THE TECHNICAL REVOLUTION
The economic surplus which the industrial revolution of the latter
eighteenth century created was the product of a crude, extensive
exploitation of our natural resources. With the aid of the steam engine
men skimmed the cream of the mines, the forests, and the new soil of the
American continent.
The wasteful use of our coal, paralleling as it did our increasing need
for power, was hampering the industries of the country even before the
war. After the breaking out of the conflict the overwhelming pressure
for increased production could not be met. In a panic we pushed our old
methods of coal exploitation further than ever before, drew on our oil
and gas supplies to the utmost, and then in final desperation integrated
the administrative side of the coal industry through the Fuel
Administration.
The relief this brought was immediate, although the chief work of the
Fuel Administration was merely to systematize and coordinate the
distribution of coal so that those who must have it would get it. For
during wartime the factories must run, and the autocratic integration
which the Fuel Administration accomplished created a seeming abundance
by keeping the factory wheels of at least the essential industries
turning.
But the relief was only apparent--not actual. When the tumult of the
war was over and we were back in still water, Secretary Lane announced
that the enormous development of war industries had created an almost
insatiable demand for power--a demand that was overreaching the
available supply with such rapidity that had hostilities continued, it
is certain that by 1920 we should have been facing an extreme power
shortage. Integrated administration had done all it could but the
problem of power to advance civilization--to build up a surplus through
production--to give all men the chance of the good life, was still
unsolved. Just as the integration by the Fuel Administration had
deferred the acute power shortage during the war, so the business
depression that followed the signing of the armistice is still holding
it in check. And yet if civilization is to go on, our multitudinous
factory wheels must turn again more swiftly and in increasing number,
our looms must weave more and more cloth, and new cars and new ships
must carry new millions of people to and fro. As yet we know no other
material means through which to build up the good life than these
whirling wheels.
The technical experts have agreed that the problem must be solved
through the integration of all our sources of fuel and power which they,
like the Fuel Administration during the war, regard as a common
reservoir like the water supply of a modern community, and through the
reduction of both coal and water power to terms of their common
denominator, electricity. As the result of Secretary Lane's prevision of
the impending power shortage, Congress in 1921 made an appropriation for
a preliminary survey by the technical experts of the power resources
along the Atlantic seaboard from Washington to Boston and for one
hundred and fifty miles inland. This territory has been called the
"finishing shop" of America. It is of irregular coast line, giving good
harbors for the shipping to carry its products overseas; its swift
streams turned the first factory wheels in America; its mountain ranges
are full of metals and easily accessible coal; and to this region the
industrially trained peoples of Europe most naturally come. Obviously
its factory wheels must turn.
As a result of the survey of this region, engineers have worked out what
is called the Superpower Plan. According to this, a giant network of
wire will be woven over the territory between the Alleghenies and the
Atlantic seaboard and charged with the very essence of power. Great
steel towers, like those that now carry the currents generated at
Niagara Falls, the Keokuk Dam on the Mississippi, and the Roosevelt Dam
at the head of Salt River in the Arizona Desert, will stride through the
valleys and across the mountains along a two-hundred-foot right of way.
Instead of steel rails and puffing engines to convey industrial power,
there will be only towers and copper wires. Instead of millions of tons
of raw coal moving slowly along through bottle necks in the mountains
and through congested freight yards, there will be the silent rush of
uncounted electrons hurrying to the centers of production to do the work
of man. Instead of spreading dirt and noise and ugliness, these new
carriers of cosmic energy will be high harps for the wind.
According to this plan of the Superpower Commission the main line of
this new power system begins at Washington and follows the coast through
the great centers of population--Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia,
Newark, New York, New Haven, Providence, Boston, and on up to
Newburyport. Stretching away from this main line two principal inland
lines are projected, one swinging off at Baltimore out to Harrisburg and
up the anthracite valley to Scranton; another leaving the main line just
before it reaches New York and stretching up the Hudson Valley to
Poughkeepsie, Port Jervis, and Utica, tapping the hydroelectric
generating stations in the Adirondacks, and connecting again through
Pittsfield, Northampton, and Worcester with the main line in Boston.
North and south cross lines mesh these secondary lines with the main
line along the coast--one through Hartford and Waterbury to New Haven,
and another from Worcester to Providence, with a short branch line to
New Bedford. Back and forth across this network of high-tension wires
will run the power to turn the factory wheels.
About nine-tenths of this power will be the developed energy of coal.
The Superpower Commission's plan calls for the establishment of great
steam-generating plants near the mines where the coal will be used to
fire steam engines which will turn dynamos and so convert the energy of
coal into electricity and feed it to that great harp in the wind.
