302 PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



the Survey, and in 191 1 the Bureau of Mines was created re- 

 heving the Survey of certain technologic duties. 



It is a matter of pride to all Americans that the United 

 States Geological Survey now leads the nations in the quality 

 of its topographic maps ; but it is unfortunate that this work 

 does not proceed more rapidly. If the rate of the last twenty- 

 five years continues, nearly a century will pass before the map 

 of our national area is completed. The general efficiency of its 

 organization is also the envy of foreign workers. With us, as a 

 general rule, politics, militarism, and geology mutually observe 

 a decorous neutrality. ^ 



Progress in Economic Geology. In the early days of our 

 state and federal surveys, the chief reason for their expenditure 

 of public money was the securing of returns through the develop- 

 ment of our mineral resources. The results secured did not 

 always satisfy the public. Consequently individuals and com- 

 panies supported their own investigations. Later the surveys 

 began to give more attention to economic minerals. The federal 

 survey has become the chief authority on the mining and reduc- 

 tion of ores. Evidence of this leadership, is the fact that private 

 corporations are drawing from the federal survey many of their 

 highest salaried investigators. 



The vastness of our mineral resources and the ease with 

 which they are turned into wealth has .encouraged careless and 

 partial development. This falling short of possible accomplish- 

 ment is keenly brought to our attention at the present time when 

 the end results of certain hydrocarbon by-products, i. e., dyes, 

 cannot be procured because Germany alone has carried such in- 

 vestigations to the highest industrial use. The same deficiency 

 of development by Americans is also illustrated in the former 

 exportation of radium minerals and other valuable ores which 

 we preferred to sell raw. The present exigency in reference to 

 dyes has aroused Americans, and should lead to a greater in- 

 dustrial independence; and the federal governraent. in coopera- 

 tion with the American Radium Institute, an organization en- 

 dowed for cancer investigation, is already successfully treating 

 radium minerals and isolating the required radium salt. A 



