same period new shipping
was built aggregating 650,000 tons gross, as com-
pared with 1,728,000 gross tons in 1914 and
2,336,368 gross tons in 1913, the year before the war.
Thus the new shipping represents roughly 25 per
cent, of the tonnage output of a normal year. These
figures are eloquent as indicating the causes under-
lying the present shortage of tonnage.

Turning now to the efforts which have been made
to minimise the inevitable consequence of this
deficiency, let us, in the first place, examine some of
the points that have been raised. Sir Charles
Woodall, speaking at the annual meeting of the
Gas Light and Coke Company, said that the Govern-
ment had commandeered large numbers of Tyne
colliers at the outbreak of the war at the rate of
about 4s. per ton, being Is. in excess of the
pre-war rate of earnings. When certain enemy
ships were ultimately released to replace these
vessels, freights had already risen, and the Govern-
ment, insisting at first on market rates for the
released tonnage, obliged shippers to pay 14s. 6d.
per ton for the use of enemy vessels which, as a
matter of fact, were inferior, for the purpose in
view, to the commandeered colliers at 4s. per ton,
and although these terms were modified by the
London Coal Supplies Advisory Committee, they still
remain onerous. He thought that it would have
been better, instead of commandeering these colliers,
if the Government had taken the enemy ships in
their stead. In this way, he thought, freights
would have been kept at a lower level, the cost of
coal would have been reduced, and the price of gas
kept down, whereby more gas and coke would have
been consumed, and more by-products would have
been available for munition purposes. We merely
state the case as Sir Charles put it, without
further comment upon the validity of his argument.
Another cause of complaint of departmental methods,
given also for what it is worth, is given in
the recent issue of the Candid Quarterly
'Review, It is there stated that expensive
passenger steamers have been sent 10,000 miles in
ballast to load heavy cargo, when cheap cargo vessels
could have been obtained near the port of loading.
A case is given of a steamer loaded with coal
sent from Cardiff to a Scotch port, and returning
after four months’ absence with 800 tons of coal still
on board, the inference being that the vessel had
been used more as a store house than as a cargo
steamer. Other instances are given of wasteful
methods, of which we can only remark that no
legitimate deduction can be drawn from them until
we know how far these instances represent general
practice or merely exceptional cases. We must in
fairness concede that, in the stress of war conditions,
some cases of this kind are certain to occur.

Of far greater import, in our opinion, are the
complaints of delays in discharging in foreign ports.
The chairman of Messrs. 8. Instone and Company
Limited has recently stated that he has known of
80 steamers being detained at one time from eight
to 10 days at Havre roads waiting their turn to go
up the Seine to Rouen. In Genoa, congestion and
delay have been equally serious, and the Italian
Government has been constrained to take exceptional
means to improve the facilities of this port. Both
in Italy and in France the situation has now, it is
believed, been considerably relieved, and it may be
hoped that a marked speeding up in the rate of
discharge will now result.

Finally, the Glasgow Sliip Owners’ Association
in their annual report just issued, formulate the
following recommendations for the better organisa-
tion of tonnage. In their opinion, improvement

could only be effected by :—(1) A more economical
use of the tonnage already chartered by Government;
(2) better co-ordination between ports and railway
authorities to hasten clearances of docks and distri-
bution of cargo ; (3) the completion of nearly finished
vessels now in builders’ yards; (4) the exclusion,
by imposed taxation or otherwise, of articles not
necessary to the absolute well-being of the nation ;
(5) the suspension during the war of all customary
rules and regulations regarding the loading and
discharging at the various ports throughout the
United Kingdom, to ensure that steamers are loaded
or discharged with all due despatch.

These proposals will doubtless receive due con-
sideration by the Board of Trade, and some of them
are, in fact, partly covered by the restrictions in
imports now under contemplation.

Amidst the stress of the times in
Utilisation which we are living particular atten-
Of Coal. tion is being bestowed upon various
social and economic considerations
which, although their importance has long been recog-
nised by the few, have been persistently ignored by the
many. Of these we select for closer examination
that much-debated question of fuel economy from the
national standpoint. As is known, a special com-
mittee upon this subject was recently appointed by
the British Association, under the chairmanship of
Prof. W. A. Bone, who is not only a recognised
authority upon industrial fuel economy, but has
recently been much in the public eye in his endeavours
to ventilate the subject in our manufacturing districts,
and to inculcate sound views upon it in the popular
mind, We refer now more particularly to his recent
lectures before the Royal Institution, which formed
a fitting climax to his series of provincial addresses
delivered at various places throughout the past few
months. The intention was admirable, for it cannot
be denied that there is great room for improvement
in the methods of power production employed in
industrial processes, and great waste is still going on
in regard to the utilisation of fuel. The importance
of this matter is at once realised when we reflect that
of the 50 or 60 millions of tons of coal used annually
for power production in this country about 90 per
cent, is absolutely wasted, so far as any effective
result is concerned. At the existing price of coal this
is a serious matter, and it is still more so in times
like the present, when it is imperative that we should
put forth every ounce of energy that we possess for
the purpose of bringing to 'a satisfactory conclusion
the war upon which we are engaged. Looked at,
therefore, solely from the point of view of loss of
available energy, it is sad to contemplate the
waste implied in the misuse of our fuel
supplies, as shown by the figures given by
Prof. Bone. It is poor consolation to know that
precisely the same questions are beginning to agitate
the United States Government, where an abundant
supply of high-grade fuel has engendered a similar
careless indifference to waste to that which exists in
our own country. The United States Bureau of
Mines has lately called attention to this phase of
national extravagance which is described as being
little short of appalling. It is, however, when we
come to a practical remedy that difficulties arise.
Prof. Bone shows how manufacturers can economise
by scrapping old plant and by the introduction of
more modern processes. His illustrations are most
convincing. The example afforded by the Skinnin-
grove Iron and Steel Works, where the fuel
consumption per ton of steel produced has been
reduced from 2’35 to 1’6 tons of coal, points clearly
to the possibility of saving about one-third of the
coal now utilised in this one industry alone. It is
also a depressing fact that we have deliberately
fostered extravagant methods of power production
by unwise legislation, based rather upon some
political fetish than upon scientific principles. An
astounding example of this short-sighted policy is to
be found in the London electricity supply which is
now generated from something like 70 different
power stations, many of which are necessarily but
poorly equipped for economic production. These are
but a few instances out of many referred to by
Prof. Bone, who calls aloud for State action to put