The smoke nuisance is one which cuts at the very basis of our business life.  The cloud which, under certain atmospheric conditions, rests like a pall over our great cities, will not even permit at times of a single ray of sunshine permeating it.  No one knows whence it rises, nor at what hour to expect it.  It is like a giant spectre which, having lain dormant since the carboniferous age, has been raised into life and being at the call of restless humanity; it is now punishing us for our prodigal use of the wealth it left us, by clasping us in its deadly arms, cutting off our brilliant sunshine, and necessitating the use in the daytime of artificial light; inducing all kinds of bronchial and throat affections, corroding telegraph and telephone wires, and weathering away the masonry of public buildings.

The immense value to us of the coal-deposits which lie buried in such profusion in the earth beneath us, can only be appreciated when we consider the many uses to which coal has been put.  We must remember, as we watch the ever-extending railway ramifying the country in every direction, that the first railway and the first locomotive ever built, were those which were brought into being in 1814 by George Stephenson, for the purpose of the carriage of coals from the Killingworth Colliery.  To the importance of coal in our manufactures, therefore, we owe the subsequent development of steam locomotive power as the means of the introduction of passenger traffic, and by the use of coal we are enabled to travel from one end of the country to the other in a space of time inconceivably small as compared with that occupied on the same journey in the old coaching days.  The increased rapidity with which our vessels cross the wide ocean we owe to the use of coal; our mines are carried to greater depths owing to the power our pumping-engines obtain from coal in clearing the mines of water and in ensuring ventilation; the enormous development of the iron trade only became possible with the increased blast power obtained from the consumption of coal, and the very hulls and engines of our steamships are made of this iron; our railroads and engines are mostly of iron, and when we think of the extensive use of iron utensils in every walk in life, we see how important becomes the power we possess of obtaining the necessary fuel to feed the smelting furnaces.  Evaporation by the sun was at one time the sole means of obtaining salt from seawater; now coal is used to boil the salt pans and to purify the brine from the salt-mines in the triassic strata of Cheshire.  The extent to which gas is used for illuminating purposes reminds us of another important product obtained from coal.  Paraffin oil and petroleum we obtain from coal, whilst candles, oils, dyes, lubricants, and many other useful articles go to attest the importance of the underground stores of that mineral which has well and deservedly been termed the “black diamond.”

CHAPTER VI.