The coal strike has brought concretely before us the disturbing fact
that modern society is so involved that we live virtually by unanimous
consent. Let less than one-half of 1 per cent of our population quit
their work of digging coal and we are threatened with the combined
horrors of pestilence and famine.
It did not take many hours after it was realized that the coal miners
were in earnest for the American imagination to conceive what might be
the state of the country in perhaps another 30 days. Industries closed,
railroads stopped, streets dark, food cut off, houses freezing, idle men
by the million hungry and in the dark--this was the picture, and not a
very pleasant one to contemplate. There was an immediate demand for
facts.
How much coal is normally mined in this country?
By whom is it mined?
What is its quality?
To what uses is it put?
Who gets it?
How much less could be mined if coal were conserved instead of wasted?
What better methods have been developed for using coal than those of
ancient custom?
Who is to blame that so small a supply is on the surface?
Why should we live from day to day in so vital a matter as a fuel
supply?
What substitutes can be found for coal and how quickly may these be made
available?
This is by no means an exhaustive category of the questions which were
put to this department when the strike came. And these came tumbling in
by wire, by mail, by hand, from all parts of the country, mixed with
disquisitions upon the duty of Government, the rights of individuals as
against the rights of society, the need for strength in times of crisis,
calls for nationalization of the coal industry, for the destruction of
labor unions, for troops to mine coal, and much else that was more or
less germane to the question before the country.
Many of these questions we were able to answer. But if coal operators
themselves had not carried over the statistical machinery developed
during the war, we would have been forced to the humiliating confession
that we did not know facts which at the time were of the most vital
importance.
In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United
States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of coal;
that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, produce
annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground; that 35
per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 years we
have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 tons per
annum; that if last year's coal were used as construction material it
would build a wall as huge as the Great Wall of China around every
boundary of the United States from Maine to Vancouver, down the Pacific
to San Diego and eastward following the Mexican border and the coast to
Maine again; and that this same coal contains latent power sufficient to
lift this same wall 200 miles high in the air, according to one of our
greatest engineers (Steinmetz).
Such facts are surely startling. They serve to stimulate a certain pride
and give us a great confidence in our industrial future; yet they are
not as immediately important, when the mines threaten to close, as would
be a few figures showing how much coal we have in stock piles and where
it is! And months since we called upon Congress to grant the money that
we might secure these figures, but no notice was taken of the urged
requests until, late in the summer, a committee of the Senate awoke to
this need and indorsed our petition.