NEW SOUTH WALES COAL.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5356, 28 May 1878, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES COAL.

In the last ten 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 tho neighboring colonies the exports have increased 57j' per cent.; to the United States, almost exclusively to San Francisco, the increase is 1664 per cent.; to China, India, aud the Eastern ports .generally, it is 35 per cent.; and to all otherports it is 25c per cent, on the quantities exported in 1867. The increase in home consumption has been 97 per cent, for an increase in our population of only 40A per cent. Here are some inferences worth notice. By far tho largest proportionate increase has been to the United States, which are credited now with one-tenth of our entire export of coal. Tho colony of Victoria has nearly doubled her imports from us, aud she took 261,481 tons in 1876. New Zealand is our next best customer, aud took from us, iu 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 iu 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, where 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 thiee Chinese ports. Even Russia has to supply her Pacific war fleet with Sydney coal, for we sent to Petropaulovaki, in 1876, no less than 14,811 tons, besides what her vessels may have obtained at other Fjastern ports.