The Farm Home

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Rocky Ridge Farm

What a frightful thing it would be if we were to wake some morning and find that there was no fuel of any kind in the United States with which to cook our breakfast. Yet this astounding thing may happen to our grandchildren, our children or even in our own lifetime if our days should be “long in the land.”

Men have usually supplied the family fuel in a large offhand manner, but women have always seen that the wood box or coal hod was filled at night to be on hand for the morning’s work.

If we do not intend that the stove shall remain cold and the family be breakfastless on that surprising morning in the future, it is time we were looking after the supply of fuel, for Joyn has been careless and the wood pile is too small.

Too many of the forests of the United States have been made into lumber even tho there never has seemed to be lumber enough and the waste of timber has been great. The great woods of the East and the North of our country have been destroyed.

Three thousand saw mills are now busily at work in the South and the timber is fast disappearing before them Within five years they will have cut out all the lumber and disappeared from the South. Then only the forests of the Pacific coast will remain and they will not last long. In less than 70 years the supply of lumber in the United States will be used up.

When that time comes, those of use who have permitted this destruction, if there are any of us left, will wish to hide our fades from the generations we have robbed, but we will be unable to “take to the tall timber” as certain politicians are said to have done in the past.

There will be no lumber to build the houses and no wood to cook that breakfast. I fear that even the dim mists of the past will be no refuge for the people who have permitted such a condition to come about and that we will be held up to scorn and reproach.

People then will not be able to use coal in place of wood for the supply of coal is fast disappearing. The end of hard coal is in sight. Soft coal there for must be the basis of the country’s industrial life as well as its fuel.  There is, to be sure, a great deal of soft coal left but it is of poor quality and must be especially prepared for use to be satisfactory.

Dr. Garfield, former fuel administrator, does not favor government ownership but says there should be co-operation between the government and all basic industries to eliminate waste and all needless expense. The greater difficulties and more costly equipment in mining inferior coal and also the higher wages make prices higher.

But cost alone is not the greatest problem. There is danger of a power shortage which will stop all manufactories unless a way is found to furnish a national power supply. Two-thirds of all our coal mined goes into the production of power. Eleven million persons are working in our manufacturing plants and more than double the power was used last year that was used in 1900.

The expense of the power is from 2 to 20 per cent of the cost of an article and when we buy $50 worth of goods we can figure that about $2 goes for the coal that supplied the power to manufacture them Quite a tax!

Electricity is the only thing that can save the situation. One ton of coal used in generating electricity will furnish power equal to 4 tons.

Secretary Lane has a plan for furnishing electric power thru a large central station. He uses a power survey of the whole United States, the locating of central stations and smaller supply stations.

It is known that in the territory between Boston and Richmond is situated one-fourth of the power generating capacity of the country and as an illustration of the plan I quote Floyd W. Parsons in the Saturday Evening Post. “The logical development is a multiple-transmission line of high voltage extending all the way from Boston to Washington and on to Richmond. Energy could be delivered into this unified system by power stations located near the mine mouths and by hydro-electric plants located at the 20 or more water power sites tributary to this area.”

Thus might be created rivers of power flowing thru the country and furnishing energy and power to our manufactories at much less than half of what it costs now.

They have just one such great power line in California and another 500 miles long reaching from Tonopah, Nev., to Yuma, Ariz.

There is water power enough in the Ozark Hills to furnish power and light for that section of the country and if included in the national system with the coal of Kansas and Illinois, would do its part in caring for the whole. The railroads could be electrified also and by the careful handling of our natural power and fuel, by a responsible head, that cold and dreary, breakfastless morning might never arrive. It need never arrive if we see to it that our water power and what is left of our fuel supply is handled carefully and intelligently. It is time to get busy with the wood box.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "The Farm Home." Missouri Ruralist (September 5, 1919): 32.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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