SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 836 



fort, no floods of water have sufficed to 

 keep him out. 



These successes coupled with ever-ex- 

 panding markets have until recently di- 

 rected attention almost wholly toward dis- 

 covery and production. But the last ten 

 years have brought a further change. We 

 are now less concerned about new discov- 

 eries than about the maintenance of old 

 ones. "We are not altogether intent on 

 production, but are much given to forecast- 

 ing and husbanding. From being solely 

 an aid to the miner, the active worker, the 

 producer, geology has become the colleague 

 and helper of the economist, the statisti- 

 cian and the philosopher. 



Like all other changes in fundamental 

 points of view, this one has not come with 

 absolute suddenness. As far back as 1879 

 certain geologists and engineers began to 

 raise and discuss the question of the dura- 

 tion of the Pennsylvania anthracite. In 

 1894 the late Richard P. Rothwell, long the 

 able editor of the Engineering and Mining 

 Journal, gave these coal fields a future of 

 70-100 years. Thus for over thirty years 

 the question of their death has been a very 

 live one. Even earlier the future of the 

 coal-fields of Great Britain came up for 

 discussion. A parliamentary commission 

 was appointed in 1866 and reported upon 

 the question in 1871. For forty years 

 anxiety has prevailed regarding the con- 

 tinued production of our petroleum wells, 

 and naturally so. The very means of 

 production of this useful source of heat 

 and light starts a train of thought along 

 the lines of its permanence. 



Some ten years ago, the question of our 

 reserves in iron ore began to excite interest. 

 Mr. Andrew Carnegie gave most forcible 

 expression to the feeling of alarm in his 

 rectorial address in 1902, at the University 

 of St. Andrews, Scotland. Mr. Carnegie 

 was known from one end of the world 



to the other as one of our greatest iron- 

 masters and his words made a profound 

 impression. In his address he assigned us 

 only enough first-class ore to last for sixty 

 or seventy years, and only enough of the 

 inferior grades for thirty years thereafter. 

 "We all trembled for some years with the 

 prospect of seeing our greatest industry in 

 the production of metal, disappearing 

 within a century. Many thoughtful people 

 began to wonder what would become of us 

 with its extinction. 



I have thought, therefore, that it might 

 be not without interest if we take up this 

 evening the more important of our metals 

 and pass in review some of the funda- 

 mental facts of their production, the yield 

 of their ores, the foreign sources, the fu- 

 ture probabilities and the effect upon the 

 civilization of our own and other lands 

 which would result from their curtailment. 

 In a word, we may for a time discuss geol- 

 ogy and economies. 



The iron industry in the United States 

 took its rise in the colonies along the Atlan- 

 tic seaboard — and at the outset was based 

 upon the magnetic ores and brown hema- 

 tites there occurring. For one hundred 

 and fifty years its growth was slow. In 

 the decade of the forties and fifties of the 

 past century it had spread to the Adiron- 

 dacks and in the fifties began its develop- 

 ment in the Lake Superior region. Not 

 until after the close of the civil war and 

 the resumption of peaceful activities did 

 this great industry manifest its possibili- 

 ties. "With improved facilities of naviga- 

 tion which placed Lake Superior in easy 

 communication with the coal-producing 

 states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, the iron- 

 ore-producing states of Michigan, "Wiscon- 

 sin, and later Minnesota, came rapidly into 

 prominence. In somewhat slower growth 

 Alabama, during the seventies and eighties 

 gathered headway. At present four fifths 



