The redistribution of mankind / by H.N. Dickson.

  • Dickson, H. N. (Henry Newton), 1866-1922.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The redistribution of mankind / by H.N. Dickson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/66 page 558
    Concentration in special areas of settlement, formerly chiefly ef- fected for military reasons, has in modem times been determined more and more by the distribution of supplies of energy. The posi- tion of the manufacturing district is primarily determined by the supply of coal. Other forms of energy are, no doubt, available, but, as Sir William Ramsay showed in his presidential address at the Portsmouth meeting in 1911, we must in all probability look to coal as being the chief permanent source. In the early days of manufacturing industries the main difficulties arose from defective land transport. The first growth of the indus- trial system, therefore, took place where sea transport was relatively easy; raw material produced in a region near a coast was carried to a coal field also near a coast, just as in the times when military power was chiefly a matter of “ natural defenses,” the center of power and the food-producing colony had to be mutually accessible. Hence the Atlantic took the place of the Mediterranean, Great Britain eventually succeeded Rome, and eastern North America became the counterpart of Northern Africa. It is to this, perhaps more than to anything else, that we in Britain owe our tremendous start amongst the industrial nations, and we observe that we used it to provide less favored nations with the means of improving their system of land transport, as well as actually to manufacture imported raw material and redistribute the products. But there is, of course, this difference between the supply of food- stuff (or even military power) and mechanical energy, that in the case of coal at least it is necessary to live entirely upon capital; the storing up of energy in new coal fields goes on so slowly in compari- son with our rate of expenditure that it may be altogether neglected. Now, in this country we began to use coal on a large scale a little more than a century ago. Our present yearly consumption is of the order of 300,000,000 tons, and it is computed 1 that at the present rate of increase “ the whole of our available supply will be exhausted in 170 years.” With regard to the rest of the world we can not, from lack of data, make even the broad assumptions that were pos- sible in the case of wheat supply, and for that and other reasons it is therefore impossible even to guess at the time which must elapse before a universal dearth of coal becomes imminent; it is perhaps sufficient to observe that to the best of our knowledge and belief one of the world’s largest groups of coal fields (our own) is not likely to last three centuries in all. Here again the present interest lies rather in the phases of change which are actually with us. During the first stages of the manufac- turing period energy in any form was exceedingly difficult to trans- 1 General Report of the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies, 1906.
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