Читать книгу Description of the Process of Manufacturing Coal Gas. For the Lighting of Streets Houses, and Public Buildings онлайн

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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.