The weekly Alaska citizen., 1917-11-12
BUREAU IF MINES EXPERIMENT STATION
 A Series of Articles Explaining Its Origin and Purpose

li VIII bf seen tlAt t.l' h-s'A- '' Mines. though d young organization. has a long and quite unprecedented record ot cooperation, not only with tine other departments and bureaus CT the Federal Government but with the individual states, with foreign bu- rraus and institutions. with corpor- atlons, universities, organizations Of manufacturers and workmeu, and in deed every known agency that Is in terested iii Ur can he made interested in the cause oi safety and efficiency m the great mining industry, upon which practically our whole modern intricately dependent civilization hangs Tn the practical matter of phy- seal resources. This network of cooperative agreement and working interplay has been one cause of the Bureaus phenomenal growth and in valuable to t and to the country at large since our own nation has be- come d participant in the war. The War and Navy departments have h,tn accustomed to call upon ue B. F-au ot Mines for assistance and CO., operation in technical mineral prob .,us in the past, and when this crisis t-me scores of engineers and chem s--. from the Bureau, trained in eH- p.0sIye work and other allied mat tels of great technical lntricacy, were asked to apply all their ener- gies to war work alone, and have done so for months. To take one instance only. pr. (. L. Parsons, one ot the leading chemists of the coun- tiy and for several years the head .t the .elhGu.oglc branch ot tle bH raau lund-s whom Sir Davis o' tha Fairbanks station served before coming .o Alaska. as long ago aa las' fall Was sent to Europe quietly on mis sion which has since been made pub lie. viz, 10 study the nitrate plants 9, the Old Country in reference to war work. When We were forced to declare war ourselves, no time was lost ill locating sites and at once preparing large plants for the pro duction of this most necessary war material, and Dr. Parsons is one of the experts, with two high army of fcials, to conduct this work.
 The cooperation idea was one of Dr. Holmes hobbies. and has con unued to he a directing policy os t1e Bureau under it's present head. Mr. Van H. Manning. a close friend cr Dr. Holmes and his Co-worker and invaluable assistant for years. Dr. Holmes believed that it was a mls- take to have each bureau of the Federal Government shut off from cacl other bureau like air-tight com partments and he labored incessant- lv to establish lines of interplay and exchange of help and inspiration at every possible point of contact. Thus tho Bureau has not only been giving out energy and help along many un- usual channels. but inspiration and vitality have come to it from innum- arable sourccs-sOurCcs that 20 deep down into the national life. In gIane- ing over the Directors reports for the q,as+ two or three years, one reads nlitr at random of cooperative agree r7ent- he+ween the Bureau of Mines a~a such diverse and widely ScDarat- ed institutions as the T0ite7 States Geological Survey, the State of H. 1irois. the California State Industrial Commission. the Public Health Ser vica. t'-e Wiacons'n Iod1strial Com mission. the Panama Pacific EXposI- tion. tho Pittsburgh Coal Company Cornell University. Columbia Univer- sitv, the Universities of Illinois Washington, North Dakota and Utah the Bureau of Standards, the War and Navy Departments, the Depart mnnt of Justi"7 IL ~ ~0 "t lholah Affairs. the Treasury T.~""--r'7''+ tn" District of Columbia. the PubIi" Printer the National Radium lnst- tute. the State of Missouri, the Penn sylvania Department of Labor and Industry, and numerous State Geolog- ical surveys.
 The very headquarters of the Bu- reau are cooperative, for they are in large new building in Washing ton, that houses also the Secretary of the Interior, the General Land Office, the United States Geological Syl,ev. the Reclamation Service, the Indian Office and the Hoover Food Commission. This building lies be tween 18th and 18th strets and F and G streets, and is one of the finest new buildings in Washington, having just been completed this sum mer.
 Geologists of the U. s. Geological Survey engaged in classifying the coals of the public lands cooperate in the collection of mine samples, and the engineers of the Bureau of Mines study the relative fuel value of these coals. Many people not ac- quainted at first hand with the work of these two bureaus do not under stand the essential distinction be- tween their work, and yet the thor ough way in which each completes and makes perfect the work of the other. There are many ways in which their cooperation is invaluable, and one thing which makes this easy and possible is the fact that many of the engineers of the Bureau of Mines were trained in structural geology