The waste in use is not less appalling. But five per cent, of the
potential power residing in the coal actually mined is saved and used.
For example, only about five per cent, of the power of the one hundred
and fifty million tons annually burned on the railways of the United
States is actually used in traction; ninety-five per cent, is expended
unproductively or is lost. In the best incandescent electric lighting
plants but one-fifth of one per cent, of the potential value of the coal
is converted into light.
Many oil and gas fields, as in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the
Mississippi Valley, have already failed, yet vast amounts of gas
continue to be poured into the air and great quantities of oil into the
streams. Cases are known in which great volumes of oil were
systematically burned in order to get rid of it.
The prodigal squandering of our mineral fuels proceeds unchecked in the
face of the fact that such resources as these, once used or wasted, can
never be replaced. If waste like this were not chiefly thoughtless, it
might well be characterized as the deliberate destruction of the
Nation's future.
Many fields of iron ore have already been exhausted, and in still more,
as in the coal mines, only the higher grades have been taken from the
mines, leaving the least valuable beds to be exploited at increased cost
or not at all.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25