The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, August 9, 1917, Page 5

. The Untold Wealth in Lignite - \ What Dean Babeock of the North Dakota University Has Done in BY HERBERT E. GASTON ORTH DAKOTA has put in an order to Pennsylvania, Illinois and West Virginia for a little snack of two million tons of coal for next winter's needs. For this store of condensed heat to last during the cold winter months and make life endurable out on the prair- ies, North Dakota will send east at least fifteen millions of- dollars. IS Rather a sizeable sum of money, isn’t it? If the people of North Dakota could keep it instead of turning it over to the railroads and the coal mine operators of the East they could do some wonderful things with it. It would build at least a half dozen splendid, modern consolidatede school buildings in every city in the state. If the farm- ers were to use it to carry out their program of state-owned industries it would build up a huge industrial center of elevators, flouring mills, packing houses and cold storage plants with allied industries. IMAGINATION HARDLY CAN GRASP THE FACTS out this vast sum every year for fuel i And yet the state which is paying —a generous slice’ of all the wealth it produces annually—this state has ~ within its own borders the largest re- serve .stock of coal possessed by any state in the union. This is a fact, testified to by the - . Dr. E. J. Babcock, dean of school of mines, University of North Dakota, who has devoted years to investigation of lignite problems. s, T Ay BT geological experts of the United States bureau of mines. There are around about six hundred million tons of coal mined and used in the United States or exported from this country every year. North Dakota has enough coal to supply all of this output for a thousand years if all the coal mines everywhere clse in the United States were to close down, never to open again. These statements, incredible as they may seem, are the calm verdict of scientists who- have investigated the coal resources of the whole country. The coal of North Dakota—if there were no other resourcé at all—would mean the building in this state in the future of a huge industry; more likely a great group of related industries de- pendent on this coal supply as a source of power and of wealth. What they mean to a state favored in addition by other great natural resources can hardly be grasped by the imagination. “But it isn’t really coal,”” somebody says; “it's only lignite. If it were real coal of course it would be a tremendous thing.” Other people have said that before; people who would rather echo what they have heard or accept what another generation has believed than to keep up with the march of progress. It was only a few years ago that gaso- line was a drug on the market. It was a nuisance and an embarrassment to the oil trust. John D. Rockefeller long- ed for some way of turning it into kerosene. People used kerosene to burn in lamps, but nobody kmew much of angthing to do with gasoline except to clean clothes with it. Now gasoline is the keystone of in- dustry and the only fear connected with it is the fear that the supply will not hold out very long. LIGNITE /IELDS MANY PRODUCTS The case is likely to prove somewhat the same with lignite, for a man with brains and foresight has been studying lignite for several years and he has found it to be, not merely a valuable commodity, but a whole bundle of val- uable and useful things. Lignite in its natural state is a fuel of considerable value,-but when it is put through some simple processes of treatment it yields up several prod- ucts each one of which is more useful than the original. Raw lignite ‘is but a poor grade of coal, but when this “low-grade” coal. as it comes from’ the mines, is dried, broken up by heat and a part of its elements recombined by a mechanicdl process it becomes a fuel equal in heat- ing value to the best anthracite coal. Uy P ) Has Somebody Got a Hatpin? Pointing Out the Way to Use a Tremendous Asset of the State N i N Wik The shaded portion of the state of North Dakota in this map represents the area in whichs lignite deposits occur. This new fuel, the manufactured lignite, can be produced right now in North Dakota at a price less than it costs to buy even the good grades of soft coal from the East. And in the process of its production other prod- ucts which in the end will prove as valuable as the finished coal itself are given off as by-products. BABCOCK IS MAN WHO WORKS WONBERS But just to say that these things can be done doesn’t tell the story. These things are being done. The new fuel is being made in a thoroughly practic- al way. It is being used. There is a ready market for all of it that is made. A worker of wonders has been at work with lignite. What he has done deserves to be better known by the people of Northi Dakota, for he has built well the foundations for a new era in the industries of North Dakota. The people of future generations in North Dakota will know him well by name and by reputation. The present generation should get acquainted with him now. This father of the future industrial greatness of North Dakota is Earle J. Babcock, dean of the college of mining engineering of the University of North Dakota. Dean Babcock is one of the pioneers in the higher educational work of the state, a modest scientist, known better outside his own state than he is within it, in spite of the fact that his whole life work has been here, In his laboratory at the school "of mines building at Grand Forks, Dean TN PAGE FOUR < Babcock for a score of years has been studying lignite. Patiently he has been at work analyzing, testing, experiment- ing, proving. He has a wonderful story to tell, but he is not yet through. Lignite is yielding up new secrets. Last week when I visited Dean Bab- cock at the university he took me into the laboratory and showed me the Jatest wonder. ‘It was my privilege to give the first news of it to the state of North Dakota and to the world through the columns of The Courier=- News and the dispatches of The Asso= ciated Press. DISCOVERS A FUEL GOOD AS GASOLINE This new wonder, which has aroused the keenest interest on the part of scientists and leaders of industry all over the nation, is nothing less than the production fromr lignite of “motor spirit,” a product related to. gasoline and similar to gasoline in its qualities, which in the future will probably re- place gasoline in North Dakota and very likely in many other states, form- ing an important addition to the world’s supply of motor fuel, the ap- proaching shortage of which is now alarming many well-informed persons. This new oil fuel is a by-product in the production of the manufactured lignite which will eventually drive all other forms of coal out of the market in North Dakota and stop the impor- tation into this state of that fifteen million dollars’ worth -of coal every year. Professor Babcock told me the story of lignite, North Dakota's great hoard