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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (May 7, 1911)
TT1E OMAIIA SUNDAY BEE: MAT 7, 1911: How Uncle Sam's Coal Fields Are Prospected and Valued k Ml . 71 t fa, n v k ? Ml ,U ill t MB 3 I, COUNTRY SHORT TONS ino.oon.nw T Mfium RuMil and TinlarKl 43,ft7A,31lJ K.M1.74S .M7.K)1 fcj5,2 47 10,067.240 B 10.510.! 30.4U.491 299,970,677 Soil .000.000 4M.4S0.0tt '- v f in cazEmmm cqm.meas Copyright, 1911, by Frank O. Carpenter.) ASHlNGTON, D. C. May 6. (Special Cor- "respondence to The tee.) I have spent this afternoon at the geological survey talking with Dr. George Otis Smith, the director, as to his new investigations of Uncle Sam's coal fields. His figures are no big that they dazzle the mind. The area of the known beds has been almost doubled within the last tan years, and it la now known tn rvvar m. twelve times as large as the states of Ohio, Virginia lor Kentucky, or about one-sixth that of the United States proper. , Borne of the new and undeveloped regions have feeds thirty, forty, fifty and even eighty feet thick, jwad one single bed contains five or six billion tons, an the whole United States, according to the estimate Of Dr. Campbell, made for the survey, the coal in the bed Is more than 8,000 billions of tons, and of this A knore than 2,000 billion tons are accesBable and easily "wtorlted. Dr. Smith says that our workable coal fjelds are ''four times as large as those of all of the country combmed, and that our tonnage Is twice as great as that estimated for the rest of the world. Uncle Sam's Big Coal Wall. You have heard of the great Chinese walL I have een It at several different plaoes. It Is about forty feet, high and perhaps twenty feet wide at the top. It begins at the Yellow sea and runs across jOhina for a dlstanoe of 1,500 miles. -The wall would o a -grain of sand or at least a single brick compared with, the mighty wall that might be made of Uncle Barn's coal. We shall estimate the amount at only SfeOOO billions of tons, taking only the workable and koceasable coal Into the calculation. If that coal were jrat out on the ground and laid up in solid masonry It would make a wall one-third of a mile high and a Xzflle Chick reaching from New York to San Francisco. Or suppose It be 600 feet thick. Which Is more than jl&ree times the width, of Pennsylvania avenue In .Washington or that of any of the largest streets of our IciBe, and make the wall three times as high as the lYVe Mug-ton monument We shall begin the construc tion at Boston and extend the wall westward. How fear do you think It would go. Would It reach across the Pacific? Yea. It would extend from Boston to Bbmnghai In China, and from .there over the whole of .Asia and Europe, until it met the Atlantlo ocean on IBM west coast of France. It would go on clear across ghat ocean to Boston, and there would be hundreds pt mlTllons of tons yet to spare. But the Chinese wall was a useless attempt at de fease to shut out the Tartars. This Is a great Indus trial wall, which means the keeping of our factories twsy and our houses warm for three or four thousand jnears of the agea to come. This estimate of how long our coal will last Is not Dr. Smith's. I tried to get him to tell, but he hedged. Said he: "As reported by Mr. Parker, the survey coal statis tician, the total production of coal in the United States np to date has been over eight billion tons, which, with tlx waste Involved la mining, represents an exhaus tion of about twelve billion tons. This Is less than H of 1 per cent of the coal now known to exist, and It leaves us more than 99 per cent of our workable coal In the ground. The amount, as I have said, Is about 8,000 billion tons, which means 4,000 times the amount we are now using each year, plus 50 per cent added as waste." A Million and a naif Tons Dally. "How much coal do we use every year?" "Our highest production was that of 1907, when we used 480,000,000 short tons. That was about 3600,000 tons every day. We are now using a little leas, but It would take more than 800,000 trains of thirty cars each to carry the coal that we are annually mining, and the combined length of those trains would be between eighty and ninety thousand miles. They would make a solid train of coal reaching two and one-half times around the globe at the equator. "But, Mr. Director," said I, "if we use less than K00 million tons a year, would not those 2,000 billions last us 4,000 years?" "I don't want to talk aboijt years." said the head ft- in - -'-r ' - I lAirnp&aDZ Ft. ir in ill in mm m iim trifimt una s u um a h i iii n if iu urn f fi?7v Mill 7 II MS I WfX mi vii in in in si ii i - m tin 19 mall III 111 HI Kill in II Ml X III 1 I zmrw fx V3 lit itAff 4wV.