them. In Great Britain the problem to be overcome is inefficient labor and a lack of modern equipment. Here, we are hampered by inadequate coal docks and pier equipment. If the British deliberately gave up the world's coal markets, we could not step in and take this trade without enlarging our shiploading facilities on the Atlantic seaboard. At the present time, the total average coal-loading capacity of all our Atlantic Coast export coaldocks is about 135,000 tons per ten-hour day. This means that working ten hours for 300 days in a year, we can load only 40,500,000 tons of coal. Now these same docks must also handle a considerable tonnage of coal annually for New England, as well as 5,000,000 tons of bunker coal for the use of ships. It is evident, therefore, that unless something is done at once to enlarge our coal-loading facilities materially, the United States need not hope to gain a permanent position as the world's leading coal export nation. It is to be hoped that the people of the United States will realize in full the importance of our produce coal more cheaply, because overhead charges will be reduced as production increases. As an example of how misinformation is often circulated, we have only to remember recent reports which stated that the scarcity of anthracite coal was due to large exports of this fuel and to its use on our merchant marine. The truth is that practically no anthracite has ever been exported to Europe, and very little of it has ever been used on ocean steamers for fuel purposes. There is an old saying that “commerce follows the flag"; this should be amended to read, "commerce follows fuel." As already stated, a large export trade will tend to stabilize the bituminous coal industry, and this should redound to the benefit of domestic consumers of coal. But there is another and a better way for both individuals and corporation to reduce their annual coal bills, and that is by exercising greater care and intelligence in burning coal. RAILROAD PRODIGALITY IN COAL present opportunity in the world's coal market. PERHAPS the greatest waste of coal is by The more we study the lesson of Great Britain, the more evident it becomes that we need not expect to reëstablish our merchant marine permanently, unless we go forward firm in the idea that our shipping and our coal interests must be closely allied. In England, in most cases, either shipping controls coal, or coal controls shipping. In the past, England would only allow her vessels to seek American coal when she had had no other cargo available, so that while the cost of the English coal f.o.b. vessel was invariably higher than the cost of American coal f.o.b. vessel, the English colliery owner was able to make c.i.f. prices so low that America was unable to compete successfully in the world's coal markets, except to a very limited degree. Unless we watch our step, the same condition will again exist. The American public must get out of its mind the idea that a large export coal trade means higher prices for coal here in the United States. Quite the reverse is true. American miners have demanded wage increases because they had too little employment and could not make both ends meet, working only two thirds. of the time, unless they received high wages for this part time employment. If we can build up a worth while foreign business in coal, our miners will have more regular employment, and the operating companies will be able to our railroads. At the present time, the country's carriers use about 27 per cent. of all the bituminous coal produced in the United States each year. If this tonnage were placed in standard coal cars and coupled in a single train, it would have a length of 26,260 miles. If moving at a constant speed of twenty miles an hour, this train would require fifty-five days to pass a given point. Such a volume of coal would be sufficient to pave a roadway from New York City to San Francisco, one foot in thickness and one half mile wide. The railroads are badly in need of locomotives and cars. If our transportation lines were to effect a saving of 2 per cent. in their annual consumption of coal, the amount thus laid aside would be sufficient to purchase several hundred modern locomotives, and thousands of freight cars. For each 1 per cent. of fuel saved, the railroads of the United States effect a direct gain of about 5 million dollars while the indirect saving amounts to a sum that is equally as great. Of all the coal that is used in the fire-box of a locomotive, only 6 per cent. of the total value of the fuel is applied to the work of moving the freight or passenger cars. When a pound of coal is burned in a freight locomotive at ordinary freight train speed, it will furnish sufficient energy to carry one ton fifteen miles. An ordinary passenger locomotive consumes a pound of fuel for every fifty two feet it travels. Each unnecessary stop made with a heavy freight or passenger train represents a fuel loss of from 500 to 750 pounds of coal, depending on the weight of the train, the length of the stop and the grade conditions. A brake-line air leak on a train of fifty freight cars has been known to cause a loss of as much as 2,540 pounds of coal