the dunes there was nothing to be seen but a boat far out at sea. At one end stood Windekind, and something golden glittered in his hand, and at the other end Johannes thought he discerned the dim figure of Death.

As he stood and watched the boat a still more wonderful sight met his gaze. Down the pathway of the water came a human form, treading calmly on the glowing waves; his face was pale and his deep eyes were full of tender sadness.

'Who are you?' asked Johannes. Are you a man?'
'A man, and more than a man,' was the reply.
'Are you Jesus, God?'

'Speak not the names,' said the figure. Once they were holy and pure as priestly garments, and precious as life-giving bread, but they have been made wash for swine and motley for fools. Name them not, for their meaning has become folly, their sanctity scorn. Those who will know me must rid themselves of names and listen to their own hearts.'

'I know you, I know you,' said Johannes.

'It was I who made you weep for men, though you understood not your own tears. It was I who gifted you with love, the love that you comprehended not; I have been with you and you have not seen me, I have touched your heart and you have not known me.'

'Why can I see you now?'

'Many tears must purify the eyes that are to behold me. And you must not weep for yourself alone, but for me, then you will see me and know me for a familiar friend.'

'I do know you, I recognise you, let me be with you.'

The figure pointed to the crystal boat sailing into the light, and again he stretched his hand to the darkening east. That is my way,' he said, 'where men and misery dwell; yonder is light and happiness and everything you have ever desired. Choose.'

Then Johannes turned his gaze slowly from Windekind's glittering form and stretched his hands towards the earnesteyed figure, and with his companion he faced the chill night wind and chose the hard path to the gloomy city where dwell men and misery.

A new lesson had begun, the lesson that

Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.

MARGARET ROBINSON.

THE SCARCITY OF COAL

THROUGHOUT Europe consumers are complaining of the difficulty of obtaining an adequate supply of coal. In London best coal in February was quoted at 40s. a ton, and in many of the poorer districts 28. to 28. 4d. per hundredweight was charged for inferior coal when bought in small quantities. The pinch of enhanced prices is felt throughout the country in a way not experienced since 1873. This scarcity of coal is a matter of vital importance. British industrial supremacy has been largely due to the abundant supplies of coal at reasonable prices. With a coal famine and exorbitant prices the manufacturing power of the country will disappear. Great Britain, however, is not suffering alone, for coal is equally scarce in Germany, France, Belgium, Austria and Russia. It is of interest, therefore, to consider the causes that have led to the present rise in price. Many believe that merchants are forcing up the price on the pretext that the abnormal demand created by the war absorbs all the available coal. In reality the transports, which in many cases have merely altered their usual course, have caused only a slight increase in the demand, as also has the cessation of the output of the collieries in Natal and Cape Colony. Moreover, the number of miners called to the Militia and the Reserves has had but an insignificant effect in lessening the output. The war is thus responsible only to a trifling extent for the rise. The chief causes are the great activity in the European iron and steel trades and the increased Continental demand ⚫ owing to strikes. It has been asserted that owing to the higher. wages now obtaining in the British collieries miners are working for a much shorter time. This statement, however, is not borne out by the official returns published in the Labour Gazette, which show that the average number of days worked per week in the British collieries during the month ending the 4th of February, 1900, was 5.69, as compared with 5.63 a year ago.

The future of British coal mining is a matter for serious consideration. In 1840 Great Britain produced 75 per cent. of the world's supply of coal; at the present time it produces only 30 per cent. The condition of the iron trade has always exercised a most

a

important influence on the production of coal, so that a large demand for iron draws with it a large demand for mineral fuel. Statistics show us, however, that since 1870 the world's production of pig-iron has increased from 12,000,000 to 35,657,000 tons; but the share taken by Great Britain has fallen from 48.8 per cent. to 24 per cent.; whilst that of the United States has increased from 14 per cent. to 33 per cent., that of Germany from 11 per cent. to 20 per cent., and that of Russia from 3 per cent. to 6 per cent. In considering the production of coal we have to deal with figures of vast magnitude. In 1898 the world produced no less than 662,820,000 tons, of which amount Great Britain produced 30.48 per cent., the United States 29.63 per cent., Germany and Luxemburg 19-74 per cent., Austria-Hungary 5:42 per cent., France 4.89 per cent., Belgium 3.33 per cent., and Russia 1.94 per cent. While it cannot be denied that during the past quarter of a century its coal-mining industry has not developed so rapidly as that of its American and Continental commercial rivals, Great Britain still holds, as it always has done, the first place.

Although coal was first mined as far back as the year 1113, by the monks of the Klosterrath Abbey, at Kirchrath-on-the-Wurm, it was in Great Britain that it was first used on a large scale, on the Tyne, the 'coaly Tine' of Milton. In 1239 King Henry the Third granted a charter for raising coals for fuel to the townsmen of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and so early was their produce attracted to London, that by the beginning of the next century great complaint arose of the injury done by the coal smoke to the health of the citizens. At a later date the tyrannical oppressions' of the Newcastle charters and grants were set forth by Ralph Gardiner in a quaint work entitled England's Grievance Discovered in relation to the Coal Trade, published in 1655, in which, in his epistle dedicatory to His Highness Oliver, Lord Protector, he petitions for a revival of that never-to-be-forgotten statute, 11 Rich. II. cap. 7, for a free trade to all, which voided all monopolies and charters, as being the greatest grievance in a commonwealth.' It will,' he writes, 'not onely make this your nation equivalent with Venice, Holland, and other free rich States, in riches, but preserve timber, and reduce coals under 20s. the chalder all the year at London, but also augment to your publique revenue above 40,000l. per ann. in that very port of the river of Tine.'

