from coal. The dye industry, on which the cotton and woollen industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire are so greatly dependent, is based upon the distillation of tar from bye-product plants, and affords a technical bridge between the mineral and metal industries on one hand and the textile industries on the other.
The finishers of cottons and woollens have an ever-growing community of interest—a material basis of co-operation in the scheme of production with the coal masters, gas producers and chemical manufacturers. Chemical manufacturers, both industrial and pharmaceutical, derive an immense number of their materials from the bye-product operators, whilst users of motor spirit now look to benzol as much as to petrol for the propellant of their engines. Arrangements have already been made by the distributive agencies of the great petroleum syndicates for the sale after the war of the coal bye-products, which certainly implies a very close community of interests between the owners and vendors of the two sources of fuel and illuminant. Coal, iron and steel, petroleum, chemicals, dyes: such are the indispensable raw materials, manufacturing accessories and fuels, whose production is now passing under a unified control made practicable by the progress of industrial technique.
Now there are plans and projects for the economy of power production and the conservation of energy. It is proposed to utilise coal at the pit head to make both electricity and gas, to be manufactured in large installations by the most modern methods and transmitted to the consumers by cables and pipes stretching far and wide over the countryside. If the production of power and illuminant is thus to be centred upon the coalfields and undertaken by the coal raisers, and if these services are to be organised on this gigantic scale, the economic position of those who control the source and utilisation of fuel will be tremendously powerful.
Colliery companies are already hiring out waste heat and power, supplying electricity for lighting, and interesting themselves in the utilisation of their bye-products. Iron and steel companies are making pipes, tubes, retorts, gas tanks, etc., and combining with the makers of electric equipment, cables, coal cutting, hauling and pumping machinery. Colliery and petroleum interests have their own selling and carrying agencies and steamship lines. The fuel raising, fuel distilling and bye-product recovery industry is yet another
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