At present we are getting fuel in a kind
of scramble with no general aim. We waste and lose almost as much as we
get. And of what we get, the waste is idiotic.
"I won't trouble you," said Sir Richmond, "with any long discourse on
the ways of getting fuel in this country. But land as you know is owned
in patches and stretches that were determined in the first place chiefly
by agricultural necessities. When it was divided up among its present
owners nobody was thinking about the minerals beneath. But the lawyers
settled long ago that the landowner owned his land right down to the
centre of the earth. So we have the superficial landlord as coal owner
trying to work his coal according to the superficial divisions, quite
irrespective of the lie of the coal underneath. Each man goes for the
coal under his own land in his own fashion. You get three shafts where
one would suffice and none of them in the best possible place. You get
the coal coming out of this point when it would be far more convenient
to bring it out at that--miles away. You get boundary walls of coal
between the estates, abandoned, left in the ground for ever. And each
coal owner sells his coal in his own pettifogging manner... But you
know of these things. You know too how we trail the coal all over the
country, spoiling it as we trail it, until at last we get it into
the silly coal scuttles beside the silly, wasteful, airpoisoning,
fog-creating fireplace.
Pages:
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93