How Europe's Production and Use of Minerals Vary from Region to has long been the world's greatest source of mineral wealth. Before the war it produced about 54 per cent of all the coal and 61 per cent of the iron. The United States in a slightly smaller area produced 38 per cent of the coal and 36 per cent of the iron. The war diminished Europe's production, but even now the value of all the minerals produced in Europe is probably nearly three times as great as the production of all the rest of the world aside from the United States.
The coal of Europe, as we have seen, is practically all located along a relatively narrow and much broken strip extending from Ireland to southern Russia. About 95 per cent of Europe's supply or about half the coal mined in the whole world, comes from the part of this strip from Poland westward. Since practically all the coal is mined in the progressive parts of Europe, the methods of extracting it vary little. The chief difference is that machinery is used more in Britain than on the continent and more in the North Sea countries than farther east. But in this respect all parts of Europe are far behind the United States.
In the use of the coal the various parts of Europe differ more than in methods of extracting it. All countries use it for heat and power, but Britain also exports it, while Germany uses it as a raw material for manufacture. Britain, having much coal of high quality, has used it to build up her foreign commerce. Her exports are chiefly manu factured articles of small bulk, while her imports are food and raw materials of large bulk. If there were no other important articles of commerce, many British ships would have to make the outward voyage with very small cargoes, although they would come back fully loaded. But coal furnishes a bulky article which can be used to fill the outbound ships in place of the wheat and cotton carried by the inbound ships. This has been a great advantage in building up trade, although it has 1 the disadvantage of depleting the future reserves of coal.
In Germany an opposite policy has been pursued. The German coal deposits are more limited than those of Britain; in proportion to the population Germany mines only about half as much as her rival. Moreover, the Germans have not needed to import food in any such quantities as the British. Hence, the German policy has been to get
as much out of the coal as possible by developing by-products, especially aniline dyes. The stimulus thus given to chemical industries gave Germany an immense advantage in making poisonous gases and explo sives during the war. Formerly the United States used coal only as fuel. Now, however, both this country and England are convinced that any country which has so extremely valuable a raw material ought to use it at home for dyes and chemicals.
The European iron ores are well distributed. They have been chiefly developed near the coal deposits in the active North Sea coun tries and especially in the district of Lorraine on the Franco-German border. Other deposits near the sea, however, in the northern parts of Sweden and Spain are now for export to the coal of Germany and especially England. Their relation to the coal is like that of the Lake Superior ores to the coal in Pennsylvania. In Europe, as in the United States, there is a growing tendency to load ships with ore in one direction and with coal in the other. Thus iron works have grown up on a large scale in Spain and Sweden, but since two tons of coal are needed to smelt one ton of ore, the main iron works remain near the coal. Sweden also uses the wood of her great forests to make charcoal with which some peculiarly good grades of tool-steel can be prepared.
Of the other mineral products which Europe produces in abundance, petroleum comes- from the Caucasus region and Rumania; zinc from southern Germany with some from Spain and Italy; lead from Spain with some from Germany; platinum from the Urals, which furnish over 90 per cent of the world's supply; potash from Germany and Alsace, which were almost the only sources until the war stimulated dis coveries in the United States; pyrite from Spain; sulphur from Italy; and other materials in small amounts from other regions. Although the southern peninsulas, the Urals, the Caucasus, and the mountains on the borders of southern Germany are the only parts of Europe that are even moderately mineralized, the few resources are so well utilized that the continent produces more than 30 per cent of the world's coal, ron, lead, zinc, platinum, tungsten, potash, pyrite, sulphur, mercury, maite, graphite, magnesite, salt, stone, clay products, cement, and date.