It has been said that we have too many mines in operation, as we appear to have too many miners, if we are to maintain only our present output. Rapid expansion in the development of industry in general may justify the existence of such mines and so large a corps of workers, even with an adequate car supply and more abundant local storage facilities, which are greatly needed in almost all places, and a more even demand. If, however, this should not be so, there is a foreign demand for the best of our bituminous coals, which at present we are altogether unable to meet for lack of credits on the part of those who wish the coal, and lack of ships to carry it. England's annual production has fallen 100,000,000 tons, according to Mr. Hoover, and the European demand next year will be more than 150,000,000 tons above her production. Whatever the world need, it can not be supplied. It is too large for any possible supply by ship, even if all necessary financial arrangements could be made, either by loan or credit. Europe, indeed, will sadly learn through this winter how little coal she can live on and how more than perilous is the state of a people who are short of power, light, and heat. As this country prior to the war sold abroad no more than 4,500,000 tons as against England's 77,000,000, it is quite manifest that here will be a new field for American enterprise, the enterprise being needed not for the winning of markets as much as for finding ways of dealing with the larger phases of a heavy overseas trade with those who are without immediate resources. SAVING COAL BY SAVING ELECTRICITY. It is three years since Congress was urged that we should be empowered to make a study of the power possibilities of the congested industrial part of the Atlantic seaboard, with a view to developing not only the fact that there could be effected a great saving in power and a much larger actual use secured out of that now produced, but also that new supplies could be obtained both from running water and from the conversion of coal at the mines instead of after a long rail haul. A stream of power paralleling the Atlantic from Richmond to Boston, a main channel into which run many minor feeding streams and from which diverge an infinite number of small delivering lines--the whole an interlocking system that would take from the coal mine and the railroad a part of their present burden and insure the operation of street lights, street cars, elevators, and essential industries in the face of railroad delinquencies--this is the dream of our engineers, and a very possible dream it has seemed to me; of such value, indeed, that we might well spend a few thousand dollars in studying it, not with the thought that the Government would construct or operate even the trunk line, but that it might so attract the attention of the engineering and financial world as to make it a reality.