Daniel C. Eddy - "Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission"

Elliott O'Donnell - "Scottish Ghost Stories"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "An Amiable Charlatan"

Archibald Forbes - "Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Checking the Waste

M >> Mary Huston Gregory >> Checking the Waste




For many years the amount of power used for manufacturing and other
purposes has doubled about once in ten years, and the steady pace kept
by different lines of development shows how closely they are related.
Our power, our forest cut, the use of our iron and other minerals, our
coal and petroleum, the railroad earnings, freight and passenger
traffic, and our agricultural products all double themselves every ten
years. This means that in ten years we shall require twice as much power
as now, but will have far less coal to use. This raises the
question,--have we available water-power to conserve our coal supply?
Let us see. It is estimated that we are now using 26,000,000 horse-power
of energy derived from steam, 3,000,000 horse-power derived from water,
and 800,000 from gas or oil, a total of 29,800,000 horse-power. It is
also estimated that there is now running idly over dams, falls, and
rapids 30,000,000 horse-power of energy. In other words, we are wasting
every day enough water to run every factory and mill, and to turn every
wheel, to move every electric car and to supply every electric light or
power-station in the country.

The amount of water-power is gauged solely by the low-water stage of the
stream. A river is considered to produce only as much power as it can
furnish at its season of lowest water. At other times factories may be
operated more actively, but usually most of the extra power is wasted
during a large part of the year.

If these storm or flood waters can be stored in reservoirs, the
stream-flow throughout the year can be made fairly uniform and the power
possibilities greatly increased. The Geological Survey believes that by
storing the flood waters and regulating the flow of the streams, the
large rivers of the United States may be made to furnish 150,000,000
horse-power, enough, if it could be utilized, to supply every power need
of our country for many years to come without using a ton of our coal,
and without in any way decreasing the water.

Of course this can never be practicable. Much power will always be
needed where no stream for power is available. But the lesson is plain
that where water can be used it should be, both in order to save the
coal and because it can be produced more cheaply. The 30,000,000
horse-power now available, if produced in our most modern electric
plants, would require the burning of nearly 225,000,000 tons of coal,
and if in the average plant run by steam-engines, more than 650,000,000
tons of coal, which is fifty per cent. more than all the coal that is
now produced in this country. At three dollars per ton it would cost
$2,000,000,000 a year to supply the coal to furnish the power that we
might have, one might almost say, as a by-product from the improving of
the rivers for navigation. The development of the water-power
possibilities of the country is now going forward at a rapid rate,
however.

Dams on the Susquehanna River will soon make 30,000 horse-power
available, which could be increased to 200,000 by building storage
reservoirs.

A dam just begun at the rapids of the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa,
will, when completed, furnish 200,000 horse-power. Niagara is producing
56,000 horse-power on the United States side. The Muscle Shoals Falls
rapids in the Tennessee River is furnishing 188,000 horse-power.
Illinois will greatly increase its possibilities for offering cheap
power to factories, when the Lakes to Gulf Canal with 173,000,000
horse-power worth $12,750,000 yearly, and the Chicago Drainage or
Sanitary Canal, which has nearly 60,000 horse-power, are complete. Both
of these projects were undertaken by the state.

In California 250,000 horse-power is now in operation, and 5,000,000
horse-power might easily be developed in that state alone, which at the
price of coal would be worth a billion dollars a year.

New England has the oldest system of water-power control, because before
the era of steam it was the chief manufacturing region of the country.
The Merrimac, flowing through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, is the
most carefully conserved river in the world, and Governor Dingley of
Maine said that the water-power of Maine is equal to the working energy
of 13,000,000 men.

The money value is counted at twenty dollars a year per horse power, but
it frequently brings as high as one hundred or even one hundred and
fifty dollars a year in a good manufacturing region, so that the value
of our water-power facilities can hardly be computed.

