Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1882-08-02
The Modern King Coal.
Philadelphia Record.

'Old King Cole, who was a merry oil
soul and who contented himself with
very mild form of dissipation in com
pany with his fddlers three. Th
greater King Coal who has become tn,
master of almost the whole materia
world, is a more real, a more importan
and more absolute monarch. His
reign, it is true, has not been Ions
one his first pretensions to the sceptre
and the crown originated with Watt
and were confirmed by Stephenson and
1 Fulton, so that a century has moi
elapsed since he ascended the throne
! But fancy what confusion would re suit
if there should be sudden stoppage
of the coal supply throughout the
world 1t is also true that King Coal
iS not the absolute necessity that lie
once Was. A rival monarch somewhat
threatens his supremacy, not only as a
light-bringer, but as power creator ;
but whatever may be tie future of
electricity, it has not yet dispensed
with the use of coal, nor even perceptI-
bly, diminished its consumption.
1t is ditiicult.to realize what figures
mean Shen they rise into millions of
tons, but by making some simple CON-
parisons OF the amount of coal taken
from the earth in this country alone
with objects whose size can be readily
appreciated, an idea of the grandeur of
our latter-day King Goals proportions
can be obtained
The total output of all kinds of coal
in the United States for 1881. amount
ed in round numbers to -, l22 0OU
tons, of which Pennsylvania rrCd Iced
4S,500, 900 tons, or nearly two thirds.
Let this immense total be supposed to
be piled up in the square in whi, the
City Hall is situated, at the junction OF
Broad and Market streets Striking
an average between anthracite and
bitCminous coal as to bulk, and assum-
ing that there is at the junction of
those streets a plot of land five hundred
feet square, this space could be inclos-
ed like square bin to height of one
hundred and seventy feet and filed
fifty times without wholly exhausting
the amount of coal that was mined in
this country last year. The great
pyramids of Egypt are regarded as
miracles Of industry and wasted labor
The largest of all, at Gizeh, which took
100000 men almost half century to
build, contains very .arly S0.000,000
cubic feet of stone. Yet if oil the coal
mined in this country in 1881 had been
piled in pyramids of similar size there
would have been more than twenty-six
of these tremendous monuments. of
coal completed, or one every two weeks.
Again, suppose that square column
had been made of coal, allowing it
base 80. feet square, there would be
more than LOO such columns, 500
feet high, rising to level with the
projected top of the Washington monu-
ment in Washington. The great
Chinese wall is believed to be l,400
miles long, 20 feet high, and "a feet
thick, containing 3,548, 100000 cubic
feet. If the coal of SSl had been put
into such wall, it would have extend
ed from Philadelphia to Chicago, and
have had enough left over to surround
both cities.
These are astonishing figures, yet,
great as they are, production of coal in
Great Britain during the same year
was more than double what it was in
this country, and every where it is con-
stantly increasing. When the great |
outputs of France, Belgium, Germany
and other fields all over the world Q
added in, the transfer Of such vast
amount of fuel from solid to gaseous
form would seem to imply considera-
BILE change in the relative density of
the earth's outer shell and it would |
be interesting matter to investigate |
such changes have any percep.
tible influence on the earth's rotation. |
The question Of the exhaustion Of the
supply does not now agitate the minds
of either philosophers or practical men,
since it is generally conceded that,
ages before the supply can become
diminished even, there will
be other sources OF power m ore readily
and economically available. 1t is prob
able that coel will long continue to be
used for many purposes, and that its
for a long time will be
likely to increase rather than decrease
but it will no longer be absolutely
necessary to depend upon it, and to
hat extent the modern King Coal has
,oan dathronad