ABSTRACT
The British people lived not by bread alone. Britain's position as a significant industrial power rested truly on a foundation of coal. Coal mining was, after agriculture, the foremost industry of Great Britain, as well as one of the oldest, having been born, it seems, almost simultaneously with the Great Charter. 1 It was a, if not the, key industry, around which the others revolved; nearly all industrial production was fundamentally dependent upon it. 2 Britain's commercial supremacy was not due solely to her geographic location or to the “spirit and enterprise of her people.” Coal was used to fuel and ballast the ships which brought bulky raw materials to Britain and left with the more compact manufactured articles. Britain owed her commercial supremacy in large part to her coal.