- - ' f - ; . VJ . ... A:; i, :ti'T " '-.1 t V I V" - ? . '' rz.il mt j MwarssssBg 9 1 V A BLACK W(fflMmm!iTE-3iiumm)uz of the "geological survey, "but If any one wants to prophesy he can use those figures as a basis, keeping in mind,.the fact that the increase in consumption; of our coal has been remarkable, and that In each decade the amount used has exceeded the total pre vious consumption since we begau to mine coal. V mean to say that the consumption for the last ten years ending with last year was greater than the total consumption during the last century. If such a ratio of increase should continue, which is impossible, the life of our eoal fields would be comparatively short." Where the Coal Lies. "Can you tell me Just where our great coal fields are, Mr. Director?" said I. "They are to be found in all but fourteen states of the union. They extend from northern Pennsyl vania to Oregon, and from Canada to southernmost Texas. You can get the best Idea of them from a map made for the survey by Dr. Campbell a couple of years or so ago." Here the director sent for a map of our coal lands about four times as large as a page of this newspaper, and spread it out on his desk. As we looked at It be said: "That great patch at the east Is the Appalachian coal field, and those spots to the right of It, at the northern end. are the anthracite beds of eastern Pennsylvania. It is from there that cemes the chief anthracite of the country. Those beds originally con tained over nineteen billion tons of anthracite, and, at the close of the year 1909 there were estimated to be over fifteen billion tons still in the ground. The Appalachian field contains much high-grade bitumi nous coal good for cooking, and it is by far the most Important coal fleM of the union at the present time. A little further over Is the eastern or HUnoU coal bed. It covers an area as large as the state of Ohio, and on the other side of the Mississippi Is another vast region underlaid with coal, while at the south are the coal fields of Texas. Our surveyors have recently Investigated the coal fields of the northwest and the Rocky mountain plateau, and especially that upon the public lands, the title to which Is still In the government-" What Tnrte Ram Owns. "Can you give me some idea of the coal lands which still belong to the government? What Is their extent?" "They cover an area of more than seventy or eighty million acres, and they contain an enormous amount Some of the beds are twenty, thirty, forty and even as -high aa eighty feet In thickness, and in many of them there are several beds with clay or rock between them. In the Navajo reservation of Arizona we have the Black Mesa coal field, which Is estimated to contain more than 5,600,000,000 tons, or more than all the coal that Pennsylvania has produced or wasted up to date. Altogether It Is estimated that there are almost 2,009 billion tonaof coal of one kind or another in the public land states. It must be re membered that a great deal of this Is lignite, of such a low grade that it will be many years before it is mined." "What is the character of the western coal?" "It is of all grades. Some of it Is anthracite and some of it is high-grade bituminous coal. We have considerable anthracite in Alaska, and also great quan titles of bituminous coal which will make excellent coke and which, eventually, will be used largely In the Industrial development of the Pacific coast states." How Uncle Sam Has Saved Millions, j I understand that you geologists are resurveying and revaluing the coal upon our public lands? Can you tell me how this is done?" , "The old way of selling the coal lands," replied the director, "was at so much per acre, regardless of '.he quality, or amount of coal it contained. The price was fixed at $20 if the land lay within fifteen miles of a railroad, or at $10 per acre if it were outside :hat limit. Our present method Is to measure up the toal in each acre, and sell the land on a coal tonnage basis. Instead of getting $10 or $20 per acre we are now getting from $50 to $500 per acre, and some of the coal land will be worth more. Within the last two years the'survey has classified more than 8,000, 000 acres of coal in that way, and has placed a value upon them of $560,000,000. "This, added to what we have classified before gives us over 13,000,000 acres already classified, the valuation of which in round numbers is $637,000,00?. At the old rates those lands would have sold for at least $400,000,000 less, and the new valuations mean a gain to the government of about that amount. - But this, you must remember, is the saving on only 13.000," . 000 acres, and we have 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 acres which are yet to be priced." Coal at One-Half Cent a Ton. "But how can you fix the value of the coal?" "We do that on a royalty basis. In the first place, We figure out how much coal each acre contains. A bed of coal one foot thick has about 1,800 tons to tho acre, and if it Is forty feet thick It would contain forty times that, or 72,000 tons to the acre. We value It as low as Vt cent a ton and from that up to 2 cents or 3 cents a ton, according to the Quality of the coal whether it Is a low-grade bituminous or a high-grade anthracite or coking bituminous. "We test the actual heating value and base our estimates on that. Having estimated the value we put the price on each acre, and