The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1912. OIL VERSUS COAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 213, 7 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1912. OIL VERSUS COAL.

It is but natural that business men who reck little of the human element in regard to great industrial disturbances, should see commercial advantages in these upheavals. Coal has been one of the most precious commodities the worhl of commerce knows, simply because most power enterprises have depended absolutely on it. The men who hew th» coal from the earth work under conditions of hourly danger. There never yet was a coalminer who obtained wages commensurate with the work he does, the risk he runs;- or the abandonment of the light of heaven that is thrust on him. We have heard much about the disappearance of the available supply of coal. Learned, scientists have discovered that the earth's supply of coal will peter out in such and such a time. There has never been until late years any attempt to prevent the wilful waste of fuel of any kind, but during the last decade scientists hav« concentrated on obtaining the last possible ounce of power out of a substance infinitely more precious than diamonds. We should have assumed a decade ago that a general strike of coal miners throughout the world would have stopped most manufacturing enterprises. Such a strike at this moment paralyses trade more than any circumstance that could be named. You cannot force men to hew coal from the bowls of the earth, but you can punish him for not hewing it, and already commerce is making dreadful reprisals. An unheralded general strike of coalminers would cripple every navy and every railway service if there were no fuel substitute for the creation of steam. A warship without steam, or a locomotive engine without force to drive, is as useless as a man without lungs, or a wheelbarrow withovt a wheel. It is claimed that coal is being superseded by mineral oil for the creation of power, but the world's coal output has not yet seriously diminished because of oil competition. The proof of the ability of oil to replace coal might be found in a sudden forced cessation of coalmining, and the consent of oil workers to fill the gap. If it is granted that the disuse of coal could be met by the substitution of oil, it must also be granted that the world would not be immediately prepared for the substitution. Thus, for instance, if a New Zealand company's boats were stuck up to-mor-row because there was no coal to burn, the boats could not be despatched even if there were a million tons of oil readv

to burn. Although the oil age is approaching, commerce is not absolutely ready for it. If a great coal strike can have any effect that may be termed "useful," it may result in preparing great commercial concerns for the alternate use of either fuel. More boats than formerly are being built with oil carrying and using capacity, and it may be assumed that their owners, having found this fuel to be to their commercial advantage, would finally discard coal. Thfc difficulty, through strikes or any othei cause, of obtaining sufficient coal tc create commercial power, would of necessity hasten the oil period. Commerce would not wait while labor was making up its mind, and it is hardly conceivable that oil workers and coal workers would so sympathise with each other that both sections would refuse to supply oil. The entire supercession of coal by oil'is at present wholly problematical. Although scientists claim to be able to determine the probable length of time that the world's coal supply will last, no two computers agree within a hundred or two hundred years. Their estimates of the possible supply of unmined coal seems pathetically futile, For a scientist to assert what probable bodies of coal are hidden in unexplored Australia, New Guinea, Canada, Siberia. or any other vast country is to simply juggle with theory. To assert that oil will entirely supercede coal is equally futile, although such an assertion might comfort sections of people not intimately associated with. coal mining. JVe cannot tell what oceans of oil Nature has stowed under the earth, we cannot measure the possible duration of its flow, and we can ■> say little about it, except that it is there and is won with a fraction of the trouble that must be used to win coal. At pre-, sent we cannot regard oil as a rival that will make it ultimately unnecessary to mine coal, but we may certainly regard it as a possible substitute and a certain alternative 6team-ereating' agent. The countries which in a coal crisis are able to fill the sudden gap with oil, will probably demonstrate the feasibility of permanently reducing the enormous consumption of coal. From any point of view, except the personal one, the diminution of coal mining and the extension of the use of oil fuel would be economically sound. The ability of oil to contest the place of coal as-the leading fuel would save future generations from the shortage of fuel that must otherwise inevitably come. A coal crisis, while doing irreparable damage to tens of thousands of individuals, would have the effect of bringing the brightest brains to bear on the question of substitution. The only known substitute is oil, and any defeat of coal is a victory for its liquid brother. A catastrophe in the coal world is not a matter of exultation, but the probable upheaval makes mention of the substitute appropriate. It is sincerely hoped that Taranaki may, in future coal crises, be able to do something in mitigation of the distress that would follow a fuel famine, a famine that would be fraught with the most serious consequences to all mankind.