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Great Britain about 10,000,000 tons were raised annually. The Continental production at the time was very small, the large expanse of forest land having delayed the necessity for turning to mineral fuel. Since then enormous strides have been made. At that period the machinery was of a primitive type. Even in 1837 a colliery was in operation in the county of Durham at which coals were raised by a donkey

and banked out and sold by an old woman. Compare this with a modern pit raising 1,500 tons a day from a depth of half a mile.

The produce of a coal seam 5 feet thick is 6,000 tons per acre, and taking this as an average thickness, the area of coal annually worked amounts to nearly 33,000 acres, or four times the area of the county of London. With this rapid rate of consumption, anxiety as to the duration of the British coalfields is well founded. Professor Hull estimates that the total quantity of coal within a depth of 4,000 feet still remaining is 81,683,000.000 tons. This estimate is reassuring, although it is not in accord with the less optimistic and divergent views on the question expressed by Professor Stanley Jevons, by the Right Honourable Leonard H. Courtney, by Mr. R. Price-Williams, and by Mr. T. Forster Brown. All these estimates are of slight value, owing to the impossibility of prophesying either the rate of increase in production and consumption, or the limits at which mining may be carried on with profit. Early in the last century a shaft 100 feet in depth was an object of wonder, and a glance over the history of the depths hitherto attained clearly shows the remarkably rapid progress that has been made in this respect. At the present time the greatest depth at which in Great Britain mining operations are carried on has been reached at the Pendleton Colliery, near Manchester, where the deepest workings are nearly 3,500 feet below the surface. This enormous depth has, however, been exceeded in other countries, notably in the Lake Superior district, where the Red Jacket shaft of the Calumet and Hecla copper mine has now attained the record depth of 4,900 feet; and in Belgium, where a colliery at Mons is 3,937 feet deep. Depths such as these show that the limit of depth of 4,000 feet adopted by Professor Hull and by the Royal Coal Commissioners in 1870, though ridiculed at the time, was well within the bounds of possibility. In view of the marvellous efficiency of modern winding engines, no considerations of a mechanical nature need limit the prospective depths of shafts. By far the most important obstacle to very deep mining is the certain and proportionate increase of temperature according to depth. At the Paruschowitz borehole, in Silesia, the deepest in the world, recently put down by the Prussian Government to a depth of 6,573 feet, this increase of temperature with depth has been found to be 1° Fahr. for 62.1 feet. Taking this as a fair average, a coal seam at a depth of 4,000 feet would be, without the cooling action of an artificial ventilating current, 64° warmer than ground near the surface.

Of late years great economies have been effected in the utilisation of coal. Mr. Price-Williams, for example, has shown that whilst in 1871 the iron and steel trades required 30 per cent. of the coal consumed in the United Kingdom, in 1887 the requirements were only 16 per cent. The effect of these large economies is shown by the fact that in 1871, in order to obtain 6,700,000 tons of pig-iron,

39,700,000 tons of coal were used, whilst in 1898 for 8,600,000 tons of pig-iron the coal consumption was 17,000,000 tons. With improvements conducive to economy in fuel it is evident that a considerable industrial development may take place with a very slight increase in coal consumption.

Another matter connected with coal consumption demanding notice is the question of coal exports. The Royal Coal Commissioners in 1870 assumed that the future exports would remain stationary at 12,000,000 tons. The Board of Trade returns show, however, that last year the export of coal from Great Britain exceeded 55,000,000 tons. Indeed, the exports have increased much more rapidly than the production. It must, of course, be remembered that the export returns include fuel used by steamers engaged in foreign trade and also the fuel supplies of the coaling stations. In view of the present scarcity of coal, letters and articles have recently been published in the daily newspapers urging that the export of coal should be prohibited. The writers forget that the rate of increase of our coal exports is the measure of our commercial prosperity. Besides affording a medium of exchange in dealings with other countries, coal is practically the only heavy article of cargo that can serve as ballast for vessels freighted with lighter merchandise, and if outward-bound vessels could not obtain sufficient cargo, there would be a serious increase in the cost of imported foodstuffs and iron ore. As Professor Stanley Jevons forcibly puts it, while the export of coal is a vast and growing branch of our trade, a reversal of the trade and a future return current of coal is a commercial impossibility and absurdity.'

Turning to the Continent, what are the conditions obtaining? In Germany all the coal raised is being eagerly bought up. In the Prussian Parliament the high price of coal has been the subject of animated debate. The annual report of the Essen Chamber of Commerce complains of the insufficient number of miners, of the decrease in the output per man, in spite of higher wages, and the frequent arbitrary holidays. Constant complaints, too, are made of the deficiency of railway trucks to carry the coal in autumn and winter. In Austria the coal trade is in a critical condition. The miners of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, 50,000 in number, have taken advantage of the present scarcity of coal to strike for a 20 per cent. increase of wages and an eight-hour day from bank to bank. Many of the large ironworks have been compelled to close. The Jitschin-Nimburg Railway, in Bohemia, chiefly used for the transport of sugar, is at a standstill, and other railways have had to reduce the number of trains. In Prague the schools are closed. In short the north-west of the monarchy has become a seat of war, the combatants being the miners, fighting for a reduction in output, and the mine-owners, fighting for the economic law that prices should fix wages, not that wages first fixed should determine prices. The stocks