The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-07
HARD COAL PRICES HIGHER
CA USE OF INCREASE EXPLAINED
 BY EXPERTS.
Economy in Consumption 10 Become Neccssity-Com Scarcity of the SuppIy-New Economic Con- dtttons ResuItluu


 dtttons ResuItlng.
 Special correspondence from the New
 York Evening Post from Washington
 says: From this time forth anthra-
 cite coal will impress itself more and
 more each year as luxury" said a prominent operator in both hard and
 soft coal to your correspondent to-day
 And this opinion is shared by the coal | experts of the Geological Survey, to
 whom it was submitted for comment.
 The number of economic forces which
 this fact sets in motion Is surprisingly
 great. The apartment house, for ex- 1 ample, which is now supplanting the l prlVate residence in so many cities,
 owes much of its success to it's ability | to use bituminous coal. In a city like 1 Washington soft coal costs hardly half
 as much for a given amount of heat
 ing power as the anthracite, which Is
 practically indispensable to the small
 householder. Every upward movement
 of anthracite, then, adds to the
 economic advantage of the apartment house, the hotel or whatever else drives | iIo iiSol llOIll a ldISG DUllGT, as l against the competing small house. | with its hotair furnace or other sim pie forms of heating. The upward ten dency of anthracite also puts a pre-
 mium upon competitive articles which
 may be derived from the soft coal like
 gas for use in kitchen ranges, electric lights, and coke. It is also destined to have an effect upon the apparatus and systems of heating In private houses The air furnace is less favor- able for the use of soft coal than the
 steam or hot water system, and hence considerable devlopment along the lat
 ter lines may be expected.
 Few people in the East realize how great luxury anthracite coal already IS in the greater part of the United States. The three states of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey take 65 per cent. of the annual output. Mas sachusetts alone consumes one-twelfth, and Pennsylvania considerably more than one-fourth of the total shipments of anthracite coal. The state of Ken lucky, on the other hand used less than 10000 tons of 1t in 1899, as against 100000 in the little state of Connecti- Sol, Nilil lCSS llletll IIdll US Indiana, which is about as populous as Massachusetts, uses one-twelfth as much anthracite coal: while In the far Northwest and the extreme South, it Is still more rarely found. The price lists tell the story.
 At Spokane, Wash, anthracite coal retailed in 1896 (the last year for which the Geological Surrey collected com parative igures) at from $15 to s20 a ton. At Helena, Mont, the price rang ed then from ST to SIS; at Butte it was from $14 to SIS. In fact, the price of coal along the great tier of Northwest ern states varies pretty regularly with the distance from the Great Lakes, and but for them it's price would be enormously higher. At Duluth, the ex- treme end of Lake Superior, anthra- cite coal is not much more costly than in Washington. This is because it Is moved cheaply as a return cargo for vessels which have to transport the iron ore from Duluth to the eastern end of Lake Erie, on it's way to the Pittsburg soft-coal fields. Chicago, also, has comparatively cheap anthra- cite coal, as do the other lake cities. | put tlG lIOIISHl COdl lGdNtS WdUGE to go by rail it's price steadily rises. broken to some extent ! in Colorado by small local deposits. In | San Francisco, Cal, Pennsylvania an- thracite, although 1t goes around by | water, retailed at from SIP to $16 ton and is probably higher to-day. Bi- luminous coal at the same time retail ed at from $7 to s10 ton, whether suitable for steam or domestic purpos- es. The Cumberland smithing coal, which Is used by blacksmiths all over the country, sold in San Francisco from S9 to $13 a ton, at the same time 1t was selling in Connecticut at from B 25 to $5. It is no wonder that Seat lie in 1896 submitted no quotations of lard coal Soft coal from the Rosslyn mines was quoted at from $1 to $250 a on, and apparently no one was extrav- lgant enough to use anything else.
 In the opinion of the coal experts of he Geological Survey, all of the hard ,oal deposits of the country are pretty we'll known, and as nearly all of them Ire found in the little region about Scranton and Wilkesbarre it Is easy 70 see the coming of a time when very iSdS @Sohciiy "iii 1V hCSCSodiy III 1t5 l But this general state nent should not be taken too sensa- ionally. Since the shipment of an- hracite began in 1920 there have been mined approximately 1,300,000,0 900 tons. The Coal Waste Commission of Penn- 'ylvania, in its report on the ; waste of anthracite mining, has esti- mated that for every ton of coal mined or consumption one and one half tons Ire lost. This not only includes the ulm thrown on the dump, but the coal lecessa rily left in the mine in pillars { or the support of the roof. On this , 'asis of waste it may be estimated that { he inroads upon the original coal de- ( 'osits have amounted to 3,25O,00O, ,000 t ong tons. ( From careful computation by the Survey, it is estimated that $ he original deposits in Pennsylvania ( mounted to about six times what has lready been taken out. At the present ate of consumption, and it is unreason- .ble to suppose that the use for an- hracite will now greatly increase, the mount now remaining would last for
 hundred and fifty ears,>although ob- iously at an increasing cost as greater ,