326 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
mines when Arthur S. Dwight was manager; and Doctor Ricketts 
and Mr. Kirk have extended the use of the methods and applied them 
so successfully that less than half the timber is used per ton of ore 
extracted to-day than was buried in the mine three years ago. The 
following data, kindly supplied by Doctor Ricketts, represent the 
saving which is going on at Cananea, and in many mines where the 
same method is applicable: 
Timber consumed per ton (wet) of ore produced at Cananea, Mexico. 
‘ Tons ore| Feet tim- | Feet per 
Period. mined. | ber used. ton. 
ATISUSts e190) LO) AU AV TOG OUG =o asereiaicteteteelels aietetetete/=iminieisiemsietaietatsiatersts 463,039 | 10,774, 342 23. 27 
HMebriary leet 90 tO duliyn sl 907) See. eraicieleeieialeiceletatelcieeteissieteterrereistcteterieee 554,473 | 8, 268, 682 14. 95 
ATS USt T1908 tO) SEPLEIMDET 30; 1 S08 Faint claleratalateinia eteteioiainisielsialeiatete sistas 97,510 | 1,091, 837 11.30 
While it would be presumptuous to pretend that, as a people, we 
are economical, and to deny that, under modern corporate control 
of large national resources, the temptation, under necessity of mak- 
ing large profits, is not betimes stronger than the appeals which 
conscience makes to subordinate personal gain to the national wel- 
fare, I am sure that neither our largest mining and metallurgical 
companies nor ourselves, as their working agents, are recklessly 
indifferent to the preservation of those very materials upon which 
the wealth of the corporations and our own salaries depend. No 
large corporation would to-day ‘use an old boiler and slide-valve 
engine with a consumption of 6 pounds of fuel per horsepower hour 
in preference to a triple-expansion, cut-off engine which will do 
the same work with 1.5 pounds per horsepower hour, and so on 
through the whole gamut of operations which these large corpora- 
tions conduct and which we, as their managers, advise them to adopt, 
because we believe them to be the best and most economical methods. 
While public policy may not be the prime motive for saving, every 
thinking man in a large institution, from the manager downward, 
takes a pride in knowing that he is saving and feels a sense of shame 
when he is conscious of wasting. And in economic life—I do not 
speak of social and domestic life—the rules against waste are be- 
coming more and more rigid and are better enforced. The public 
outcry, therefore, against the large corporations for wasting the 
natural resources of the nation is unjust, in so far as it fails to 
recognize what they have done and are doing in the direction of con- 
servation, and inasmuch as it gives the working staff of these great 
corporations so little credit for the marvelous progress the world 
has made through their instrumentality. They have saved where 
formerly, through ignorance and inexperience, their predecessors 