An ideal picture of the harmonious development of our water resources
for all purposes is one that is not too difficult to realize. It is the
ideal that should be always before us in the improvement of our
waterways, and we should bear in mind that although the expense will be
heavy, it will not cost more than one-tenth as much to improve all the
important waterways as to equip the railways to carry the traffic they
will be called on to carry in the next ten years; and also that in the
past, for every dollar that has been spent on waterways, almost
twenty-five dollars has been spent on railways. The railways are a great
and important part of our national development, but the waterways should
not be neglected. Rather, the two should be so harmonized and adjusted
as to make one great commercial system that will furnish cheap and
abundant transportation for all our commerce.

The most complete plan for conserving our waters is as follows: First,
build storage reservoirs along the upper stretches of the river to hold
the overflow waters of the flood season which are to be turned into the
main channel when the water becomes too low for ordinary navigation.

These storage reservoirs should be on the lowest grade of land, that
which would be least productive. The reservoirs should be well stocked
with the best varieties of fish to make them profitable. The banks
should be planted with forest trees and made as attractive as they can
be made to form public parks and pleasure grounds for the people, where
boating, fishing and bathing may be enjoyed.

The next point is to remove all obstructions from the river, to canalize
it at shallow places or rapids, so that the whole river will be
navigable, and, if necessary, to deepen the channel so that it will
carry large vessels between two important points.

Dams should be built to take advantage of every opportunity for
water-power. One of the worst mistakes in the past has been the failure
to use the power that might have been developed in improving the streams
for navigation.

Rivers should be made profitable still further by stocking with fish and
should be kept clear of factory refuse and sewage. Soil-wash should be
lessened by planting trees and shrubs along the banks; and where
overflow or erosion lowers the value of the land or repeatedly ruins the
crops, dykes and levees should be built.

The rivers most important commercially should be improved first. Canals
should be cut between waterways where large benefits will result;
overflow and swamp land should be drained, and in arid regions every
particle of water conserved for irrigation purposes.

The irrigation canals may also be used to supply water-power, and the
canals may be used as are other canals for towing barges. If electric
power is produced, electric towing is cheap and very desirable as a
means of transportation.

In short, our water supply should be as carefully used and with as
little waste as the land of forests. The most important improvements
needed are, a Lakes to Gulf Waterway that shall be safe and practicable
at least for vessels of moderate size; the improvement of the Ohio,
Missouri, Tennessee and Upper Mississippi Rivers; an inner coast passage
from New England to Florida, and in navigable rivers dredging and
deepening if necessary, to make many outlets to the sea which will
afford cheap transportation.

In the West, the Columbia, San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers with their
branches should be made navigable. Many western rivers have been almost
ruined by filling with rocks in hydraulic mining, but this is now
prohibited by law and if the channels were cleared they would again
become navigable.

Appropriations for much of this work have already been made by Congress,
but the work is not systematically planned. The cost of all of it would
be about sixty-two and a half cents a year for each man, woman and child
in the country and every one would receive some benefit.

The National Conservation Commission on Waterways found that the average
family pays for transportation or freight on all its food and clothing
and the necessities of life, nearly or quite one-third their actual
cost. "It is estimated that the direct benefits would be a yearly saving
in freight handling of $250,000,000, a yearly saving in flood damage of
$150,000,000, a saving in forest fires of at least $25,000,000, a
benefit through cheapened power of fully $75,000,000 and a yearly saving
in farm production of $500,000,000; a total of $1,000,000,000, or twelve
dollars and fifty cents for each person--twenty times the cost! And this
does not take into account the benefits from irrigation, drainage, and
the lessening of disease by a pure water supply."


REFERENCES

Waters. Report of the National Conservation Commission.

Report of Inland Waterways Commission, 1908.

American Inland Waterways. H. Quick.

Waterways and Water Transportation. J. S. Jeans.

Waterway Transportation in Europe. L. G. McPherson.

Highways of Progress. J. J. Hill.

Navigation Resources of the United States. (Johnson.) Report, Governor's
Conference.

Conservation of Power Resources. (H. St. Clair Putnam.) Report,
Governor's Conference.

Florida's Waterways. (Miles.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Our Water Resources. (Lyman Cooley.) Report, Governor's Conference.

The Lakes-to-Gulf Waterway. (Randolph.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Water Resources. (Kummel.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Necessity for Waterway Improvement. (Austin.) Report, Governor's
Conference.

