CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES. 
By JAMES Doucuas, New York, N. Y. 
(New Haven meeting, February, 1909.) 
In discussing the waste upon which hinges, or is supposed to hinge, 
so largely the preservation of our national resources, the conclusions 
reached would be more reliable if actual experience were consulted, 
and fewer deductions were drawn from general statements, which are 
often the product of the imagination. 
It can not be questioned that the value of by-products has not been 
sufficiently appreciated by us, and that our tardiness in recovering 
the useful ingredients of the escaping gas of our coke ovens is one of 
the most glaring instances of shortcoming in that direction. And yet 
even for that sin there is some palliation in the immature condition of 
affiliated industries. I presume that it is admitted without argument 
that, except under very exceptional conditions, all the elements can 
not be recovered from most of the ores or natural products which we 
treat. While it is a shame that the by-products from our coke ovens 
should be dissipated, Edward W. Parker’s report to the United States 
Geological Survey for 1906 ¥ supplies a fairly good excuse in justifica- 
tion of this appalling waste. He says (pp. 773 to 774) : 
What has been already commented on in previous reports about the slowness 
of manufacturers to change from the better known but wasteful beehive practice 
to the by-product recovery method of coke manufacture is particularly empha- 
sized in the statistics presented in this chapter. For it would appear from the 
table following that the construction of by-product ovens had about come to a 
standstill, especially when the records for the preceding five years are taken into 
consideration. At the close of 1901, when there were only 1,165 by-product 
ovens completed in the United States, there were 1,533 in course of construction, 
498 of which were completed during the following year. At the close of 1902, 
1,846 retort ovens were building, 298 of which were added to the completed 
plants in 1903. At the close of 1903, 1,885 new ovens were building and 954 of 
¢ Reprinted by permission from Bulletin of the American Institute of Mining 
~ Engineers, New York, No. 29, May, 1909, pp. 439-451; also in Transactions of 
American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1909, with discussion thereon. 
> Mineral Resources of the United States for 1906, U. S. Geological Survey 
(Washington, 1907). 
317 
