MINERAL PRODUCTS. 
11 
of Europe. This country’s preeminence in the production of petro 
leum 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 re 
sulting from an international inquiry made by the Twelfth Interna 
tional Geological Congress. This publication, in preparing which the 
geological surveys of the world cooperated, furnished the first au 
thoritative 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,