Report Congressional Committee on European Waterways. Senate Document,
1910.

River and Harbor Bill. Senate Document. Burton, 1910.

Forests, Water Storage, Power and Navigation. (Taylor.) Proceedings of
the Am. Hydrochemical Society.

Our Inland Waterways. (McGee.)

Outlines of Hydrology. (McGee.)

Natural Movement of Water in Semi-arid Regions. (McGee.)

Irrigation in the United States. Dept. Commerce and Labor Census Bureau.

Irrigation Projects of the U. S. Reclamation Service.

Reports of Irrigation in various states. Apply to Governor.




CHAPTER V.

COAL


When we begin to study the mineral resources of the country we pass to
conditions altogether different from those which we have been
considering. Heretofore we have been dealing with resources that can be
renewed, the soil by proper management, the forests by replanting, the
waters by nature's own processes; but the fuels, the iron and many other
mineral resources once used are gone for ever.

As to their importance Andrew Carnegie says: "Of all the world's metals
iron is in our day the most useful. The opening of the iron age marked
the beginning of real industrial development. To-day the position of
nations may almost be measured by its production and use. Iron and coal
form the foundation of our prosperity. The value of each depends upon
the amount and nearness of the other. In modern times the manufacturing
and transportation industries rest upon them, and with sufficient land
and a fertile soil, these determine the progress of any people."

We are sometimes told that we need have no anxiety about the future,
that new discoveries and inventions will take the place of the present
fuels, and even substitutes for minerals will be devised long before the
supply is exhausted. This may be true, and in a way the future must take
care of itself, but until new inventions have actually been made it is
criminal to waste present resources and blindly trust that time will
make our folly appear good judgment and foresight.

We have vast mineral resources unused; the present generation, even its
children and its children's children need have no fear of a shortage.
But in the use of those resources that are steadily and for ever
diminishing we must look a long way into the future. We are under the
most solemn obligation to take only our part of the store, and leave the
rest untouched and unspoiled for those who are to come after us. When we
consider what these mineral resources have done for our country in the
last fifty years, when we realize that it is only by having cheap and
abundant coal, iron, and copper that our railroads, our various electric
systems, and our great manufactories have been developed, we can realize
our duty to give the coming generations an equal opportunity to develop
their ideas.

The yearly products of the mines of the United States are now valued at
more than $2,000,000,000. Sixty-five car-loads of freight out of every
hundred carried by our railroads are made up of mineral products. More
than a million men are employed at the mines, and more than twice that
number in handling and transporting mine products.

Of every one hundred tons of coal mined in the whole world, the United
States produces forty-three tons. We supply forty-five tons out of every
hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver,
thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eight tons of the zinc, about
fifty-five tons of the copper, and sixty-three tons of the petroleum
consumed by all civilized countries.

This would be a cause for great national pride if we did not need also
to consider the shameful fact that our wastes or losses in the mining,
handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than
$1,500,000 per day, or, for the year, the gigantic sum of $547,500,000.
That is, more than one-fourth of the entire output is wasted!

Of all our minerals, the fuels which supply heat, light, and power for
domestic and manufacturing purposes, are the most necessary and
important. Other materials can not be manufactured without their aid.
Almost every particular of modern life would be changed if we no longer
had plenty of fuel. Its use means its immediate and complete
destruction, which is true of no other resource, and the use of fuels is
increasing and will increase so rapidly that their conservation is
becoming a serious problem.

The principal fuels are coal, gas, oil, peat, alcohol, and wood, and of
these, coal is at present by far the most important. The first record of
coal mined in this country was in 1814, when twenty-two tons of
anthracite, or hard coal, were mined in Pennsylvania. An increasing
amount was mined each year, but until 1821 the production was less than
five hundred tons per year. In 1822 the production advanced to nearly
60,000 tons, and since that time has increased by leaps and bounds.

During the seventy-five years from 1820 to 1895, nearly 4,000,000,000
tons were mined by methods so wasteful that 6,000,000,000 tons were
destroyed or allowed to remain in the ground so that it could never be
recovered. Within the next ten years as much was produced as in the
entire seventy-five preceding years, and in this period 3,000,000,000
tons were destroyed or left in the ground beyond the reach of future
use. Up to this time the actual amount of coal used has been over
7,500,000,000 tons; the waste 9,000,000,000 tons.

