As a remedy, bituminous operators have proposed that they shall be relieved of the restrictions of the Sherman law, so that they may combine to limit production and regulate distribution and prices as the anthracite owners have succeeded in doing. The miners, by resolution of their national convention, have proposed a policy of public ownership and democratic administration, the entrusting of the technical regulation and development of the mines to engineers appointed by the government and the administration of labor relations by a democratic tribunal composed of representatives of the technical management, the public, and the miners. The effectiveness of either policy would be contingent upon the application to the mines and their product of the scientific knowledge which has been rapidly accumulating during the last decade and very little of which is now applied to the industry. The character of the political reconstruction of the industry, which public necessity must sooner or later compel, will be largely determined by the outcome of the impending technical revolution in the production and utilization of coal. CHAPTER VIII RIVALS OF COAL Until recently it has been taken for granted that there was plenty of coal. The industrial revolution rose and triumphed on the theory of an inexhaustible supply. Mines were opened casually here and there and such coal as was easy to get was taken from the reserves which were supposed to be bottomless. And men were poured into the mines, thousands in excess of the need. They were as plentiful as the coal. Because of these two things--the vast amount of coal and the cheap and abundant man power--the coal industry came through the industrial revolution which it created, without being itself revolutionized. Now the coal supply is large, but it is not by any means unlimited. No one can increase it. There is no way of manufacturing coal. The limitations of the supply were fixed by the geographical revolution. Twenty million years ago all the coal we have or shall have was packed away in the ribs of the earth in seams varying from sixty feet to the thickness of a blade of grass. It is estimated that we still have in the world more than seven thousand billion tons distributed as follows: North America 5,073,431,000,000 Asia 1,279,586,000,000 Europe 784,190,000,000 Australasia 170,410,000,000 Africa 57,839,000,000 South America 32,097,000,000 ----------------- Total 7,397,553,000,000