my own immediate neighborhood, but from other sections as well.

While thanking the Committee for the compliment implied by the appointment, yet it has seemed to me that they laid out a very large subject for one person to write about-so large that the time at my disposal did not warrant the undertaking, and in consequence I have ventured to change the subject somewhat, and shall treat simply of the "Residuals of a Coal Gas Works." What I desire to call your attention to is not so much the value of residuals in themselves—with that you are all familiar— but to the probable revenue that can be derived from them; to the necessity of paying a large amount of attention to their sale, and to point out some methods followed successfully by some companies with which the speaker is familiar, in disposing of these bye products. In the first place, what can be derived from the sale of residuals in a coal gas works? It is a fact that in a large European works the entire cost of manufacture is paid for by profits derived from the sale of coke, tar, and ammonia water, and their products, so that the gas in the holder costs absolutely nothing.

At the other extreme is the small works, poorly managed, where the tar runs into a convenient sewer or river, where nearly all the coke is used in heating the retorts, and where at the end of a year the total returns from residuals amount to fifty cents per ton of coal carbonized, or less. Between these extremes there is a wide margin. Few of us, perhaps none, can ever expect to reach the high results of the foreign company referred to, but all of us, it is to be hoped, make a better return than the last named.

How shall the sale of residuals be expressed? If in so many hundreds or thousands of dollars, it means nothing unless the size of the company be known. If in so many cents per thousand feet, the statement is misleading, for the reason that the price received for coke, which is by far the largest item, must depend entirely on the local price of fuel. For illustration: Suppose A is the manager of gas works in a city where the cost of the coal for domestic purposes is $6.50 or $7.50 per ton—he may be able to obtain 11 cents per bushel for his coke, and if he sells fifteen bushels per ton of coal carbonized, the receipts would be

$1.65. B, on the other hand, manages a works where good coal for domestic purposes is sold at $2. He sells, let us say twenty-five bushels per ton of coal carbonized, but can receive at most but five cents per bushel, or $1.25. If expressed in thousand feet sold, and each sells 10,000 feet per ton, A would receive 161⁄2 cents per M. and B but 122 cents, and yet B manages to sell sixty-seven per cent. more coke per ton than A.

It seems to the speaker that the proper way to express sales of residuals is in percentage of cost of coal carbonized. This gives an intelligent statement at once of the results reached, and enables us to compare results with others in the fewest words, and in the most comprehensive manner possible. The coal has cost one hundred per cent., the returns from residuals are fifty, sixty or seventy per cent.

In the case of A and B referred to before, A would probably pay $5.50 per ton for his caking coal, for with high prices for domestic coal, gas coal is almost invariably correspondingly high, and vice versa, and his receipts for coke being $1.65 per ton would be thirty per cent. of cost of coal carbonized. B, on the other hand, would undoubtedly purchase his coal for $2 or lessand his receipts being $1.25 per ton, would be sixty-two per cent. I submit to your judgment if these percentages, thirty and sixty-two, do not more nearly represent the comparative working of the two managers, so far as relates to coke, than can be expressed in any other way.

Let me say frankly that I started in the preparation of this paper with the hope of proving that in most works well managed, the residuals could be made to pay ninety per cent. of the cost of the coal; but here on the seaboard and through New England, with good caking coal costing from four to five dollars per ton, I have very reluctantly come to the conclusion that most of us must content ourselves with 70 to 80 per cent.

Let us

But what does this mean in this part of the country? assume that the cost of coal, including cannel or other enriching material is $4.30 per ton in the coal shed. Seventy per cent. of this will bring an income of $3 from each ton carbonized, and if the capital be no larger than $60 per ton of coal used or $6 per thousand feet sold, the income from residuals will pay 5 per cent. on the capital.

Can this standard be reached under ordinary conditions? I believe it can, and the fact that better results than 70 per cent. are obtained at one works on the seaboard here, and results reaching closely to 100 per cent. in a Western city, where cheaper coal is obtained, ought to be all the proof needed that my statement is not exaggerated.

In the order of value the residuals can be named coke, tar and ammonia.

First-Coke, and how much can be obtained from it? The answer to this depends upon the quantity saved, the rapidity with which it is sold after being made, and the price received.

First-The quantity saved. This, in turn, depends on the settings for the retorts, and whether regenerative furnaces are employed. All will agree, I think, that no gas manager can afford to use a poor setting or a poor stack; the waste of heat, and consequent waste of money, are too great; but all may not agree with the desirability of using regenerative furnaces. After an experience of seven years, I unhesitatingly say that I am strongly in favor of these furnaces, and one of the principal reasons is the larger amount of coke left for sale than with the ordinary setting. It is well known that certain gas works using furnaces are selling 30 bushels of coke per ton of coal carbonized. The day when a gas manager can rest content in selling 15 or 18 bushels of coke per ton has passed, and 25 to 28 bushels, or higher, must be the standard.

