COAL - Clpdigital.org

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ventures are able and conservative business men,
the reliability of whose foresight has been proved
by experience. Were the prospects as gloomy as
some of the newspapers try to make it appear,
there would be mighty few improvements and
mighty few new ventures in the coal field. Fortu­
nately, however, the power of the press, great
as it is, does not control actual conditions. If
they did. most of the coal companies would be
theoretically bankrupt at one season of the year
and actually so at another. Recently some of
these papers have been telling the public that the
coal business was stale, flat, profitless and without
a future. About the time the winter demand sets
in good and strong every coal man in the land
will be represented by them as a millionaire
robber baron. Those in the trade know that few
are millionaires, and none either barons or rob­
bers. They know also that there is no more oc­
casion for them to be bankrupt now than there
is to be all the other things a few months hence.
The fact is that the coal trade has been passing
through a dull period due to over-production, but
that ways have been and will be found to dispose
of the surplus profitably. The outlook for the
future is bright in the extreme, despite the pro­
test of pessimism and ignorance.
* * *
THE INTENSELY PRACTICAL mind of the Japanese,
as shown by the numerous stories of their earnest
and successful efforts to gain mechanical informa­
tion by actual experience, is being further exem­
plified in a Western Pennsylvania coal mine. A
round dozen of these little yellow men have be­
come employes of the mining company within a
few months. They learn rapidly, and already
are good practical miners. They are sober, in­
dustrious and well-behaved and are as acceptable
to their employers as any of their other men.
Recently one of them was killed in an explosion.
His body was incinerated and the ashes sent
back to Japan by his comrades who returned to
work as usual after disposing of the remains.
Where these men came from or what has been
their previous station in life is a mystery which
for the present cannot be unravelled. Future
visitors to China and Manchuria, however, may
find some of them in charge of important mining
THE COAL TRADE BULLETIN.
operations as Rear Admiral Evans found his
former Japanese caliin steward in command of
a battleship recently. It is the Japanese way
and the success and progress of their country
prove that it is a good way.
GERMAN COKE IN ENGLAND.
United States Consul-General Mason, at Berlin.
in commenting on the fact that Cammell. Laird &
Co. the British ironmasters, have entered into a
large contract for German coke for their Cumberland
works, says:
"It is now about ten years since the British iron
masters, with a large and influential following in
the United States, were firmly convinced that
German coke (made in retort ovens that save the
volatile secondary products which the primitive
'beehive' oven wastes) could never equal beehive
coke in quality or take its place in iron and steel
manufacture. True, German iron mills were then
making structural steel, rails, and other railroad
supplies, which were being sold at London and
Liverpool in competition with homemade English
products. They were enabled to do this because
many leading German iron and steel works have
their own coal mines and coking plants, and,
having saved in their coke making the gas, tar,
ammonia, and benzole, which constitute about 40
per cent, of the value of the raw coal, they were
enabled to sell their steel at very close rates while
deriving their profits—such as they were—mainly
from the sale of their by-products.
"But the idea has got fixed in the English mind
that retort-oven coke would never do for blast
furnace use; that it lacked resonance, 'columnar
structure,' and other essential qualities. The same
belief was and is still to some extent entertained in
the United States, although there are enough retort
ovens of the Otto-Hoffman and Semet-Solvay
types in use in our country to show by contrast
that the archaic beehive coking system, which
pours out in the Connellsville and other districts
vast clouds of smoke and valuable gas to blacken
and defile the air and landscape, is as primitive
and wasteful as it is obsolete and unscientific."
In the anthracite coal region the transmission of
steam power to distant machinery has been carried
to extraordinary lengths, because of the cheapness
of coal relatively to the labor required for running
engines. In one case the pipe is said to be a mile
long and pipes from 2,000 to 4,000 feet in length
are not uncommon, near Scranton. Of course the
metal is well wrapped in non-conducting material,
usually asbestos or magnesia, to lessen the waste
of heat by radiation.