in a ten-hour period. The loss of coal each time a modern locomotive pops off for five minutes is about seventy-five pounds. If locomotive firemen were to save a little more than one shovelful of coal out of each ton used, the total saving would be equal to nearly 1 per cent. of all the coal handled. The ultimate in fuel economy on our railroads is a long way off. Railroad practice in many parts of our country is far from being modern. For example, the brick arch, if applied to an American locomotive, and properly operated and maintained, will save approximately 15 per cent. of the locomotive's fuel; yet some of the largest roads in the country are only now commencing to equip locomotives with this well known fuel-saving device. D SOME HINTS ON COAL ECONOMY URING the war, stress was laid on economy in household heating and cooking practices. The reason was the vital need for coal to carry on the fight. Now, unfortunately, we hear very little about ways and means to save coal in our homes. Here is one thing to remember. Each householder profits just as much from making four tons of coal do the work now done by five, as he does from a 20 per cent. reduction in prices. Fuel waste would be less if consumers kept in mind a few facts. In American homes there is too much heat and too little moisture. Dry air at 70 degrees generally feels cooler than moist air at 60 degrees. Moisture is the great bed blanket Mother Nature has supplied for the inhabitants of the earth. The atmosphere in many houses drys a person out just as wet clothes are dried out on a wash line. Body evaporation carries away heat and we feel chilly. Every house Every house should have a hygrometer as well as a thermometer, and as much attention should be paid to humidity readings as to temperature readings. There are dozens of ways to humidify a house. Radiator pans may be used, or the householder may adopt some simple plan like hanging a soaking-wet bath towel over the back of a radiator. Even a boiling kettle in a room is helpful. Moist air is a preventive In as well as a cure for catarrh: It retains its heat much longer than dry air, and as a consequence, less coal is needed to keep such air warm. an atmosphere containing proper moisture, a temperature of from 64 to 68 degrees is scientifically best for the human race. In firing a house-heating furnace, do not poke and slice the fire more than necessary, and do not break the bed from the top. Break all lumps into pieces; firing large lumps is wasteful. In shaking the ashes, do not shake through unburned fuel. The first glow in the ash pit is a warning to stop. In winter, maintain the fuel bed ten inches thick; in mild weather, decrease the depth and keep a layer of ashes on the grate under the live coals. Remove ashes frequently and brush the flue once a week. Be economical of hot water. To heat only a gallon of water from 40 degrees to 150 degrees requires about a quarter pound of coal. If we use ten gallons of hot water in taking a bath, at the above rate, we consume two and a half pounds of coal. Even in our use of cold water we should exercise care, for some of our small municipal plants consume as much as a pound of coal in pumping twenty-five gallons of water. People often leave a faucet open simply to get a cold drink of water. Some industries campaign among their customers in behalf of economy of usage. Fo. instance, the gas industry spends thousand of dollars each year in an effort to improve al. gas-consuming devices. One gas company last year spent $65,000 to reduce the waste of gas in the homes of its customers. Another concern coined the phrase, "matches are cheaper than gas," and this little reminder has caused many people to extinguish needless flames and then relight the burners when there was work to be done. This farsighted policy is based on the belief that waste of gas by faulty appliances or otherwise, causes high gas bills. High bills breed complaints. Complaints mean letter writing, delayed payments, and dissatisfied customers. The companies believe that satisfied customers mean more to them than the small revenue that might come from the excessive use of gas. Members of the coal industry often complain that the public is hostile toward their business without cause. The mine owners might lessen this hostility by showing more interest in the question of economy in coal consumption. Good-will, like corn or wheat, grows only where it is planted and cultivated. T BY COL. THOMAS E. LAWRENCE HE Turkish engineers, who had blown up the wells, reported to their Government that every source of water was utterly destroyed. One of our secret friends sent a message to say that he had been present at the firing of the King's well at Jefer, and that the charges of dynamite were all set in the top of the shaft. In his opinion, the well was not filled up, but the upper courses of stone had been blown inward, and keyed together. We would find them arching over the mouth of the well, and the bottom still intact. So on a June morning we rode out from Bair in good hope. We marched that day, and slept the night in the great plain of Jefer. Next day at noon we reached the wells, whose condition seemed very bad. They