COMPLETENESS OF THE RETURNS

A complete count of the thousands of wagon mines and country coal banks from which bituminous coal is dug in this country could be made only by sending agents up every creek and along every hillside in the coal-bearing regions. The cost of such a count would prohibit it, and in practice a limit must be set to the size of the mines to be considered. The Federal Census Bureau sets this limit at mines producing about 1,000 tons a year. Many of the States that publish statistics set the limit higher. The Pennsylvania Department of Mines, for example, covers only enterprises employing as many as

10 men.

The Geological Survey desires to ascertain the total output of coal from all sources, large or small, in order to find the rate at which the country's resources are being drawn upon. In practice, however, it has been found advisable to employ different methods for the commercial mines, on the one hand, and the country banks and wagon mines, on the other.

For the commercial mines statistics can be obtained largely by correspondence. To the mailing list new names are constantly being added from the trade journals, from the records of State mine inspectors, from reports of field agents, and from reports by the producers themselves. At intervals the list is checked against lists kept by associations of operators or State officials and lists of shippers kept by railroad-car distributors. Every tenth year the list is further supplemented by the enumerators of the Federal Census Bureau, who canvass the entire country. In 1923 many new names were obtained from the field agents of the Federal fuel distributor and from the United States Coal Commission. Even after all this checking the list is not absolutely complete, but it is very nearly so.

Schedules of inquiry are mailed by the Geological Survey to all producing companies listed, and no company is dropped from the list until it has been definitely accounted for. To follow up companies from which no reply is received by correspondence, cooperative arrangements have been made with State geologists and coalmine inspectors, field representatives of the United States Bureau of Mines, secretaries of operators' associations, and other local agents, who make inquiry in person and report to Washington. In the Rocky Mountain States the work of following up the returns is now done by the branch offices maintained by the Geological Survey at Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco. Areas to which no permanent local representative of the Survey has been assigned can be covered only by sending out a field agent from Washington, and the present plans include regular work by such agents

every year.

Some of the smaller mines are operated so intermittently that the owners can not be found at the end of the year, and recourse must be had to railroads to find the number of tons of coal shipped by these mines, from which estimates of the number of men employed and the value of the product can be made. Such estimates are made in order to round out totals, but only when the evidence shows that a mine was in operation during the year and when all other means of getting the exact figures have failed. Wherever in this report the inclusion of estimates introduces the probability of significant error, that fact is indicated.

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The method just described is used in the canvass of commercial producers, including mines that make an output of at least 1,000 tons a year and that are operated rather steadily year after year. handle the numerous sporadic wagon mines is a different problem and requires a different method. For several years the Geological Survey attempted to canvass these "small mines" also by mail, but the results were found not to be satisfactory. The Survey in 1920 and again in 1922 therefore turned to the railroads and asked for lists of all wagon mines that had shipped coal during the year, the date that each opened and closed, and the number of carloads shipped by each. The response of the railroads was instant and generous. The experiment showed that the only means of obtaining an adequate picture of the activities of wagon mines in a year of high prices is the records of the railroads.

In 1921, however, it was not considered worth while to ask the railroads for this information, because the profound depression in the coal market put the wagon mines temporarily out of business. For this reason, the statistics of production in 1921 do not include the output of wagon mines.

In 1923 market conditions in the early part of the year favored the operation of wagon mines, and the Survey again obtained from the railroads the names of all wagon mines that shipped coal over their lines and the quantity shipped. The total number of mines thus reported by the railroads, eliminating names already on the Survey's list of commercial producers, was 2,384, and their total shipments in 1923 were 1,141,000 tons.

These methods are believed to yield practically complete returns for all mines, big and little, that ship by rail or water and for all those of commercial size that serve a purely focal market. No attempt was made in 1923 to measure the product of country coal banks that did not ship by rail. Although the number of such banks runs into the thousands, their combined output is so small as to be negligible. Their product is sold locally, it does not involve the use of railroad cars, and it does not enter into competition with the output of commercial mines. When formerly the Geological Survey attempted to cover these producers regularly, the maximum output reported for them was about 1,000,000 tons a year.

No reports as to number of employees or time worked have ever been obtained from the wagon mines, and all the statistics of number of men employed, average days worked, and the like in this report are calculated from the returns of the commercial mines alone.

UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

The standard unit of measurement adopted for this report is the net or short ton of 2,000 pounds, but as Pennsylvania anthracite is mined and sold by the gross or long ton of 2,240 pounds, that unit is used in the part of the report dealing with anthracite. Unless the unit is otherwise expressly stated, the word "ton" as here used means the net ton of 2,000 pounds, to which all other figures, however reported, have been reduced.

There is a steadily growing sentiment in favor of the general use of the net ton of 2,000 pounds as the standard unit of the coal trade, particularly for bituminous coal in the Eastern States, where both

gross and net tons are now used. The use of both units is of course undesirable, but as many State and municipal laws require the use of the gross ton, and as freight rates throughout a part of the Eastern States are now fixed accordingly, it is difficult to make an immediate change to a standard unit. In reports on foreign trade and shipping rates quantities are expressed in either gross or metric tons, and here too the use of more than one unit is undesirable. The general use of the net ton in the United States, even in the anthracite region, is here recommended.

STATISTICS OF PRODUCTION

SUMMARY

The complete returns for 1923 indicate a production of 564,564,662 tons of bituminous coal and lignite, and 93,339,009 tons of anthracite, a total of 657,903,671 tons. The total value at the mines was slightly over $2,000,000,000, of which roughly one-fourth was contributed by anthracite and three-fourths by soft coal. The value for soft coal, $1,515,000,000, has been exceeded but once, and that for anthracite, $507,000,000, is the largest on record.

TABLE 11.-Coal produced, 1920-1923, by States, and increase or decrease in 1923

Exclusive of wagon mines.

In comparison with 1922, both branches of the industry show an increase in both quantity and value of product, not because the output in 1923 was large so much as because the output in 1922 was curtailed by the great strike.

A better standard of comparison is afforded by 1920, a year of active production. Against that standard the output of 1923 shows a small increase for anthracite and a very slight decrease for bituminous coal. The decrease was not uniform, however, for in some States substantial advances over 1920 were recorded. (See Table 12.) The increase was most apparent in the nonunion fields of the South. Thus Kentucky, including some union and some nonunion territory, produced 25.4 per cent more coal in 1923 than in 1920. For West Virginia the advance was 19.9 per cent and for Virginia 3.4 per cent. In comparison with 1920 the output of Alabama in 1923 shows an advance of 25.6 per cent, but this comparison is misleading because in 1920 the output of the State was curtailed by a strike. From the output in 1918, a fairer standard of comparison, Alabama showed an increase of 6.6 per cent for 1923. Pennsylvania reported little change from 1920. Illinois and Indiana, on the contrary, both showed decreases of 10.6 per cent. In Ohio the output declined 11.6 per cent. The sharpest decline, however, was registered by the trans-Mississippi States. The States of the Great Plains, as a group, from the Dakotas south to Texas, showed a decline of 30.5 per cent; the Mountain States, 20.3 per cent; and Washington, the sole important producer on the Pacific coast, 22.1 per cent. Mention should be made, however, of the exceptional advance of North Dakota, which in 1923 produced 46 per cent more than in 1920. In fact, this State shows a greater increase since 1913 than any other. The decline in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri was particularly sharp, partly because of the competition of fuel oil. Oklahoma registered a drop of 40.5 per cent, and Arkansas 38.3 per cent. The sharpest decrease of all, however, was recorded by Maryland (43.8 per cent), where the strike of 1922 hung over for many months into 1923.