Experts estimate that in the beginning there were somewhere about
2,000,000,000,000 tons of available coal, so that we have now, with all
our wastefulness, used less than two per cent. of our original
inheritance. But we must remember that in the ten years closing with
1905, we used as much as during the entire history of our country up to
that time, and the rate of consumption is still increasing. In 1907 the
amount mined was about 450,000,000 tons. Counting on a continuance of
the same rate of increase, in 1917 it will be 900,000,000 tons a year,
and if the same conditions should continue for twenty years we should be
using and wasting in one year as much as we have used in all our history
up to the present time. By that time more than one-eighth of our
original supply will be gone, and in less than two hundred years nearly
all of it will have for ever disappeared.

That is a long time to look forward, but a short time in looking
backward. It carries us back only to the childhood of Benjamin Franklin
and others prominent in our early history; and if this nation could look
forward to only an equal period of prosperous development in the future
the time would seem short indeed.

But the danger of our coal supply becoming exhausted lies not so much in
its present use as in the rapid increase in its consumption. Fifty years
ago (about the time of the Civil War) we were using an amount equal to a
little more than a quarter of a ton for every man, woman and child then
in the country. Now the rate is five tons, or twenty times that amount,
for each person of all our greatly increased population.

The Pittsburg Coal Company owns about one-seventh of the great
Pennsylvania anthracite fields. From the amount it is now mining each
year and judging from the amount of coal it is able, with present
methods, to reclaim from an acre of coal land, the estimate is made that
this Pittsburg field will be exhausted in ninety-three years. A like
comparison of all the eastern fields indicates that by the beginning of
the next century there will be practically no cheap fuel left in the
entire Appalachian basin.

The Geological Survey reports that, taking into account the available
coal which can be reached and mined by present methods, and supposing
the present conditions of use, waste, and increase to continue, the coal
supply will be exhausted by the year 2015 A. D., but taking into account
the probable improvements in its use, the year 2027 A. D. is estimated
as the time when the present coal fields will be exhausted, and the
middle of that century as the time when all coal fields in the United
States will be gone.

This true story well illustrates the need of conservation and the folly
of careless waste. High in the hills of the Pittsburg region a thick
bed of excellent coal was found by the early settlers. It was impossible
for them to build roads up the steep cliffs, so some method of getting
the coal down to the valleys had to be devised. Buffaloes roamed the
western plains in countless millions, and were so abundant about
Pittsburg that the supply seemed inexhaustible. So the pioneers killed
the buffaloes, filled each skin with a few bushels of coal, sewed it up,
and tumbled it down the mountain side.

This was the way they marketed their coal--by destroying their
buffaloes. For many years no one dreamed that there was any end to the
supply of buffaloes. And so both east and west they were killed for
their skins, which sold for a few cents, for their horns, for a supply
of steak, or for mere sport; and then one day people woke up to find
that the buffalo had disappeared, not in one settlement only, as they
had supposed, but everywhere. There are a few remaining, carefully cared
for by the government. They are among our most valued possessions, and
yet only a few years ago they were destroyed, wasted, by millions.

This passing of the buffalo, the skins of which, as common then as
burlap bags are now, were used to market our first coal, carries with it
a deep lesson as to what will happen to the coal itself, even within
the present century, unless our people awake to the consequence of what
they are doing and make a determined effort to stop all unnecessary
waste.

Let us see where and how these wastes occur. The first serious loss of
our coal occurs at the mines. There are three great wastes in mining.

(1) A coal bed is not made up entirely of pure coal, especially if it be
very thick. Sometimes there are layers of shale or clay, which makes a
large amount of ash. This can never be sold as regular marketable coal;
but it is rich in carbon, and much of it might be used if it could be
marketed near the mines and sold as low-grade coal. In the past there
has been almost no market for it, and if it were either in the roof or
bottom of the coal bed, it has been left unmined. If mixed with pure
coal, the low-grade coal was thrown into great heaps at the mouth of the
mine. This refuse coal is called culm. The amount varies from one-tenth
to one-half of the coal in nearly every coal bed, and would probably
average one-fourth in all the mines of the country.

