The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1914-12-03
CONST|TU-
ENTS OF INDUSTRY

Extracts from address by Geo. Otis
Smith, director, United States Geo.
logical Survey, before American In
|%stitute Chemical Engineers, Philadel-
|phia, Pa:
-Four constituents enter into the re-
action that we term industry. Two of
these, brain and Drawn, are organic
compounds and two are perhaps to be
regarded as inorganic-money and
material. None of these c~omponents
is wanting here in the United States
and in fact their abundance affords
the best reason for an optomistic out
look upon the present industrial stu
alton. OF these four constituents,
labor and capital and brains are all
more easily transported generally
than the crude materials upon large
tonnages of which the industry must
depend. Thus, cheap coal attracts
manufacturers just as cheap land at
tracts farmers.
With distribution of raw material
is linked the influence of markets up
on the location of industry. The de-
velopment of transportation systems
makes the problem of markets a most
complex one. The industrial indie
|pendence of the small community of
a century ago has given way to the
system under which your dinner table
may represent the tribute from sew
eral continents. Even in a country so
diversified as ours in its natural boun-
ties domestic production of everything
consumed is not desirable nor profit,
able. Exchange of commodities with
foreign countries becomes necessary,
SO it follows that industrial indepen-
|dence is the goal toward which a ma
ton should face, but not a goal which
lit should have either the intention or
desire to attain.
To increase industrial prosperity
this country needs to export finished
rather than crude products and to i'm
port raw materials rather than manu-
features. 1t is the product of Ameri-
can labor rather than the bounty Of
our natural resources that preferably
should go into the worlds markets.
As the engineers of America study
this matter of expansion of manufac-
turning, it becomes evident that the
distribution of raw material and Of
power is the key to industrial oppor-
tunities.
Petroleum and natural gas in their
distribution in ONE degree supplement
coal. Thus, the largest oil field both
ir present production and probable re-
serve is in California, a state with
only negligible coal reserve. Taken
together, these mineral fuels consti-
tute a national asset comparable with
the soil esourc Of this country, but
the largest part of the value of the
natural gas, petroleum and coal to the
nation is in their relation to manu-
features.
The wide distribution of ores Of the
principal metals sufficiently rich and
EXTENSIVE to be mined in large quaint
ties means that the metallurgical in
dustry is important on both the Pa
cifc and Atlantic seaboard, in most
of the Rocky Mountain states as well
as in several of the middle states.
Even in the two metals which at once
suggest to us OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
and steel-there is widespread pro-
duction. In the mining of copper
last year 90 states contributed, and
no less than % states furnished iron
ore to the furnaces of the country.
The raw material of this
country are so widely distributed that
industry has been developing at this
rapid pace at many points. The ten
dency is away from geographic cen
A-o1rcc - :-J, rokLn~ khn,
toward it. A few opportunities for
expansion need only to be suggested;
the south with its happy combination
of coal and iron ore in the same dis
tricts makes pig-iron production pos
sible at minimum cost; the west with
it's hydro-electric possibilities avail
able as a source of relatively cheap
power for chemical and metallurigical
industries; the Rocky Mountain re-
gions with its vast unutilized sources
ofu s~ulphuric acid and equally great
unmined stores of phosphate rock.
The ingredients necessary for pro-
ducing prosperity appear at hand. The
new financial system already promises
more mobile credits. A more sympa-
lthetic attitude of the public toward
DiK nuuotAidt ORCAdtAOnc ~ lhuiS0tCus
The efficiency of American labor and
American engineering vas never
questioned In any estimate of Ameri-
can ability to make the most of the
present opportunities for industrial
expansion, no better measure of the
inventive genius Of this country can
perhaps be found than in a moment s
review of what is making the Euro
pean war so terrible. Strictly neu-
trail may we be, yet from the heights
above to the depths below We find
American inventions cat the 'front.'
the ~aeroplane, the magazine rifle
andmachine gun, the barbed wire, and
and the submarine and its torpedo.
Cannot our nation lead as well in fash
Joining the tools of peace as in design
ing the machines of war;
State of Ohio, City of Toledo, Lucas
County-ss.