Читать книгу Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas - Friedrich Christian Accum - Страница 7

[1] A Statement of the advantages to be derived from coal gas.—p. 42.

It remains further to be observed that the coal, by yielding gas and other products, namely, tar, pitch, and ammoniacal liquor, is not entirely lost. It produces, besides light, an excellent fuel, namely, coke; and as a manufactory, or workshop, generally requires heating as well as lighting, there is a gain both ways. The manufacturer, by distilling his coal instead of burning it as it comes from the pit, saves his candles and improves his fuel. One effort at the outset in erecting a gas apparatus, will reduce his annual disbursement for those two articles of prime necessity, much in the same manner, though in a greater degree, as the farmer gains by building a thrashing machine and laying aside the use of the flail.

The coal is so far from being reduced in consequence of the gas-light process, to an useless mass, that in many places immense quantities are reduced to the state of coke for the purpose of rendering the coal a better fuel than it was in its natural state; for coke gives a strong and lasting heat. It is equally valuable for kitchen and parlour fires, and still more as a necessary requisite in some important branches of manufacture, so that in whatever quantity coke may be produced, it can never want a good market. The demand for coke in this capital, since the establishment of the gas-light works, has prodigiously increased. Numerous taverns, offices, and public establishments, which heretofore burnt coal, now use coke to the total exclusion of coal; and in almost every manufactory, which requires both extensive lighting and heating, gas and coke are now the means jointly employed. A coke fire emits a very uniform and intense heat; it produces no sparks, and burns free from soot and smoke; it requires no trouble in managing, and to those who have the misfortune of being plagued with a smoaky chimney, affords the only certain cure.

Another valuable product is the tar which is deposited during the production of the gas, this tar when rectified by a slight evaporation, has become an article of commerce. Large establishments, both of coal tar, coal oil, and pitch, are in full action, and the commodities which they furnish have become in great demand. The ammoniacal liquor which the gas-light process affords, has of late given rise to very important branches of chemical manufacture, carried on upon a large scale. But as the gas is at present supposed to be the only object in view, for the sake of the light which it yields, the other products being only accidentally connected with its extraction, let us leave the idea of profit on them out of the question, and with the utmost latitude of concession, require them only to stand as in part for a portion of the coal employed in the process, we have still the gas, an article which performs the functions of the oil, the tallow, or the wax for which it is substituted; and to the price of which we have no need to call the attention of those who make use of them. There remains only to be opposed on the other side, the expence of the apparatus by which the gas is to be prepared, and the lights maintained. From the materials and the workmanship, with the interest of the capital sunk, the expence in the first instance, must be very considerable. But where the quantity of light must be great, even from cheap substances, or where, with a less quantity of light, the substances from which it is derived must be of the costliest kind; such is in either case the enormous expence of these materials, that by superseding them and making every reasonable allowance to the engineer who erects the gas apparatus, the sum it costs, both principal and interest, is soon liquidated, leaving at last a total saving, excepting the expence of accidental repairs, which, from the durability of the materials employed, seldom exceeds a trifling sum.

The principal expence in the pursuit of this new branch of civil and domestic economy, is therefore, the dead capital employed in erecting the machinery for obtaining and conveying the gas. The floating capital, after the first cost incurred in erecting the apparatus, is comparatively small; even if usurious interest is allowed for the first cost of the apparatus, and its deterioration, the saving must always be considerable, especially if the number of lights furnished are comparatively in a small place.

At the same time were we to offer advice to the public on this subject, it would be, that no private individual resident in London, should attempt to light his premises, for the sake of economy, with coal gas by means of his own apparatus, whose annual expence for light does not exceed forty pounds. But when a street, or small neighbourhood is required to be lighted the operation may be commenced with safety; the sum required for erecting the apparatus, and the labour attending the process, together with the interest of money sunk, will then soon be liquidated by the light and other products.

Individuals have accordingly engaged successfully in the distillation of coal, and trade with advantage in the articles produced by the process.

In like manner may the lighting of cities be accomplished without the aid of incorporated bodies; and parishes may be lighted by almost as many individuals as there are streets in a parish.

The supplying of light to the street or parish lamps alone, of any district of street lamps only, can never be undertaken with economy in this capital, nor indeed in any other; for the money sunk in furnishing the mains or pipes only, must always greatly exceed what any revenue from the lighting of the streets alone can compensate.

