282 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



sessed and developed notable deposits of the metals, have invariably 

 taken a prominent position among their contemporaries, and have 

 reached a higher physical and intellectual plane than those dependent 

 alone upon agriculture or on commerce. Food crops quickly disap- 

 pear. Fabric crops are worn out in a year or two. Fuel crops burn 

 up about as quickly as they come into the market. There must be 

 an annual harvest of these or trouble ensues. Commerce is the 

 science of the distribution of crops, and is dependent on them for its 

 existence. The various metal crops, however, are of the nature of 

 permanencies. They go into use and not into consumption, and a 

 very considerable part of each year's addition to the world's stock be- 

 come articles or structures that are capable of earning interest for 

 their owners. Probably in this lies the explanation of the prosperity 

 that invariably results from an active metallic production. These 

 substances can not be eaten up like wheat, they can not be worn out 

 like cotton or wool, they can not be burned up like coal or lumber or 

 tobacco. They remain and accumulate, are perhaps remelted and 

 used yet another time, and even such parts as are apparently lost in 

 the chemical arts, or in plating or ornamentation, are very extensively 

 recovered from time to time. As a nation, we are producing about 

 35 per cent, of the world's crop of aluminum, 58 per cent, of that of 

 copper, 23 per cent, of the gold, 33 per cent, of the lead, 43 per cent. 

 of the iron, 26 per cent, of the mercury, 30 per cent, of the silver, and 

 29 per cent, of the zinc.^ This is a remarkable record for a commun- 

 ity that has existed for less than a hundred and fifty years, and it 

 means that not only are we in possession of a part of the globe that 

 has great mineral resources, but that our form of government and the 

 nature of our laws are such as to foster and encourage that individual- 

 ism that alone permits a people to develop the best that is in them. 

 The metal era has but just begun. The earth beneath us is a store- 

 house abundantly full of them. Heretofore man has been content 

 to utilize only those things that were on the surface of the planet. 

 "We have now begun to call upon the earth for its very heart blood. 

 Heretofore the mason and the woodworker have been almost the sole 

 executors of the will of the architect and the artist, but now the 

 founder and the smith are becoming his main interpreters. Sub- 

 stances that can be liquefied and molded, rolled and hammered and 

 drawn into form, are taking the place of those that with painful and 

 long effort must be chiseled and sawn. Materials that seem to be 

 capable of taking on life, that can be made to pulsate and vibrate, that 

 will transport energy and light and sound and other forms of force, 

 are being substituted for inert stone and brick and mortar, wherever 

 strenuous life exists or is to be protected. In its future evolution 

 * Statistics of the year 1906. 