were all ruined, apparently beyond our mending, and we began to wonder where we would have to ride for our next drink. However, in the end we collected around the King's well (Auda's family property) and sounded about it with a tent-mallet. The ground rang hollow, and we called for volunteers to dig down into it and make sure. It was a hot task for a mid-day in summer, in that blinding white place, but necessary, for if it failed we would have to go sixty miles in the night to the next well. The Jefer plain is of pure hard mud, as flat as the hand, white with salt, and thirty miles across-but it was easy digging, since there were no stones, and the explosion which shifted the masonry had cracked and loosened the soil about it. As they dug and threw out the earth, the core of the well rose up like a round tower in the centre of their hole. This proved that the damage was indeed superficial, and we began very carefully to take away the ruined head of the pile. Some of the stones were difficult to move, for they had become interlocked in their fall; but this was all the better sign and we worked harder. Before sunset, they shouted that there was no more earth, that the interstices between the blocks were clear, and that they heard the mudfragments that slipped down splashing many feet below. Half an hour afterward there was a rush and rumble, followed by heavy splashes and then yells. We ran up to see what it was, and found the well yawning open, no longer a tube, but a great bottle-shouldered pit, twenty feet across; and the bottom was black with water and white with the spray where the last Ageyli, who had been clearing away the blocked stones when the key slipped, was striking out lustily to keep his head above water. Everybody stood and laughed for a long time, while the Mirzugi lowered him a noose of rope, and out we pulled him, very wet and frightened, but quite unhurt. We rewarded and feasted the diggers, and watered our camels all night, while a second squad of Ageyli, with a long chorus, built the mouth up again in an 8-foot wall of mud and stones. At dawn the earth was stamped in round it, and the well stood complete to the surface of the desert, as fit, in appearance, as it had ever been. Only the water was not too plentiful. We worked it all the twenty-four hours, and ran it to a cream; and still there were some camels not satisfied. From Jefer riders went forward into the Dhumaniyeh tents at Batra, to lead their promised attack against the Turkish post of Fuweila, which covered the great spring of Aba el Lissan, and the edge of the plateau, where the road to Akaba drops down in steep waves to the Guweira plain. We decided to sit in Jefer till the morning of the first, when the messengers ought to return with news of how the attack had gone. AT NEWS OF A MASSACRE T DAWN next morning, a tired horseman rode in with news that the Dhumaniyeh had fired on the Fuweila post yesterday, as soon as our men had reached them. The surprise, however, had not been complete, and the Turks had been able to man their stone breastworks. The Arabs fell back into cover, and the enemy, believing that they had only an ordinary affray to cope with, had made a sortie on their horses and swept down upon the Dhumaniyeh tents across the ridge. The men were all out fighting, and in their anger the Turks had smashed the tents and furniture, and cut the throats of the women and children. The Arabs got down from the hill-tops too late to save their families, but in time to cut off and kill the men who had massacred them. To complete their vengeance, they assaulted the now weak garrison of the fort, and carried it in their first rush. We were ready saddled and waiting, so we got off in ten minutes, and rode southwestward toward El Haj, the first station south of Maan on the Hedjaz Railway, and on our direct road for Fuweila. At the same time, we sent a small party northwestward, to cross the line just above Maan, and make a diversion on that side. Especially they were to try and capture the great herds of sick camels which the Turks used to pasture about Shobek, to wait until they were again fit enough for service. We calculated that the news of the Fuweila disaster would only have just reached Maan, and that before the Turks could assemble a relief column and transport for it, our northern party might catch their camels, and our main body would be on the railway, where we intended to execute such demolitions as would compel the relief expedition to be deflected from Fuweila thither. BRIDGE BLASTING INTERRUPTED the explosives arrived, and we began to blow However, our meal was barely cooked when some horsemen rode up and said that at sunset a long column of fresh troops of infantry with guns had appeared at Aba el Lissan from Maan. This was most unwelcome, for the Arabs were disorganized by victory, and had had to abandon their ground to the Turks without fighting. They were now at Batra, waiting for us. We learnt afterward that this surprising vigor of the enemy was accidental. They had left Maan in the morning, marched gently along the motor road through Waheida and Mreigha to Aba el Lissan, and thence uphill toward the old post, which was deserted except