Great Britain has long been the centre of the universe in the supply of the world’s coal, and as a matter of fact, has been for many years raising considerably more than one half of the total amount of coal raised throughout the whole world.  There is, as we have seen, an abundance of coal elsewhere, which will, in the course of time, compete with her when properly worked, but Britain seems to have early taken the lead in the production of coal, and to have become the great universal coal distributor.  Those who have misgivings as to what will happen when her coal is exhausted, receive little comfort from the fact that in North America, in Prussia, in China and elsewhere, there are tremendous supplies of coal as yet untouched, although a certain sense of relief is experienced when that fact becomes generally known.

If by the time of exhaustion of the home mines Britain is still dependent upon coal for fuel, which, in this age of electricity, scarcely seems probable, her trade and commerce will feel with tremendous effect the blow which her prestige will experience when the first vessel, laden with foreign coal, weighs anchor in a British harbour.  In the great coal lock-out of 1893, when, for the greater part of sixteen weeks scarcely a ton of coal reached the surface in some of her principal coal-fields, it was rumoured, falsely as it appeared, that a collier from America had indeed reached those shores, and the importance which attached to the supposed event was shown by the anxious references to it in the public press, where the truth or otherwise of the alarm was actively discussed.  Should such a thing at any time actually come to pass, it will indeed be a retribution to those who have for years been squandering their inheritance in many a wasteful manner of coal-consumption.

Thirty years ago, when so much small coal was wasted and wantonly consumed in order to dispose of it in the easiest manner possible at the pitmouths, and when only the best and largest coal was deemed to be of any value, louder and louder did scientific men speak in protest against this great and increasing prodigality.  Wild estimates were set on foot showing how that, sooner or later, there would be in Britain no native supply of coal at all, and finally a Royal Commission was appointed in 1866, to collect evidence and report upon the probable time during which the supplies of Great Britain would last.

This Commission reported in 1871, and the outcome of it was that a period of twelve hundred and seventy-three years was assigned as the period during which the coal would last, at the then-existing rate of consumption.  The quantity of workable coal within a depth of 4000 feet was estimated to be 90,207 millions of tons, or, including that at greater depths, 146,480 millions of tons.  Since that date, however, there has been a steady annual increase in the amount of coal consumed, and subsequent estimates go to show that the supplies cannot last for more than 250 years, or, taking into consideration a possible decrease in consumption, 350 years.  Most of the coal-mines will, indeed, have been worked out in less than a hundred years hence, and then, perhaps, the competition brought about by the demand for, and the scarcity of, coal from the remaining mines, will have resulted in the dreaded importation of coal from abroad.