MINERAL  PRODUCTS.

11

of  Europe.  This  country’s  preeminence  in  the  production  of  petroleum ­
  is  even  more  conspicuous,  so  that  the  opportunity  for  exporting
mineral  fuels  presents  no  immediate  problems  for  the  domestic
producer.
COAL.
The  exports  of  coal  from  the  United  States  have  never  been  large
enough  to  affect  the  production  materially.  They  amounted  to
20,000,000  short  tons  in  1912  and  23,200,000  tons  in  1913,  or  less  than
4  per  cent  of  the  total  output  of  the  mines  in  each  of  those  years.  At
present,  however,  while  the  six  European  nations  that  rank  next  to
the  United  States  as  coal-mining  countries  are  at  war.  the  demand
for  export  coal  from  neutral  countries  is  inevitable.
It  must  be  granted  that  the  sale  of  manufactured  products  for
export  is  preferable  to  the  sale  of  raw  materials,  but  there  appears
now  to  be  a  large  opportunity  for  coal  export  that  will  not  curtail
in  the  least  either  the  domestic  supply  of  coal  or  the  activities  of
domestic  manufacturers.  The  exportation  of  coal  to  South  American
countries  must  be  of  advantage  both  in  establishing  trade  relations
and  in  insuring  a  balance  of  trade  in  our  favor.  Already  shipments
to  European  and  South  American  ports  have  begun,  and  there  is
demand  for  authoritative  information  regarding  the  quality  of  the
coal  from  the  different  fields  accessible  to  the  seaboard.  How  this
information  can  be  obtained  has  already  been  mentioned  on  page  9.
As  stated  by  Secretary  Lane,  “  Coal  is  our  one  resource  about  which
there  need  be  no  present  anxiety.”  In  1908  Campbell  estimated  that
our  reserves  of  easily  accessible  anthracite  and  bituminous  coal  were
more  than  eleven  hundred  billion  (1,106,527,000,000)  tons  and  that
nearly  half  as  much  more  of  the  same  grades  was  accessible  with
difficulty,  besides  comparable  tonnages  of  subbituminous  coal  and
lignite.  Five  years  later  a  new  estimate  made  by  the  same  geologist,
in  the  light  of  much  better  geologic  data,  especially  regarding  the
extent  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  coal  fields,  exceeded  these  figures  by
nearly  30  per  cent.  His  estimate  of  more  than  fifteen  hundred  billion
(1,500,000,000,000)  short  tons  in  the  United  States,  exclusive  of
Alaska,  was  published  in  a  volume  on  the  world’s  coal  resources  resulting ­
  from  an  international  inquiry  made  by  the  Twelfth  International ­
  Geological  Congress.  This  publication,  in  preparing  which  the
geological  surveys  of  the  world  cooperated,  furnished  the  first  authoritative ­
  statement  of  the  coal  supply  of  the  world,  and  showed
that  North  America  possesses  nearly  two-thirds  of  this  supply  and
that  the  United  States  alone  has  reserves  exceeding  those  of  any
other  continent  and  nearly  double  those  of  Europe.
In  view  of  the  steadily  increasing  consumption  of  coal  in  the
United  States  the  question  how  long  the  exportation  of  coal  should
be  encouraged  or  continued  must  be  considered  at  some  future  time,