Abstract
COAL is the main material foundation of British industrial supremacy. The importance of coal is given by Mr. Justice Sankey as his first reason for its State ownership. The rapid British industrial progress at the end of the eighteenth century was due to our abundantcoal. Modern coal mining began in Belgium earlier than in Britain, but British mines soon had the greatest output in the world. In 1800 they produced two-thirds of the world's coal, in1860 the proportion was 60 per cent., and in 1913 the United States, Britain, and Germany together produced 87 per cent, of the world's coal. It was not until 1899 that the British output was surpassed by that of the United States; but, in spite of the ease of working of the American fields, our yield per unit of coal area is sixteen times as great as that of America. The British output of nearly 300 million tons is irrefutable evidence of the skilful organisation of the British coal industry and of the courage and capacity of the British miner.
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GREGORY, J. The Conservation of Our Coal Supplies. Nature 105, 108–110 (1920). https://doi.org/10.1038/105108a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/105108a0