The most beneficial application of gas-lights unquestionably is in all those situations where a great quantity of light is wanted in a small place; and where light is required to be most diffused, the profit of this mode of illumination is the least. Hence, the lighting of the parish, or street-lamps alone, without lighting shops or houses, can never be done with economy.

It may be objected to the universality of our conclusion that the price of coal differing very much in different places will occasion a variation in the expence of the new mode of lighting.

The price of coals can however have but little effect upon the cost of the gas-lights; because the very refuse, or small coal, which pass through the screen at the pit’s mouth, and which cannot be brought into the market, nay, even the sweepings of the pit, which are thrown away, may be employed for the production of coal-gas. It makes no difference in what form the coal is used. This circumstance may contribute to enable coal-merchants to furnish coals in larger masses, and as they come from the mine, instead of increasing the bulk by breaking them into a smaller size, which is a practice commonly followed.

The demand which the gas-light occasions for inferior sorts of coal may hereafter contribute to lower the price of the superior kinds, and keep a level which cannot be shaken under any circumstances. It may contribute to prevent combinations which do certainly operate to the prejudice of the public, and sometimes put this great town at the mercy of a few proprietors in the north, who deal out this commodity in any way they please. The competition thus produced, it is impossible not to consider as an advantage, which would tend to prevent such combinations, and put the inhabitants of London out of the reach of them.

The advantages which the coal trade must reap from the introduction of the gas-light must be very considerable. There is already less waste, but a greater consumption of coal than formerly. The lower classes of the community are scantily supplied with firing; and nothing but a reduction of price is necessary to increase to a very large amount the average quantity of fuel consumed in the country. The lightness of the coke produced by the gas-light manufacture diminishing the expence of land carriage, facilitates its general diffusion—the comforts of the poor are becoming materially augmented, and a number of useful operations in agriculture and the arts are beginning to be carried on, which have been hitherto checked by the extravagant price of fuel. If any additional vent were wanted for the coke, it would readily be found in the continental market; coke being better suited than coal to the habits of most European nations.

Many, and unquestionable as are the advantages of this new mode of procuring and distributing light, it was not to be expected that an invention which went to impair a branch of trade, in which a large portion of skill and capital had hitherto been successfully employed should escape encountering very considerable opposition. On the first introduction of the gas-lights, great but happily unsuccessful endeavours were made to alarm the public mind by dismal forebodings of the destruction which would ensue to the Greenland trade, and the consequent loss of a valuable nursery of British Seamen. When impartially considered it will be found that there was nothing more in this objection than the common clamour that is always set up against every new means of abridging labour, to which had the public listened, an interdict would have been laid upon the spinning and threshing machines, the steam engine, and a thousand other improvements in machinery.

Such clamour scarcely ever fails to be made when the extension of machinery, the application of inanimate power, and the abridgment of labour consequent on either, is a matter proposed. We are then sure to be told that the scheme of mechanical or chemical improvement is pointed against the human species, that it tends to drive them out of the system of beneficial employment and that, on the whole, the sum of the improvement is not only a less proportion of good to society, but a positive accession of misery to the unemployed poor.

The misfortune of this argument is that to be good for any thing, it would prove a great deal too much. It is not confined in its scope to any particular species or defined extent of improvement, but is equally proscriptive of all improvements whatever. It is a principle for savage life, not for a state of civilization. It takes for its basis that it is an advantage to perpetuate that necessity for hard and incessant labour under which man finds himself originally placed by nature, with all the wants, privations, ignorance and ferocity, which are attendant on that condition, and that every discovery, invention, or improvement which tends to abridge the quantity required of human labour, and to augment the resources for living and enjoyment is a serious injury to society. The advocates of this narrow theory do not go the whole length of maintaining that diminishing labour, and increase of substance, are in themselves positive evils, a position too absurd perhaps for any one to uphold; but they maintain what ends in a consequence nearly as untrue, namely, that neither the one nor the other is of any advantage to society at large. The palpable error of this theory is, that it supposes that all improvements which tend to supersede human labour, are necessarily made for the benefit of a few, and not for the common benefit of the many; that instead of lessening to each individual the share of labour requisite to obtain the means of his subsistence, their only tendency is to lessen the value of each personas labour, and to oblige him to work more in order to live equally well.