for the silent vultures flying round the stone walls in quick uneasy rings. The battalion commander feared that this sight might be too much for his young troops, and so led them back to the spring of Aba el Lissan in its steep narrow valley and camped them there in peace all night. This news shook us into quick life. We threw our baggage across our camels and rode off with the messengers, over the rolling downs of this end of the table-land of Syria. We carried our hot bread in our hands, and ate it while we rode, and with it mingled the taste of the dust of our large force as it crossed the valley bottoms, and the strange, keen smell O WE rode steadily through the flowing of the wormwood which overgrew all the slopes. scended on the line with little opposition, and cleared a long stretch of it, capturing the weak guards and patrols. The Turks could not distinguish us in the heat haze, and we took them without casualties to ourselves. Then the hills, everything strikes very suddenly on the senses; and when marching in a long column, as we were doing, the front camels, pacing cautiously in the dark, kick the dustladen branches of the aromatic shrubs, the scent-particles fly up, and hang in a long mist upon the air, scenting the passage of all those behind. We rode all night, and when dawn came we dismounted on the crest of the hills between Batra and Aba el Lissan, with a wonderful view to the west of the green and gold plain of Guweira, and beyond it the ruddy mountains, hiding Akaba and the sea. Gasim abu Dumeik, the head of the Dhumaniyeh was waiting there for us with his hard-bitten tribesmen, We talked for a few minutes, made rapid plans. and scattered for the work. We could not go forward to Akaba, with any hope of success, while this battalion held the head of the pass; and if we could not dislodge it, all our two months' hazard and labor would go for nothing. Fortunately, the enemy made our work easier by bad dispositions. They remained supinely in the hollow, while we split into sections and crowned all the hills about them unobserved. Then we began to snipe them steadily in their positions under the slopes and rock faces and by the water, hoping to provoke them to come out and charge uphill at us. Meanwhile Zaal went off with the horsemen and cut the Maan telegraph and telephone wires in the plain behind. it before in Arabia, and the anxiety and constant effort made it hard for us. Even many of the tough tribesmen broke down under the beating of the sun, and crawled or had to be carried under the shade of rocks to recover. We had little water and could not detach enough men to bring more to us, so that thirst was added to our pains. We had to run up and down, supplying our lack of numbers by mobility, looking over the ridges for a spot from which to shoot, or to counter some Turkish effort. The hill-sides were steep and difficult, and exhausted our breath, and the long plants and grasses wove about our dragging feet as we ran, and seemed to pluck us backward. We had to be very careful of our ammunition, and each round was fired grudgingly, for our rifles were so hot with the sun that they seared our hands, and the rocks on which we lay burned the skin off our forearms and off our chests, so that later they peeled in great painful sheets. Our feet, of course, were harder; yet even they were severely tried, and before the evening, many of the more energetic men were leaving rusty prints upon the ground at every stride. We consoled ourselves with the knowledge that the enemy in their enclosed valley would be hotter than we were on the open hills, and also, that they were Turks, men of white meat, little apt for warm weather. We clung tightly to them, and did not let them move or mass or sortie out against us cheaply. They could do nothing adequate in return. We were no targets for their rifles, for we moved with speed and eccentricity, and we were able to laugh at their little mountain gun which they fired up at us. Its shells passed over our heads and burst hundreds of feet in the air behind us-yet, of course, so far as they could see, fairly on the hostile summit of the hill. In the afternoon, I had a heat-stroke myself, or pretended to have one, for I was worn out by the weariness of it all, and cared no longer how it went. So I crept down into a hollow to the southeast, where there was a trickle of thick water in a muddy cup of the hills, and tried to suck some moisture off the dirt through my sleeve. Masir joined me, panting like a tired animal, with his cracked and bleeding lips gaping apart in his distress; and then old Auda appeared striding down powerfully, his eyes bloodshot and staring, his face working with excitement. He croaked hoarsely with by the stones, trying to find coolness under them, and said to me. "Well, how is it with the Howeitat? All talk and no work?" "Indeed," I returned for I was angry with everyone and with myself, "they shoot a lot and hit a little." Auda turned almost pale with rage, and tore his headcloth off trembling, and threw it on the ground beside me. Then he ran back uphill like a madman, shouting out to his men on this side and on that in his dreadful strained and rustling voice. |