210 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



and of power" were directed by coal, then China, which 

 possesses 33 '3 times more of this directive force than Great 

 Britain, and had so early a start in life, should be the su- 

 preme summit of the industrial world. If this solid hydro- 

 carbon "raises up one people and casts down another," the 

 Chinaman should be raised thirty-three times and three 

 tenths higher than the Englishman; if it " makes railways 

 on land and paths on the sea," the Chinese railways should 

 be 33 '3 times longer than ours, and the tonnage of their 

 mercantile marine 33 -3 times greater. 



Every addition to our knowledge of the mineral resources 

 of other parts of the world carries us nearer and nearer to 

 the conclusion that the old idea of the superlative abund- 

 ance of the natural mineral resources of England is a delu- 

 sion. We are gradually discovering that, with the one 

 exception of tin-stone, we have but little if any more than 

 an average supply of useful ores and mineral fuel. It is a 

 carious fact, and One upon which we may profitably pon- 

 der, that the poorest and the worst iron ores that have ever 

 been commercially reduced, are those of South Staffordshire 

 and the Cleveland district, and these are the two greatest 

 iron-making centres of the world. There are no ores of 

 copper, zinc, tin, nickel, or silver in the neighborhood of 

 Birmingham, nor any golden sands upon the banks of the 

 Rea, yet this town is the hardware metropolis of the world, 

 the fatherland of gilding and plating, and is rapidly be- 

 coming supreme in the highest art of gold and silver work. 



These, and a multitude of other analogous facts, abun- 

 dantly refute the idea that the native minerals, the natural 

 fertility, the navigable rivers, or the convenient seaports, 

 deterinine the industrial and commercial supremacy of na- 

 tions. The moral forces exerted by the individual human 

 molecules are the true components which determine the 

 resulting force and direction Of national progress. It is the 

 industry and skill of our workmen, the self-denial, the en- 

 terprise, and organizing ability of our capitalists, that has 

 brought our coal so precociously to the surface and re- 

 dire*cted for human advantage the buried energies of ancient 

 sunbeams, while the fossil fuel of other lands has remained 

 inert. 