Now, however the existing state of things may be in this country, or in other countries, arising out of a variety of arbitrary circumstances, foreign to the natural, and in all cases the ultimately inevitable course of industry, it is a matter of justice, clear and undeniable, that every improvement in society ought to be the property of the many, and not of a few; and that it ought either to lessen the quantity of labour necessary for acquiring the means of living, or to increase the profit to be gained by continuing the same quantity of labour. Nor does there seem any reason for believing that, in point of fact, the actual distribution of things is so far from according with this principle of justice as some superficial and prejudiced observers are fond of representing. The labourer, or artizan, may now work a greater number of hours daily than he did years ago; but how seldom do we find this to be the case without his comforts being more than proportionally multiplied, and his ultimate independence from labour essentially promoted. In general, however, the fact is, if we may give credit to well informed economists, that the working classes do not labour more than formerly, and yet live, or at least have the means of living better; and that by working even less than formerly, they can obtain the means of living quite as well.

Let the real state of matters in this respect, however, be as it may, the question comes to be one merely as to the distribution of the produce of nature and of art, and instead of opposing improvements because they tend to encrease that produce, the object of those who have really the good of their fellow-creatures at heart, ought to be, to encourage such improvements as much as possible, but at the same time to obtain a correction of any partiality or injustice which may have crept into the distribution of their beneficial consequences. It is not to be denied that all new improvements which interfere with and change the occupations and habits of the working classes of people, must at first expose them to inconvenience and distress, against which it is in fairness the duty of society to protect them; but let not that temporary inconvenience and distress which can and ought to be provided against, be held as an insuperable obstacle to the adoption of an improvement the ultimate tendency of which it is to better the condition of mankind.

It is likewise true that the manufacturing classes often suffer great want by the occasional suspension of employment, and sometimes actual oppression, by the demand for labour; but that involves a question more immediately connected with political economy than the present subject.

It is not the machinery that is in fault in such cases, but those speculators who occasion an inordinate excess of employment, or those statesmen who, with their folly, derange the great machine of human interests and intercourse.

Every invention which tends to diminish the labour of men must be a benefit to the species; and it is wicked to argue against the use of any thing from its occasional abuse.

If the application of mechanical inventions thus tends to improve the humanity of the public, if it reduces the necessity of hard labour, and diminishes the danger of many occupations which we contend it does, they who contribute to this object deserve our respect and gratitude.

It may be true that we have now no such minds as those of Homer, or Bacon, or others of their stamp; but we should reflect that the circumstances which produced such characters are gone by, and great faculties have found other objects and other materials to work with.

The use of mechanical industry not only improves and augments the comforts of domestic life, but it also, perhaps, does as much to soften the feelings of mankind towards one another as the precepts of philosophy. It tends to engender a detestation of hard labour, and to make the world consider not what the labourer may be able to do in tasking him, but what he ought to do without detriment to himself. It effects this by withdrawing, to a great degree, from observation, the distressing spectacle of men and animals toiling beyond their strength.

It ought never to be forgotten, that it is to manufactories carried on by machinery, and abridgment of labour, that this country is indebted for her riches, independence, and prominent station among the nations of the world.

Authentic estimates have shewn, that the use of machinery in Great Britain, is equivalent to an addition to the population of upwards of one hundred millions of adult persons.

This immense accession of power, has enabled this country to withstand assaults, and to achieve objects of political ambition, that appear almost miraculous when compared with the geographical extent and numerical population of the kingdom.

With respect to what has been advanced as to the probable injury that would result from the general adoption of the gas-lights all over the country, to the Greenland trade, it may be observed that the traffic might with more propriety be called a drain than a nursery of the naval force. The nature of the Greenland service requires that the crew should consist of able bodied sailors; and being protected men, not subject to the impress law, they are rendered useless for national defence. The nursery of British seamen is the coasting trade; and as the gas-light illumination becomes extended it will increase that trade as much as it diminishes the Greenland fishery.

Even on the extreme supposition that it would annihilate the Greenland fisheries altogether, we should have no reason to regret the event. The soundest principles of political economy must condemn the practice of fitting out vessels to navigate the polar seas for oil, if we can extract a superior material for procuring light at a cheaper rate from the produce of our own soil. The consequence of lighting our dwellings and manufactories with gas can in fact prove injurious only to our continental friends, one of whose staple commodities, tallow, we shall then have less occasion to purchase, although the new lights can never supersede entirely the use of candles and moveable lights.