110 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



to individual activities ; there is no community of interest in the mat- 

 ter ; the responsibility may be ignored, but it can not be delegated. In 

 the realm of industry, competition affords the incentive for meeting 

 this responsibility. The incentive, in general, has been sufficient for 

 all practical purposes, and the specific application of this principle 

 constitutes one of the chief interests in the shaping of industrial 

 enterprise. Since power is a mineral derivative, the mineral indus- 

 tries provide a logical field for comparison. Here is found scarcely 

 an instance of consequence where the raw mineral values are not con- 

 centrated to their utmost before shipment and where every available 

 refinement of procedure is not employed toward the advance elimina- 

 tion of weight. The whole field of ore dressing has grown up under 

 the incentive of this principle, not to mention the applications of 

 metallurgy in this respect. The only noteworthy exceptions occur in 

 rare connections, where competition for the placement of the end- 

 products is a negligible factor.^ 



The third principle of transportation calls for the full utilization 

 of the material hauled. American economic practice has regarded 

 this, along with the advance elimination of weight, as a matter to be 

 left to industrial determination and application. This policy is nat- 

 ural enough and, in general, works out satisfactorily, for the two 

 principles are complementary. What is usable at the manufacturing 

 end obviously determines what represents value and non-value at 

 the raw material source; conversely, the degree of separation prac- 

 ticable at the source specifies the range of material for which use is 

 to be sought. The whole epoch-marking development in the field 

 of by-product manufacture finds much of its stimulus in the effort to 

 derive returns from what would otherwise be the waste in transpor- 

 tation. But, with certain notable exceptions offered by some of the 

 large industrial combinations, there is much to be desired and little 

 to be proud of, so far as American achievement in this direction goes. 

 The superfluous transportation that results from the failure at the 

 manufacturing end to make full utilization of the whole range of 

 values held in the raw material hauled amounts to many millions of 

 tons each year. Instances are plentiful where the loss is due to a 

 blind nonrecognition of opportunity on the part of the interests 

 directly concerned. But in the main the default rests upon the in- 



^ Perhaps the most notorious example of failure on this score is afforded by anthracite 

 coal during the war-time stress, when millions of tons of waste slate were permitted to 

 accompany the outgoing shipments of coal from the mines. The same thing was essen- 

 tially true of bituminous coal during this period, only, as bituminous coal in the 

 natural state is cleaner in respect to slate than is anthracite, the relative proportion of 

 waste hauled was less in the case of soft coal. The outcome, then, should be accredited 

 more to natural conditions than to lack of enterprise in this direction on the part of the 

 bituminous producers, who, in common with the anthracite producers, displayed a ready 

 response to the temporary nullification of competition as regards the placement of their 

 products. 



