THE COAL QUESTION.[1]
The heading of this paper will have a familiar sound to Members of the British Association. From the date when Lord Armstrong first directed public attention to the subject, and Professor Jevons published his exhaustive book on the question, down to the present year, in some form or another—either as the result of an inquiry, as in the Report of the Coal Commission in 1871, or in notices such as those by Professor Hull and others— the coal question has again and again recurred.
And at the meeting of the British Association at Cardiff which may now be considered one of the greatest centres of the coal industry it will not be inopportune to revert to a subject so intimately associated with the progress and well-being of Great Britain—--and, in doing so, to direct some special notice to a phase of the subject, which does not appear to be securing that amount of public and legislative attention which its importance justifies.[2]
The probable duration of our total coal resources depends largely upon the annual increase in the production of coal. Will that increase continue at an increasing or diminishing rate, or will it arrive at a maximum output, remaining stationary for a period of long or short duration, and then gradually decrease; and, lastly, is the quantity of coal estimated by the Royal Commission of 1871 a reliable estimate ?
It may, the writer suggests, be accepted that the rate of annual increase in the production of coal will have a tendency to decrease, not only because the rate of increase in the population
is gradually decreasing, but also because the earlier developed
- ↑ Read before the British Association at Cardiff, August 1891.
- ↑ Since the writer first considered the subject, he has noticed an able and instructive paper by Professor Lupton, in Nature, published in the year 1885, bearing upon this part of the question. Mr. Price Williams and others have also dealt with some features of the rapid exhaustion of our coal.
