proved. Of the many handicrafts followed in both countries alike, there is good reason to believe that some are followed more economically in England by reason of the larger employment of female labour. This is more particularly true of the textile industries, in most of which women, while receiving considerably less remuneration, can render as efficient service as the opposite sex. But it is much less likely to be true of other industries, and especially of mining and mechanical industries, in which sheer strength and endurance are important factors in the determination of relative efficiency. In a general way, it is undoubtedly true that the extensive employment of female labour tends to reduce and to keep down the average rate of wages. In France and Austria, where women are more generally employed than in England or the United States, labour is less highly remunerated all round, and least of all in the State where the greatest proportion of women are to be found in the ranks of industry. But England has not hitherto suffered in any material degree from the consideration just stated. In spite of the higher range of wages generally paid in our own country, and the more limited employment of female relatively to male labour, we are not threatened so much by countries in which the converse state of things applies, as by newer countries, where female labour is less resorted to, and the average rate of wages is higher than in our own.

1 Belgium may be cited as an example of the inability of a country that employs a majority of men in textile trades to compete with countries in which the female workers predominate. In Belgium, of 88,522 persons of both sexes employed in the cotton trade, only 26,624, or 29 per cent. of the whole, were females, according to the census of 1884. In England, on the other hand, as many as 355,323, out of a total of 586,470, or 60 per cent. of the whole number engaged in the cotton industry in 1881, belonged to the female sex; while in the United States, out of a total of 169,771 80 employed, 91,479, or 53 per cent., were females. It seems reasonable to suppose that in Belgium, where labour is so cheap, the larger employment of women would enable the country to take a much more prominent position in regard to cotton supply.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ENGLAND'S COAL SUPPLIES.

"The day when the advantage of cheap coal shall be lost to us for ever must arrive. Economy may retard but cannot hinder its arrival. If we begin and continue to save consumption steadily and at once, it will come late; if we do not it will come soon, and we shall apparently only be driven to those economising contrivances and habits which will keep it cheap by its becoming or remaining dear. Other countriesnotably, our most formidable rival, the United States-have supplies of coal incomparably larger than our own, and can raise that coal at a decidedly lower cost; and coal is at once so indispensable, so primary, and so bulky an article, that it transfers the industrial sceptre of the world to the land where it is found in the greatest abundance and at the lowest price."-W. R. GREG's "Rocks Ahead."

"When the expense of working British coal mines leaves no remuneration to the capital and labour employed, when brought into competition with the mines of other countries, then will they be as effectually lost to Britain for purposes of ascendancy, and their produce as exports, as if no longer in physical existence; and her superiority in the mechanical arts and manufactures, cæteris paribus, it may well be feared, will be superseded."-Report of the South Shields Committee an Coal Mines, 1843.

"The absolute amount of coal in the country rather affects the height to which we shall rise, than the time for which we shall enjoy the happy prosperity of progress."-W. S. JEVONS on The Coal Question."

66

IT has been as much the custom of some writers to exaggerate as it has been that of others to depreciate the importance of her supplies of coals as a source of England's industrial supremacy. While coal is undoubtedly one of the most important adjuncts of manufacturing prestige and material prosperity, it is probably too much to affirm that it is the be-all and the end-all of these desiderata. Nations that have no coal supplies of

their own have achieved industrial eminence, as we have already seen in the case of Switzerland. Other nations, possessed of enormous stores of the same valuable mineral, have lagged far behind in the race for supremacy, as witness Russia, China, and India. There are other countries, again, such as France, that have supplemented their own scanty or unsuitable supplies of coal by imports from other countries, and have continued, even under this stern necessity, to enjoy a large amount of material progress. But all these cases are more or less exceptional in character. All other things being equal, the nation that has the largest, the cheapest, and the most varied supplies of coal is undoubtedly the best equipped for the industrial race, and is the most likely to excel therein.

This truth is not more obvious than its corollary, that England's pride of place as an industrial nation is due very largely to her exceptional advantages as a coalowning and coal-producing country. It is quite possible that the distinguishing qualities of the Anglo-Saxon race would enable England to keep well to the front, even if her coal supplies were much inferior to what they are; but the conditions of her supremacy in such a case would be very much harder to meet, and her preeminence would be likely to proceed on different lines.

For the reasons just stated, it is necessary that we should examine the character of the tenure by which we hold this potent element of our country's weal. It is by no means the first time that such an inquiry has been attempted. It is, indeed, scarcely likely that we shall succeed in shedding much, if any, new light upon the subject. The solution of the problem has been attempted again and again, now in a highly alarmist, and then in a temperate and practical mood; but the danger, whether regarded as near or remote, has always been admitted to be real, and little capable of being ultimately averted.

The most of us can still remember when Sir William Armstrong, at the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1863, called attention to the fact that "we have already drawn from our choicest mines a far larger quantity of coal than has been raised from all other parts of the world put together; and the time is not very remote when we shall have to encounter the disadvantages of increased cost of working and diminished value of produce."1

The conclusion thus arrived at by the then President of the British Association was based upon the fact, that at the end of 1861 "the quantity of coal annually raised in the United Kingdom had reached the enormous total of 86 millions of tons, and that the average annual increase in the eight preceding years amounted to 2 millions of tons."

Three years later still, Professor Jevons, in his wellknown essay on "The Coal Question," entered into an elaborate calculation, based upon the then rate of consumption of coal, which led him to the astounding conclusion that " rather more than a century of our present progress would exhaust our mines to the depth of 4000 feet, or 1500 feet deeper than our present deepest mine." 2 Put in another way, he estimated that "if our consumption of coal continues to multiply for 110 years at the same rate as hitherto, the total amount of coal consumed in the interval will be one hundred thousand millions of tons."

Although his figures brought Mr. Jevons to the above. startling results, he did not positively assert that our coalfields would be worked to a depth of 4000 feet in little more than a century. On the contrary, his view was, that we could never advance to the higher amounts of consumption supposed. "But this only means that the check to our progress must become perceptible within 1 Report of the British Association for 1863. 2 "The Coal Question," p. 241.

a century from the present time; that the cost of fuel must rise, perhaps within a lifetime, to a rate injurious. to our manufacturing and commercial supremacy."

On the 28th June 1866, a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into the probable extent and duration of the coalfields of the United Kingdom. On the 27th July 1871, that Commission, after having taken a great deal of evidence, and obtained calculations of the probable quantities of coal contained in the known coalfields of the country, reported that the total quantity of coal then available, at a depth of less than 4000 feet, beyond which the mineral could not well be worked, was 146,736 millions of tons, which, calculated on the basis of diminishing ratios, would be exhausted in 360 years, at the end of which period the population of the country would be 131 millions. Assuming, however, an increasing consumption in arithmetical ratio, the duration. of our coal supplies would be limited to 276 years; while, on the supposition of a non-increasing consumption, the period would be extended to 1273 years.2 The Commissioners, while admitting that any view of the duration. of our coal supplies must be subject to unforeseen contingencies, pointed out that at the then rate of increase of consumption, the progress towards exhaustion would. be very rapid.

It is now twenty-two years since Sir William Armstrong uttered his remarkable note of warning at Newcastle; it is nineteen years since Mr. Jevons put forward his most alarming, if not alarmist, theories as to the limited duration of our industrial supremacy; and it is fourteen years since the Royal Commission presided over by the Duke of Argyll reported upon the extent and duration of the coalfields of the United Kingdom. Let us see, then, what has been the course of events in the interval.

1 "The Coal Question," p. 242.

2 Report, p. xvii.