we have now maps showing the values of coal lands on millions of acres. The maps ore in townships, divided up into forty-acre tracts, the value of each of which has been carefully calculated. Ar acre of coal twenty feet thick would contain 36,000 tons, and this at -cent a ton would be valued at $180, supposing we considered the full tfmount of coal it contained. We estimate, however, at 1,000 tons Instead of 1,800 tons to the acre foot, end the price of the twenty-foot bed would be on the basis of only 20,000 tons, making It cost $100 per acre, Instead of $180. If it were 1 cent a ton 1. would be $200 per acre, and if the bed were thicker or thinner It would be more or less. We have other allowances for waste and for the difficulty of mining." Uncle Sam as a Coal Merchant. "But can the government lands be sold at these high prices?" "We are selling. them. During a single month at v J Pius X a Practical Reformer feTUDENTS Of human nrhlAVAmAnt mnv nnf S entirely comprehend the Intricate delicacy countries that are steadily trying to throw off the yoke of the retrogressive and de caying Bystem of family government, Improperly called monarchial institutions. Plus X was long a par ish priest and a keen observer. He will not tolerate an Indolent or worldly clergy, and even cardinals In Italy having suburban sees are obliged to give them per sonal supervision In other words, to be seen in Rome less and more often in their own dioceses. Rome has ceased to be a lounging place for clerics, according to Augustln McNally, writing In the New York World. The meager cable messages making known the promulgation of some new decrees do not give an adequate Idea of his character. To obtain that we must peruse the decrees themselves. They reveal a man of strong will, solid piety and a profound knowl edge of his position and its obligations. Ue is bent upon making the world understand that everybody Inside the church priests and blBhops, archbishops and patriarchs and the scarlet clothed members of its senate, students In seminaries, high and low In re ligious orders, and the great multitude of the laity must observe Its laws. Young men are not to be ad mitted to the ministry when their attitude ta that of persons about to enter a profession rather than of those who esteem it a vocation; priests newly out of seminaries are not to harangue "the faithful" with flowery sermons and conferences upon subjects with which they themselves are not wholly familiar, and which, in general, are "better calculated to flatter the Intellect than reform conduct." Sensational preachers are to be forbidden the privilege of the pulpit Bishops must see to tt that prVeeta are quick to answer the call of the sick or the dying, and they themselves are ordered to give a more comprehensive aocount of their stewardship than has been the eustom. These are but passing Instances. And tf we are to base our con clusion on the utterances of the pontiff there has been need of a reformer of Rome. The pope's most recent decree forbids the clergy from engaging in any kind of commercial endeavor and they are solemnly warned against allowing the use of their names as guarantors for any project.. What does this mean? It means, among other things, that a goodly number of the clergy in Portugal, for instance, will have to be content with their usual salary and the stipends of the faithful for marriages, baptisms, deaths, eto. The Benedictines must close their brewery, the Father This and Father That Building and Loan association must get another name and shades of all the Parisian eating places! the poor Carthusians may no longer prepare those de lightful white, yellow and green liqueurs. Though these practical reforms may not seem weighty matters when viewed from the viewpoint of those who would have the simple pope rank among the eminent statesmen of the century, he regards In ternal reformation and the codifying of all the laws of the church as subject of vital concern. His actlv- the Salt Lake Cltjr office we have received $200,000 for such lands, and additional claims were filed that month by would-be purchasers aggregating $200,00$ more. The selling prices are fixed so that they will be attractive to the purchaser and at the same time will prevent the lands being bought and held, in order that the buyer may make a great profit out of the unearned increment thereon. The Idea is to conserve the coal for the government and the people. The land office also Issues patents for farm lands as home steads, reserving the coal which lies beneath them." . "What sort of coal lands are the best invest ments?" "At present the high-grade and more expensive lands are the better buys, although more of the low priced lands are being sold. You see we have a con siderable competition from the railways that have re ceived large grants of public lands as subsidies, and some of which own vast quantities of coal. The Union Pacific road has extensive tracts of valuable coal lands. I would say that the railroads are not anxious to sell at the government prices, and that our prices