Steam-generating plants to supply more distant consumers are projected
at tidewater--that is at places to which coal can be delivered by
coastwise steamers. Incidentally these tidewater plants involve a
considerable amount of coal haulage from the mines to the seaports, and
from the ports nearest the mines to the other ports along the coast;
from the lower West Virginia fields, across the mountains, to the
southern end of Chesapeake Bay and thence by boat northward along the
coast to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. En
route this coal will be joined by other coal from the upper West
Virginia and the lower Pennsylvania bituminous fields and also by coal
from the middle Pennsylvania field which will have to be freighted
through New Jersey to the Hudson ports, then again up Long Island Sound
by steamdrawn barges. While great economies would be effected by the
transformation of coal into electric energy at the superpower stations,
both at the mines and at the tidewater ports, the plan of the Superpower
Commission still involves the necessity of hauling millions of tons of
raw coal from the mines to seaboard. This limitation the Commission held
to be necessary, not only for the purpose of utilizing the comparatively
small plants which existing public utility companies have already built,
but because at the time their report was made the electrical engineers
had not yet perfected means of transporting electricity for long
distances without great leakage on the way. Since the Commission's
survey was published, however, an invention has been announced which
greatly increases the distance over which the high-voltage currents can
be efficiently sent, so that it is now feasible to transmute a much
larger proportion of coal into electricity at the mine. The plan for
practically all the tidewater generating plants can be given up,
together with the long, slow, costly process of carrying coal to them,
and that ninety per cent of the electricity for the superpower system
which is derived from coal can be generated directly at the mine.
The other ten per cent according to the Commission's plan will be
hydroelectric power. Generating stations are to be established at the
rapids of the Potomac just above Washington; along the lower reaches of
the Susquehanna in Pennsylvania and Maryland; along the upper courses of
the Delaware and the Hudson; in the Adirondacks; and at intervals along
the whole length of the Connecticut River. But the main dependence of
the projected superpower system is still the bituminous coal supply
which it is planned to keep at its old job of raising steam to drive the
turbine engines which will in turn drive the electric dynamos.
Besides the Commission's superpower plan for the Atlantic seaboard,
other power systems have been sketched out, one centering around Helena
in southern Illinois and designed to serve most of the Mississippi
Valley, one near the northwest coast, another in California.
The integration of water and coal is a long step toward the solution of
the power problem, in that it not only brings a new force to supplement
the coal supply but also saves the coal now used by steam locomotives to
haul raw fuel to its millions of consumers. Moreover, it contemplates
the electrification of all the railroads within the zone whose traffic
is heavy enough to warrant it, and as it is estimated that two pounds of
coal applied to an electric locomotive will do as much work as seven and
one-half to eight and one-half pounds when applied to a steam
locomotive, the amount of coal now used for transportation will be still
further reduced. Through such beginnings as these projected superpower
systems must come the comprehensive integration of the industry.
But the Federal Commission's superpower plan as published is only a
beginning. It is not enough merely to save the energy of coal, to
relieve the congestion on the freight railroads, and to provide a
common-carrier system for high-voltage electricity. There is needed also
the more intensive utilization of the fuel supply. The plan of the
Superpower Commission regards coal--bituminous coal especially--as
nothing more than fuel. The industrial revolution was built upon the
power of coal to fire the boilers in steam engines. But the use of coal
for the generation of steam only is almost the least efficient way in
which it can be utilized. From the point of view of national economy the
better utilization of what are known as the by-product values of
bituminous coal is quite as important as the establishment of an
integrated power system.
For coal is much more than potential power. Bituminous coal is the
source of many of our most valuable mineral products and yet today, of
the more than 500,000,000 tons annually produced, almost all is used
exclusively for the production of power and all of its ingredients
except the heat-producing elements are wasted. About one-twelfth of the
bituminous coal--that which is now used for the production of coke in
ovens that recover its by-product--must be excepted from this statement.
Moreover, the 90,000,000 tons of anthracite mined every year are
economically used because anthracite contains practically nothing but
carbon and ash and its direct burning is the most efficient way in which
it can be used if its energy content is thoroughly conserved. Omitting,
then, the whole of the anthracite supply, and that bituminous which is
already properly utilized, we still have more than 400,000,000 tons
wastefully used every year--so wastefully that not only are all its
commodity values destroyed, but its primary purpose of creating heat and
industrial power is imperfectly served. In the effective integration of
fuel and power it will become necessary to separate the energy-producing
elements in bituminous coal--and also of the sub-bituminous coal, of
lignite and peat, of which we have reserves amounting to the billions of
tons--from those which have only a commodity value.
In their report made for the Smithsonian Institution, Gilbert and Pogue
point out that "there are in one ton of good bituminous coal, fifteen
hundred pounds of smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite, ten thousand
cubic feet of gas, twenty-two pounds of ammonium sulphate, two and
one-half gallons of benzol, and nine gallons of tar" and that lignite
gives almost as much of these commodities. Apart from the fuel values
represented by the "smokeless fuel analogous to anthracite" the gas and
benzol, the ammonium sulphate, and tar have unique values as
fertilizers, and the source of those mineral elements from which our
dyes and a large part of our modern medicines are made. The process used
to extract these commodity values is similar to that which nature used
in making anthracite, except that the volatile matter which the
geological revolution drove off into the air is collected and utilized.
