REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1920. 135 



to depict the industrial processes of mining, milling - , and manufac- 

 ture: some show only the material stages from the native occurrence 

 to the finished product: scarcely any may be said to deal adequately 

 with the economic aspects, the most difficult and at the same time 

 the paramount issue in the undertaking. For coal, glass, lead, 

 natural gas, asphalt, the cements-lime-plaster group, and for sev- 

 eral of the minor minerals what is chiefly needed is a thorough- 

 going attention to the work of arrangement and labelling. All 

 the others still have gaps in what is materially available; but even 

 these would be greatly enhanced as to worth by a like attention 

 to the latent possibilities afforded in what is at hand. 



As matters stand at this writing less than half of the mineral 

 resource field has been covered. Additional exhibits are needed and 

 those already assembled need amplifying. To make up these defi- 

 ciencies, however, the Museum must look to cultivating the indus- 

 trial interests involved rather than to its own resources: for only in 

 this way can it hope to meet the tests or keep the instructive worth 

 of the work alive to the issues of the day. From past experience 

 industrial cooperation may be counted on. but the Museum must 

 take the initiative ami at the same time be prepared to produce 

 results. This need for widening the scope of the exhibits calls for 

 systematic attention especially in connection with the metals, where, 

 with the exception of lead, the representation is woefully inadequate. 

 Of paramount importance, however, is the need for systematically 

 arranging, labelling, and otherwise bringing out the full potentiality 

 afforded in what is already on display. As already stated, the focus 

 of attention earlier in the division's development was to give scope 

 to its offering even at the cost of thoroughness. While the results 

 are still far short of covering the whole field, their range has come 

 to be such that the Museum can well afford to turn its energies more 

 toward perfecting what has been assembled. This is the Museum's 

 responsibility to its industrial cooperators no less than to the public, 

 and if it is to go on profiting from industrial cooperation it must 

 render a favorable accounting for what it has already received. The 

 first essential is, of course, to reconstitute the division on an active 

 working basis, and the work primarily in hand is that of rounding 

 out the division's twenty exhibits and providing for their effective 

 display. 



