§ MR. JOHN GORDON (Londonderry, S.)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he can give, approximately, the annual coal consumption of the United Kingdom and Ireland for domestic and industrial purposes; what is the approximate estimate of the cost to the consumers during the year 1900; and what the cost would have been had the average prices of the ten preceding years been current in 1900.
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURThe annual coal consumption of the United Kingdom is approximately 160 millions of tons. I cannot state the cost to the consumer of the portion of the annual output retained for home consumption, but I may say that the total output in 1900 was valued at £121,653,000 at the pit's mouth, and that at the average pit's mouth value of the preceding ten years its value would have been about seventy-seven and a half millions.