Waterbury Democrat., 1902-12-05
Coal Producfior1 oE fbe
 United ~Sfofe.S and f6e World
First Place rTsnesa1 Faei Producing
 Nation, Having Passed Great Britain in 1899.

per cent. and that Of Germany 19.2 l per cent. of the coal production of l the world.
 l In 1899, for the first time, the coal 1 production of the United States ex- l ceeded in quantity that of Great Brit
 ain. This superiority has been maln- | tained for two successive years. | During 1901 the United States pro- duction was greater than the amount of coal produced in Great Britain and
 all her colonies. During this year the shares of the leading coai-produc- ing countries were as follows: Unit ed States, 34 per cent; United King dom, 25 pc ent., and Germany, 1922 per cent. is there any prospect that the Hing position of this country may be lost in favor of an-. other country within any calculable future time.
 These statistics clearly show that
 the United Kingdom is rapidly losing it's former preeminence as a coal producing power, and that while it's production is increasing rapidly it's absolute increase is less than that of the United States, and it's relative or proportional increase considerably less than that of either the United States or Germany. In 1868 the. pro- duction of these three countries, the United Kingdom, the United States
 and Germany, in the order named,
 was 115,5o0,o0o, 31,6oo,ooo and 3e,- | 100000 net tons; in 1897 their output | was 226, 400, ooo, 200, ,2oe.ooo and 132,- 100000 net tons, respectively; in 1901,
 245,300,oo0, 293, 100000 and 16s,2oo,Oo9 | net tons. The absolute increase dur ing the period ending with 1901 in the British production was 129, ,s00,- | 900, as compared with 132, ,O0o, ,000 for Germany and 261, ,oo0 net tons for the United States. The proportional increase during these years was 112.4 l per cent for the United Kingdom, as
 compared with 3e4.6 per cent. for
 Germany and s26.9 per cent. for the l United States. F
5.-
 The countries in the second order l of coal production are Austria Hun gary, France and Belgium. These | countries produced, in 1901, 104, ,463,-
 poo short tons of coal, or 12 per cent. of the total. The combined output of these countries is thus consider l ably less than that of Germany, and
 less than half of that of either the i United Kingdom or the United States. The rest of the world furnishes
 less than 61a per cent. of the worlds l production, or about one-fifteenth as much IS the six countries named.
 The beginning of coal production in < the United States dates only to the l 9pcf SrxIIo -fo.. S,f 1I, l though the existence of coal was mo-
 ticed by the early explorers at the l end of the seventeenth and the be- l ginning of the eighteenth century The Virginia deposits near Richmond, i first noticed in 1701, were the first I mines to be regularly worked in this
 country. Mining was begun about the year 1750, and the coal was gold at l Richmond in 1766 for 12d GA cents) l per bushel ind at Philadelphia in 17s9
 for Is. 6d cents) per bushel Of 76 l pounds. 1922 the amount of coal I mined in this region was 4S,214 long I tons; in 1893. 142, ,5S7 long tons. About I the year 1920 the develo' rent Of the I anthracite coal regions gan. Ow- I ing to the fact that Il companies l which first produced this coal were I also building the first canals and rail-
 ways. the growth of the anthracite
 coal trade proceeded more rapidly I than that of bituminous coal. Until
 about 1870 the production of anthra- l cite was greater than lat of bitu-
 minous coal. Thus foi lieS year 1860
 the output of bituminous coal is esti-
 mated by the United States geological
 survey at 80GO.O0O long tons. while
 the combined production of the Penn
 Eylvania anthracite regions exceeded S,5O0,oc0 tons, and for the year 1864
 the avcrag price of bituminous coal l at New York was almost one dollar
 per ton higher than that of anthracite
 $7.6S as againat s6.75.
 l. was not until coal began to bc
 used extensively in the iron industry
 and the railroads made possible the transportation of coal for longer dis l tances during all parts of the year
 that the production of coal. and bi-
 luminous coal more particularly, re,
 ceived it's chief impetus. Although l in Great Britain the use of coal for
 iron smelting dates back to the
 eighteenth century, the use of char
 coal having been completely discarded
 at the beginning of the nineteenth
 century, the only fuel used in Amer
 jean blast furnaces until about 1s40
 was charcoal This was quite natural,
 as with the abundance of large for.
 ests the charcoal used for. the marals