But it was the permanent settlers in America and elsewhere who found vastly greater wealth. They found it in coal, iron ore and other humble minerals that made possible the Industrial Revolution and its bountiful capacity for generating prosperity from the goodness of the ground. New inventions and new mineral discoveries helped the United States become a world power. Today we live in the Age of Technology. Preoccupation with the wonders of science tends to obscure the role of minerals, but they are just as necessary for the spaceships of the future as for the steam engines of the past.
Minerals remain our keystones of destiny.