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



activities now being carried on in behalf of the country by the Food 

 Administration and the Emergency Fleet Corporation. 



But whatever the outcome of the railway issue — or, more broadly, 

 •the transportation issue, from which the power problem is insepa- 

 rate — this country need not wait upon the eventuality before taking 

 action. Just as the railroads are not idle during the period pending 

 their final disposition, so the matter of energy transmission should 

 not be held in abeyance until the question of control is settled. On 

 the contrary, the establishment of such a project would require a 

 preliminary period of planning and investigation, including a sur- 

 vey of the coal and water-power resources of the country with refer- 

 ence to the demand for power, and there is no apparent reason why 

 this initial activity could not be engaged in at once. In view of the 

 importance of the isiue, this is not a matter to be referred to one 

 side as an incidental piece of work, but belongs properly as a feature 

 in the emergency activities of the day. 



NATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL OPPORTUNITY. 



Power and raw materials constitute the foundations of industry. 

 Capital, labor, markets, and other elements enter into the structure, 

 but they do not lie at the base. Neither power resources nor raw 

 materials are uniformly available; both tend to be provincial in 

 occurrence; but since industrial power is dominantly drawn from 

 coal, while raw materials are derived from a thousand sources of 

 organic and mineral origin, the aggregate availability is far more 

 restricted in the case of coal. In other words, any given section of 

 the country is almost invariably provided with raw material of some 

 kind, while under the present regime only those sections contiguous 

 to rich coal fields are amply provided with power.^ The geographical 

 and political consequences of the localized occurrence of coal and of 

 concentrated types of raw materials^ are obvious and well known. 

 The inequalities of opportunity conditioned by these matters have 

 always been bones of contention, from the aboriginal strife over de- 

 posits of salt and flint down to the action which resulted in the con- 

 quest of an iron-bearing province and contributed prominently to the 

 recent epoch-making conflict. 



Discord from this source is as old as human history and nations 

 have evolved with the placement of their boundaries strongly influ- 

 enced by concentrations of resource opportunity. The North Ameri- 

 can Continent, however, provides a notable exception to the rule. 

 Its vast area was explored and appropriated before its resource 

 potentialities were recognized, and hence its various sections came 



> On the r'aciflc slope and in the Southwest oil takes the place of coal In this respect. 

 ^ The organic raw materials are less significant in this respect than mineral resources, 

 since the former are reproducable and not so exclusively focussed at specific points. 



