Evening star., 1925-08-11
BACKGROUND OF EVENTS
BY PAUL i. COLLINS.

shalt not in the Constitution. or
statutes. fs
President Cleveland. in his famous
initiative in sending troops into Hi
nois to protect the interstate com
merce and mails against a strike de
fled Gov. Altgeld, who stood upon his
claimed gubernatorial. right to- control
affairs in his State without Federal
interference. There have been few
to criticize Clevelands S action in thus
protecting the general welfare,
even if Gov. Altgeld were correct in
his technicalitY-which no court has
upheld.
President Wilson and President
Harding took more outspoken posi-.
tions in their crises than Mr.. Coolidge
has vet expressed. The Governor
of Massachusetts in 1902 appealed 10
President Roosevelt. saying that If
the coal famine continued the misery
throughout the Northeast. and espe-
cially in the cities, would be appall.
ing and consequent disorder so great
that frightful consequences might
follow" President Roosevelt subse-
quently wrote:
1T is not too much to say that the
situation which confronted Pennsyl-
vania. New York and New England
and, to a less degree. the States of
the Middle West. in October. 1902
was quite as serious as if they had
been threatened by an invasion of
hostile army of overwhelming force.
How long will civilization tolerate de-
pendence upon the crude practice Of
digging carboR out of the mines and,
transporting it thousands of mileSA
where it is needed for combustion
heat? Within miles of every fac
ic
cooling source of heat, free for the
taking. Mr.. Edison has urged that
coal should be Burned at the mouth
Of the mines and converted into cleo
trio energy which would carry itself
upon cables hundreds of miles. for
power and heat. -
A German engineer. now comes for
ward with a plan 10. tap the earth
heat, 3 miles below the surface
and pipe it to wherever it is needed.
just as water is piped under, pressure
to every home.
Every 100 feet downward in the
earth, the temperature rises ! de-
gree entigrade-nearly ? degrees
Fahrenheit. Three miles down. it is
$50 Fahrenheit. Water boiIs at sea
level at 212 degrees Fahrenheit, but
miles down there is double the
atmospheric pressure and the boiling
point is 24S degrees. which is still 80
degrees lower than the heat found al
that depth; so all water would be con
verted into steam, superheated.
The plan of the German engineer is
as follows: 1.-Two shafts would be drilled
down miles, where a chamber would
be cut in the solid rock. One shaft
would zigzag with right angle bends
every few hundred feet. Through that
shaft water would descend, and at each
bend the water falling from the pre-
vious bend 500 feet above would ope-
rate a turbine-water turbines in the
first miles down, steam turbines
below that depth. These turbines
would create electricity which would
be delivered above by insulated cable
BY the time the water reached the
chamber, it would be superheated
steam, which would rush up through
the straight shaft. and at the surface
1t would be piped throughout the city
or the factory, for power. heat and
electric light. No fuel would ever
again be needed, for one such outfit
would supply in heat and power the
equivalent of 10000 tons of good coal
day. There would be no more SCOT.
no more coal to haul. no more strikes
in mines. and no more prophecies of
exhaustion of the world supply of
fuel.
AS the earth's supply of heat is in
exhaustible, a mans use of it would
be limited only by the number of
shafts sunk to the proper depth. There
has never been a shaft miles
, down, but men never flew above the
clouds until some one invented the air.
plane. No conception of the capacity
of the great world power plant has
ever been dreamed, except by scien-
fists. Men keep on laboriously dig
ging coal-provided the operators and
miners agree.
Copyright, 1928. By Paul v. co,.t.a,