This material is rich in carbon, and when used in gas-engines will
furnish more power than the best Pocahontas coal when steam-engines are
used. Thus one-fourth of all our coal is wasted at the mines simply
because steam-engines instead of gas-producer engines have been
employed. If in the future installation of power this fact is taken into
consideration, it will make the cost less to the user, and at the same
time utilize a large proportion of our impure coal and save the higher
grades for other purposes.

(2) In the mining of coal it was formerly the unfailing custom to leave
supporting pillars of coal for the over-lying rocks to rest upon, to
make suitable working-rooms, etc. These pillars, twelve to eighteen
inches square, and higher than a man's head, are scattered throughout
the entire mines and are usually of the highest grade coal. In many
mines, also, a roof of coal a foot or more in thickness must be left
because the material above the coal is not solid enough to prevent
cave-ins. When the mine is abandoned and closed these pillars and
roofings remain untouched, because removing them constitutes one of the
greatest dangers to life, and is one of the frequent causes of mine
accidents. It is improbable that the coal thus left in abandoned mines
will ever be reclaimed, because not enough is left to make it profitable
at present prices to re-open the mines; and frequently the rocks cave in
about these pillars and make the task almost impossible.

(3) By careless blasting an unnecessarily large amount of coal is blown
into powder,--the slack which has not been marketed at all until within
the last few years. Much of this slack, which is the best grade of coal
in a pulverized form, is left inside the mines. These wastes in
abandoned roofing, pillars, and small-sized coal, together make a total
which for all the mines in the country will average fully one-fourth
more of the coal that is in the ground.

It is to be noted, however, that conditions are changing for the better.
The most modern mines use fewer supporting pillars of coal, and these
are of larger size, so that there is less danger of accidents. Wherever
possible they use timbers of wood instead of these smaller pillars of
coal. They also mine as near the top of the seam of coal as can be done
safely, and so regulate the blasting that much less slack is made than
by the heavy discharges. These changes in mining methods save a far
larger proportion of coal, and also prevent many accidents, which are
the most unfortunate feature of coal mining, and the one which should
receive most careful consideration. (See chapter on Health.)

One large mining company in Kentucky raises its own timbers by planting
trees in straight, close rows on its coal land, thus making the land
produce its own mine timbers to conserve the coal below. This company
claims to have lost but one life in ten years, and to save seventy-five
per cent. of its coal. This is a striking illustration of what better
mining methods will do for both the miner and the mine owner and of how
forestry may be an aid to the conservation of coal and also of human
life in the mines.

We have already shown how half of the coal is wasted, but there still
remains another source of waste at the mines. This is a large but
unknown quantity. Coal usually exists in beds or layers with shale or
rock between, much as a "layer-cake" is made, the layers of cake being
represented by the coal and the icing between by these "rock-partings,"
as they are called. In rich fields, there are from three to ten of these
rich layers or beds of coal, one above another. It often happens that
the thickest and best layer is the lowest, and when this is the case, it
is usually mined first, regardless of the fact that some, and possibly
all, of the higher beds are dislocated and broken or filled with deadly
gases. Nearly all this loss could be avoided by simply mining the upper
stratum first.

So much for waste at the mines. This is serious enough if it were all,
but it is not all, it is only the beginning. Let us see now what becomes
of the coal that is marketed. The railroads are the largest single users
of coal, and here we are confronted with the surprising statement that
our locomotives consume three tons of coal in doing the same work that
is performed by English locomotives with one ton. This difference is
said to be due to different construction of the engines themselves, and
to more careful stoking, or firing. Our locomotives use 100,000,000 tons
per year, and by even the best methods known a large proportion of the
heat units is wasted. Great effort should be made to improve the
locomotives so that they will consume less coal; but as long as the
railroad companies own the coal mines, as they do in many instances,
they can obtain coal so cheaply that the cost of the improved form of
engine is greater than the amount saved.

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