32 BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



minerals, which, though relatively small in quantity, are none the less 

 essential links in the chain of industrial operations. Even if these two 

 could ' pool ' their resources they would still be compelled to obtain from 

 other nations the residual few. For it is important to remember that, 

 unlike organic substance, it is not possible to make synthetic metals, and 

 it never will be ; it is not even possible to make artificial substitutes for 

 many essential minerals that are used as such and not merely for their 

 metallic constituents. There is no other mineral and no artificial substance 

 for instance that can combine the qualities which give to the mineral 

 mica its position of importance in the Arts — its fissility in thin sheets, its 

 transparency to light and opacity to heat rays, its stability at high 

 temperatures, its toughness and the degree of its insulating properties. 

 There will never be a synthetic mica. 



Thus the international exchange of minerals is an inevitable con- 

 sequence of our new civilisation ; and the cry for freedom of movement, 

 for the ' open door ' and for equal opportunity for development comes 

 into conflict with the unqualified formula of ' self-determination.' What- 

 ever may have been possible before the industrial revolution, when the 

 mineral industry merely contributed to the simple wants of agriculture, 

 when most national units were self-contained, the formula of ' self- 

 determination ' has come too late in the World's history to do good without 

 a more than consequent amount of harm. We cannot even live now 

 without the free interchange of our minerals for those of other nations ; 

 in the name of civilisation we dare not go to war. 



There is one more group of fundamental data to recall before we are 

 in a position to point the practical lessons which follow from the newly 

 established and prospective mineral situation. I have already referred to 

 the way in which economic considerations tend, through large-scale produc- 

 tion, to restrict operations to a limited number of specially favoured areas. 

 There was a time within my memory when the primitive lohar, a survival 

 of the aboriginal inhabitants of India, could be found in every province, 

 nearly every district. He collected the granular mineral from the weathered 

 outcrops of relatively lean iron-ore bodies, and, by using charcoal as a fuel, 

 turned out blooms of malleable iron in a miniature clay furnace, using a 

 pair of goat skins to produce the necessary blast. These primitive 

 workers also produced small ingots of steel by the carbonisation of wrought 

 iron in clay crucibles many centuries before the same process made 

 Sheffield famous. 



But with the large-scale production of steel in western countries, 