are as a rule below those asked for private coal lands In the same districts. , The Old Plan and the New. "Can you give me an example of the old method of selling in contrast to the present plan?" "Suppose we take one of th Wyoming coal fields," said the director. "Here is a township whloh at the old rate of from $10 to $20 per acre was valued at $460,000. It la now priced at 1 cent a ton, according to its coal contents, and the value la just $2,800,000, a difference of $2,340,000 for that township alone In another township In Wyoming the present valuation of the coal lands Is a little more than $8,000,000, whereas it was less than $500,000 before, and a single 1 square mile of that township had been valued at $216,000" , Surveying the CoaL v "13,. Vaw MAH , V. - ..... , A . . . u., " vou iu uiis;wi uow jusi wnai coal there is in the land? Do they use diamond drills and bore down through every acre?" "No." renlied the director. "Th. 11UUI the outcroppings of the coal on the mountains and hills, and the veins exposed in the canyons and valleys. If there is a bed of coal twenty feet thick In one canyon and we find a bed of the same thickness and same quality of coal some distance away with the other geological conditions, that would show that the two were a part of one and the same bed, we should conclude that all the land between the two contained coal. Our estimates are carefully made, and, as a rule, they are below rather than above the real amounts." The Depth of Coal Beds. "How deep do you fix the possibility of mining T" "We estimate that at about 8,000 feet," replied the director. "I mean for coat. The lignite la esti mated at about one-third that depth." "How abont lignite, la it of great value?" "It will probably be worth far more in the future than it is now. We have altogether In the neigh borhood of 150,000 square miles, containing about 890 billion tons of lignite, whloh to easily accessible. There are vast beds of lignite In northern Dakota, covered over with rich' farming lands, and there are great beds in the south, including Texas and other gulf states. We have a lignite bed In North Dakota which is as big .as the whole state of South Carolina. Its contents are estimated at something like 500 bil lion tons. Montana and New Mexico have large de posits of lignite and there are billions of tons of It in Alaska. Lignite Rrlqnettee for the Railroads. "But have we had any practical testa of the value of lignite?" "It Is used largely In Europe,- replied the director of the survey. "Germany consumes 15,000,000 tons of It annually, and In the shape of briquettes it la consumed on many of the European railroads. Is also employed there for domestlo heating and gas making. Briquettes have been used experimentally on some of the railroads and we have a number of factories which are now making them. The briquettes burn without clinkers, and I have seen it estimated that if they should be substtuted for coal on the rail roads, the saving .In our coal consumption would be sometbV i' like 80.000.000 tons per annum. The geological survey has been making experiments as to briquette manufacture, and we have machine whih will exert a pressure of 28,000 pounds to the square me. in u Qirecaon are marve.ou. a pres.aem ,nch( forclng ,lgnlu ,nto DrlquetteB " J message Is brevity alongside of these long documents. 0f a binder, such n. mtrh nr . ,w . . r uiur suDsianre. 01 usea ror gasmsklng, and U will teeming with wise reflections, a multitude of al lualons, hundreds of citations as so many authorities for his attitude, now lamenting the utter indifference and laxity of some portion of his flock, again in forceful language announcing that such and such dangers must be avoided. Bishops shall do this, eschew that, and prieets they are forever In his mind; they are bound to be vigilant, watch inoeesantly over those placed tn their care. The pope is solicitous. He wanta details. For instance, the bishops are ordered to make Inquiry "whether the churches are free of access to the in time form a large source of the fuel supply for gas engines." The Coal Lands and the Deserts. "What will be done with the money that the gov ernment gets from its coal lands?" I asked. "Tharis a very interesting feature In connection with the revaluation," said the director. "The greater part of the government coal lands lies in the states wnicn are reclaiming the deserts, and this money will so 10 me reclamation fund. It will be used to mtta reservoirs In the mountains doma v . poorest, so that all may attend without discrimination canali to c,rry the water out over the land t w'n or without being humiliated or inconvenienced." In- enormously Increase the area of Irrigated' land and terpreters of these document claim that this clause . will eventually result in the creation of thousands of appears to be a direct censure of the custom preva- farma So far the proceeds of the coal lands have lent In thla country of exacting a fee at the church all been deposited to the credit of the Irrigation doora. . reclamation fund. FRANK O. CARPENTER,