The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

STATISTICS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 455
tions, the relative importance of the English coal mines has become less, and the
political economists of England were justified in busying themselves with this coal
question after Professor Jevons had raised his cry of alarm.* There is no fear,
of course, of the stores of coal becoming altogether exhausted, for down to a depth
of 4,000 feet they are estimated to amount to no loss than 146 milliards of tons.
That which causes apprehension is the proximate exhaustion of those coal seams
which lie nearest to the surface, for the cost of raising the coal increases with the
depth to which the miner has to descend in search of it, and the working of the
•mines may in the end prove unremunerative. Several of the coal basins—as, for
instance, that of Coalbrookdale—have already been partiajly abandoned ; others,
including that of South Staffordshire, will probably be worked out by the end of
the nineteenth century. In the meantime other countries whose coal basins are
superior in extent to those of the British Islands might come to the front, and
deprive England of her pre-eminence as a coal-producing countrj'.f The coal-
mine owners are very largely dependent upon manufacturers for their prosperity,
for the crises which disturb the industrial world always exercise an influence
upon the cost of the fuel consumed in the factories. Hence, notwithstanding
the quantity of coal raised or exported exhibits an increase, the money
paid for it may have been less, and such has virtually been the case of late.
France for many years to come will no doubt remain England's best customer for
coal, owing to the irregular distribution of her stores of fuel ; but other markets
may be shut through a slight displacement of the balance of trade. The coal
trade is, moreover, one of those which suffers most from strikes, and is attended
with the greatest risk to human life. The precautions now taken to prevent
accidents are no doubt greater than formerly, but nevertheless of the thousand
miners who are annually killed in the underground galleries of England and
Scotland, the vast majority perish in coal mines.
Of the coal raised about one-sixth is used for domestic purposes ; a third is
employed to feed the engines of factories, steamboats, and railways ; and over one-
fourth is consumed in the manufacture of iron. Most of the iron ore occurs in the
neighbourhood of the coal beds, and this is a capital advantage. The iron industry
of England is of paramount importance, for it supplies about one-half of the cast
iron employed throughout the civilised world. + It has often been said that the
consumption of iron affords a true gauge b}'' which to measure the prosperity of a
country, and there is a great deal of truth in this. Up to 1740 the iron manu-
facturers of England only made use of charcoal in their smelting works ; but after the
first successful experiments had been made with mineral coal, charcoal gradually
became disused, and by 1796 had been almost completely abandoned. Siace then
* Jevons, " The Coal Question," 1866.
t
Principal coal basins of the world, according to Neumann-Spallart :
China . . 193,460 square miles.
United States 192,380 „
Hindustan . 34,730 „
British Isles . 8,930 „
Germany .
J Say 7,000,000 tons out of a total production of 14,000,000 tons.
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