94 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



been debatable and debated. Too often and too much in representa- 

 tive public opinion is the existence of the official geological organi- 

 zation justified by certain perfectly obvious considerations which 

 subtend a large angle in the public consciousness. Gold and silver, 

 iron and coal, petroleum and natural gas, and terms like these are 

 made too often to set forth a reasonable vindication of official 

 geology. But you and I may well insist that such factors as these 

 reckoned in terms of the wealth of the state are not the justification 

 of official geological research. We may as well draw back the veil 

 — private enterprise will pretty effectively take care of such things 

 as these without much help from us. Against such factors which 

 we may term the obvious sources of wealth must be weighed the 

 more recondite products which have seldom entered into the esti- 

 mate of the law-making body or the public knowledge. 



It is in these that many of our states are richest, not in those 

 obvious factors. In a state like this, which I cite not for com- 

 parison but for illustration, the unexploited iron ore would seem to 

 be well over a billion tons, while the actual value of the annual 

 product of iron is not more than one-tenth that of the annual output 

 from thirty or more different mineral products. And we can not 

 even begin to estimate for our state the vast reserves in products 

 undeveloped or conceive the now unknown applications to industry 

 and the arts which our commonest geological compounds are com- 

 petent to supply in response to the demands of the state. 



I can see in such a state or in a union of states and governments 

 such as ours, the demand for every human need, today actual and 

 tomorrow possible, which is in any way dependent on the rocks of 

 the earth, fully met here without reliance on any outside source. 

 And it is of eminent importance that the state take counsel with 

 itself to magnify such independence, at the sacrifice of its com- 

 mercial ease, for dependence in commerce means no less than does 

 dependence in the scheme of nature, that is, degeneration or stag- 

 nation. 



I counsel therefore, you who are official servants of the state, to 

 urge, within your power, upon the state this primary obligation : to 

 take from no other what it can itself as well produce from its own 

 stores. Insist, as the right is in you, that the state shall take account 

 of the knowledge you possess for the full but conservative develop- 

 ment of its own resources, and neglect no occasion to enforce the 

 claims of the man who knows best, to precedence in these councils 

 of the states. 