Second-The rapidity with which coke can be disposed of affects to a large degree, the quantity, provided, of course, it is sold by measure and not by weight. If a pile is allowed to accumulate and the coke handled over a number of times, the consequent shrinkage in bulk is very great, reaching, so I am told, to as much as 30 per cent. Coke should be sold, if possible, as fast as made. If customers do not come and leave their orders, then seek the customers; devote time and energy to its sale. Push it with the same enterprise that we use in selling our gas, and the results sought for are sure to follow. I have in my office a large poster which has been used very successfully by a New England gas company. With an accumulation of coke in their yards, the bill-boards, dead walls, and fences in the city where that company is located are covered with that poster, with

coke and its virtues printed in glowing colors, so that he who runs not only may but must read. The result, I am told, is invariably the same, the demand increases and the surplus disappears, and that, too, without lowering the price.

Third-The price at which coke is sold. It is the fixed belief of the speaker that the same price per pound or per ton ought to be obtained for this product in every place as is paid in that place on an average for a good quality of steam and house coal. I believe this because some careful experiments at the gas works in my charge convinced me that a pound of coke would evaporate a trifle more water than a pound of coal, and because (and this, perhaps, is the most convincing proof) I obtain that price and have done so for years, almost without exception.

The experiments referred to were made in an upright tubular boiler: 7.36 pounds of water were evaporated with a pound of good anthracite coal, and in the same boiler, under the same conditions, 7.55 pounds of water were evaporated per pound of coke. Or expressed in dollars-if the coal were worth $5.00 per ton of two thousand pounds, coke would be worth $5.13 for the same quantity.

The price at which coal has been retailed in the town in which the speaker lives has varied from $5.00 to $6.00 per net ton for a number of years. And the price of coke has been fixed at nine cents per bushel in the yard or ten cents delivered within a mile of the works for the past six years, and has not been deviated from except on rare occasions. As a Winchester bushel of dry coke weighs about 37.5 pounds, there are 53.3 bushels in a ton of 2,000 pounds, and at 10 cents per bushel, the price received for coke must have been $5.33 per net ton. As the cargo prices, or those at which the manufacturers buy their coal, are much lower than the retail prices, I think that the statement made above is fairly proved that the company with which the speaker is connected has received for its coke the full average price at which coal is sold in its neighborhood.

I have been told that the company is very fortunate to be able to obtain such a price for coke, and probably that is a fact; but back of the good fortune lies a great deal of labor, and the price is as much the result of hard work as any other successful enterprise is the result of well-directed thought and effort.

Besides, other companies in New England receive the same or higher prices. Our Secretary can, if he will, tell you of one which receives on an average ten cents per bushel for broken coke; a neighbor of his receives about the same price; another, exceptionally situated, receives 121⁄2 cents per bushel, and so on.

In selling coke there are a few essentials which to the writer seem quite important. Have a fixed price, "like the law of the Medes and Persians which altereth not." Make it as high as you think the market will bear, and then adhere to it. Nothing will destroy a good coke trade so quickly as a rise in price. Seek a house trade; it is the most reliable in many ways, and can be depended on to last better than almost any other; and one great point in its favor is the fact that it varies in its demand almost directly as our production of coke-being heaviest in the winter, and lightest in summer. To secure this trade it is a matter of necessity to break the coke-without that, the attempt will be a failure, for nothing but a coal famine will force any large number of people to try to use the large lumps of fuel, in their cooking stoves, which we haul out of our retorts.

The breaking of coke seems to be quite a bugbear to some of our ablest members—and yet in small works with hand hammers or in large works with machines, the breaking can be done at a very slight expense.

These gentlemen claim that between the labor, the shrinkage and the breeze produced, it would be as well to sell the coke for a very small sum. The answer to this is, to charge a sufficiently higher price for the broken coke to cover these items. The speaker has sold broken coke at eleven cents per bushel in yard, or twelve cents delivered, for a number of years; and from some careful experiments the following results are arrived at:

One hundred bushels of large coke is worth at 9 cts., $9.00; when broken it makes 85 bushels small coke worth at 11 cts., $9.35; and 7 bushels breeze worth for steam, at 6 cts., 42; total, $9.77—leaving an excess of 77 cts. to pay for labor in breaking, which more than covers the cost.

In this connection it may be of interest to relate a personal experience which happened this past year. From some changes in the retort house, a larger quantity of coke was saved last year than ever before, and during the present year a still larger quan