The gas created by the process can be delivered by pipe lines over
practically any distance to the centers of consumption, or, with the
help of the internal-combustion engine, converted into electrical energy
at the mine. Gas as a fuel has the great advantage that it eliminates
both storage and haulage, and produces the same amount of heat from
about one-half the amount of coal, and since it can be produced as
needed all the year round it will go far to eliminate the seasonal
character of coal mining. Moreover, wherever heat rather than light or
power is desired, gas, in the present state of technical development, is
even more economical than electricity. Under the by-product system the
present annual coal output can be made to more than double its service
in driving machinery and in addition it can be made to contribute
heavily to our supply of fertilizers, motor fuel, and chemical
products. It is estimated that the aggregate loss resulting from the
present wasteful utilization of coal is over ten dollars a year for each
inhabitant of the United States.
The by-products of coal can play an important part in the fuel industry.
Where it is thoroughly integrated they can help in financing the
development of hydroelectricity to supplement the electricity produced
from coal. For while the running expenses of a hydroelectric plant are
little more than the interest on the capital invested, the amount of
that capital is large. Also the establishment of gas plants at the mines
is a costly thing. The temptation is to revamp and repair and reorganize
the present outworn and wasteful system rather than make large new
investments and scrap the old equipment. But in the commercial value of
the by-products from bituminous coal lies the possibility of paying for
the new power to turn our factory wheels by the sale of dyes and
fertilizer and medicines and tar and explosives and perfumes and a
hundred other things. So it is to the chemical laboratories that we look
for the new values which may make a superpower system financially
possible just as it is to the electrical workshop that we look for the
inventions which will integrate it into one thing.
But even the recovery and sale of the by-products of coal are not all
that is involved in the new way of supplying the world with power. While
gas can yield the full fuel value of coal in a more efficient form than
solid fuel, as well as all the commodity values, if it is converted into
power through the steam engine, at least one-half of its energy value is
lost. To conserve its full value, gas must be burned in the
internal-combustion engine, the most familiar type of which is the one
we know under the hood of the automobile and the most efficient type is
the Diesel engine which has made the by-product system industrially
practical.
The internal-combustion engine is a relatively simple device for
transforming the energy in fuel into power directly instead of
indirectly as the steam engine does, of turning wheels at first hand, of
cutting out steam as a middleman. It greatly enlarges the range of fuel
utilization because it can burn not only fuel gas and the lighter
oils--gasoline, benzol, and their close kin--but also fuel alcohol, the
supply of which though hitherto only slightly developed will last as
long as the sun and rain make vegetation grow in the soil. Our future
success in winning and holding an economic surplus upon which the
opportunity for the good life and a world civilization depends, rests
almost as largely upon the internal-combustion engine as the industrial
revolution depended upon the steam engine of Newcomen and Watt.
When the internal-combustion engine has been adequately developed, and
that time is near at hand, it will be economically possible to establish
the great superpower stations at the mines, to integrate the electricity
flowing from their gas-driven dynamos with the flow from the
hydroelectric stations on the great rivers and mountain streams, and to
use the surplus gas and smokeless coal to supply the domestic consumer
during the period of transition from our present wasteful fuel and power
system to the new system which will give us heat and power with the turn
of a button on an electric switch.
In our solution of the fuel problem there must be an extension of such
work as that of the Fuel Administration which integrated the
administrative side of the industry as by a man in a high tower with all
the resources and needs of the country spread beneath him. He must see
all the sources of power as in a common reservoir--all the coal and oil
and gas and water power--all the fuel alcohol and those subtle forces
within the material atoms themselves which scientists dream of forcing
to do the work of man. He must sort and deliver power to fill the need,
this in the form of oil or gas sent through its own pipe line; this
still in the bulky form of coal or coke by rail or water to those few
industries which can take no substitute; and more and more of it
transmuted into electricity and poured along the singing wires, or later
perhaps through the pathways of the air itself, to turn the wheels of
industry.
And in addition to the actual pooling of the power resources of the
country, there must come their intensive and economical use--economical
by more standards than that of money alone--so that the miner who blasts
the coal from the face, the man who sinks the oil well or runs the
internal-combustion engine or strings the electric wires, will get in
return for the thousands of tons of coal he has mined or the kilowatt
hours he has generated from his dynamo, the material basis of the good
life.
This integrated industry of which the mining of coal, the projected
superpower systems, the pumping of oil, the development of water power,
and the organization and training of those who produce or consume power
are essential parts, is the inevitable result of the development that
has gone before. Just as the industrial revolution had its beginnings in
the coordination of the steam engine, the coal mines, and the factory
machinery, and its incentive in the drive of the acquisitive instinct to
make existence possible; so this new industrial advance, the integration
of the power that drives industry, is the logical result of the
development of long-distance electric transmission, the intense
utilization of the fuel supply, and the invention of the
internal-combustion engine, and it may result not only in making
existence possible but in making life good.