164 
INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
United States the year has less working days for coal miners than 
in most countries. But this circumstance does not affect appre- 
ciably the comparisons. Put in terms of daily output per worker, 
we have: 
Tons oF CoAL Propuckp PER DAY PER UNDERGROUND WORKER 
191 
United States 
bituminous 4.01 
anthracite 2.91 
Great Britain 1.36 
Prussia 1.29 
Belgium 0.82 
France 1.06 
1914 
128 
78 
25 
.26 
"76 
nr 
1918 
M 
0 
3 
1922 
5.10 
3.18 
1.17 
0.75 
0.84 
The explanation of the American effectiveness of labor in coal- 
mining is to be found partly in the human factors, partly in those 
of nature. The seams in the United States are thicker than in 
most countries, and in general are more accessible. But coal- 
cutting machines are used more widely than in other countries; 
and this, even when the comparison is made with countries having 
seams quite thick enough for machine mining. In the United 
States (1918), 56 per cent of the coal was machine-mined; in 
Nova Scotia (1916), 44 per cent; in New South Wales (1918), 25 
per cent; in Great Britain (1918), 11 per cent. In the three last- 
named there is nothing in the quality of the seams which stands in 
the way of mining by machine. 
Similar in character is a comparison made by a well-known 
German economist * for another bulky and homogeneous com- 
modity — brick. The regions compared were Germany and the 
United States; and for the United States, the State of New York 
separately, as well as the country at large. In the United States, 
for the year 1905, the output of bricks per person employed was 
141,000; for the State of New York alone, the output was 180,000. 
In Germany, for 1904, the output per head was only 40,000. The 
1 First half of the year. 
K. Ballod, in the Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, 1910, p. 294.