Free The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells Page A

key to metallurgy and oil to transit. When they are done
we shall either have built up such a fabric of apparatus, knowledge and
social organization that we shall be able to manage without them—or
we shall have travelled a long way down the slopes of waste towards
extinction.... To-day, in getting, in distribution, in use we
waste enormously....As we sit here all the world is wasting fuel
fantastically."
    "Just as mentally—educationally we waste," the doctor interjected.
    "And my job is to stop what I can of that waste, to do what I can to
organize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane fuel using. And
that second proposition carries us far. Into the whole use we are making
of life.
    "First things first," said Sir Richmond. If we set about getting fuel
sanely, if we do it as the deliberate, co-operative act of the whole
species, then it follows that we shall look very closely into the use
that is being made of it. When all the fuel getting is brought into one
view as a common interest, then it follows that all the fuel burning
will be brought into one view. At present we are getting fuel in a kind
of scramble with no general aim. We waste and lose almost as much as we
get. And of what we get, the waste is idiotic.
    "I won't trouble you," said Sir Richmond, "with any long discourse on
the ways of getting fuel in this country. But land as you know is owned
in patches and stretches that were determined in the first place chiefly
by agricultural necessities. When it was divided up among its present
owners nobody was thinking about the minerals beneath. But the lawyers
settled long ago that the landowner owned his land right down to the
centre of the earth. So we have the superficial landlord as coal owner
trying to work his coal according to the superficial divisions, quite
irrespective of the lie of the coal underneath. Each man goes for the
coal under his own land in his own fashion. You get three shafts where
one would suffice and none of them in the best possible place. You get
the coal coming out of this point when it would be far more convenient
to bring it out at that—miles away. You get boundary walls of coal
between the estates, abandoned, left in the ground for ever. And each
coal owner sells his coal in his own pettifogging manner... But you
know of these things. You know too how we trail the coal all over the
country, spoiling it as we trail it, until at last we get it into
the silly coal scuttles beside the silly, wasteful, airpoisoning,
fog-creating fireplace.
    "And this stuff," said Sir Richmond, bringing his hand down so smartly
on the table that the startled coffee cups cried out upon the tray; "was
given to men to give them power over metals, to get knowledge with, to
get more power with."
    "The oil story, I suppose, is as bad."
    "The oil story is worse....
    "There is a sort of cant," said Sir Richmond in a fierce parenthesis,
"that the supplies of oil are inexhaustible—that you can muddle about
with oil anyhow.... Optimism of knaves and imbeciles.... They don't want
to be pulled up by any sane considerations...."
    For some moments he kept silence—as if in unspeakable commination.
    "Here I am with some clearness of vision—my only gift; not very clever,
with a natural bad temper, and a strong sexual bias, doing what I can
to get a broader handling of the fuel question—as a common interest
for all mankind. And I find myself up against a lot of men, subtle men,
sharp men, obstinate men, prejudiced men, able to get round me, able to
get over me, able to blockade me.... Clever men—yes, and all of them
ultimately damned—oh! utterly damned—fools. Coal owners who think only
of themselves, solicitors who think backwards, politicians who think
like a game of cat's-cradle, not a gleam of generosity not a gleam."
    "What particularly are you working for?" asked the doctor.
    "I want to get the whole business of the world's fuel discussed and
reported upon as one affair so that some day it may be