NEW SOUTH WALES COAL.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1347, 8 June 1878, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES COAL.

In the last ton years (writes the “ Sydney Morning Herald”) the output appears to have nearly doubled, and the increase has been disposed of to the countries enumerated in the following proportions : —To the neighbouring colonies the exports have increased 57f per cent.; to the United States, almost exclusively to San Francisco, the increase is 166£ per cent.; to China, India, and the Eastern ports generally, it is 35 per cent.; and to all other ports it is 2ok per cent, on the quantities exported in 1867. The increase in home consumption has been 97 percent, for an increase in our population of only 40£ per cent. Here are some inferences worth notice. By far the largest proportionate increase has been to the United Stales, which are credited now with one-tenth of our entire export of coal. The colony of Yictoria has nearly doubled her imports from us, and she took 261,481 tons in 1876. New Zealand is our next best customer, and took from us, in the year just named, 150,287 tons, notwithstanding the opening of mines of her own—an increase of more than half during the decade. But the largest rate of increase, leaving out the Californian mail steamers, has been in our own local consumption, which is more than double the rate of increase in population. Does not this suggest the growth of our manufacturing industries ? No doubt it is partly to be accounted for by the substitution of coal for wood for domestic use, and by the extension of our railways. But this has also been done in Victoria and New Zealand, whore railways have been pushed on much more rapidly than here ; so that, as compared with them, our increased consumption of coal, the great source of manufacturing motive power, is a strong presumption of our greater industrial progress. Our principal customers in the Eastern seas are Hongkong, Singapore, Bombay, Java, and two or three Chinese ports. Even Russia has to supply her Pacific war fleet with Sydney coal, for we sent to Petropaulovski, in 1876, no less than 14,811 tons, besides what her vessels may haye obtained at other Eastern ports.