230 J. M. CLARKE— GEOLOGY AND ORDER OF THE STATE 



increase thus the general well-being and comfort of the commonwealth. 

 The broad proposition is not debatable; the proposition in detail has 

 always been debatable and debated. Too often and too much in repre- 

 sentative public opinion is the existence of the official geological organiza- 

 tion justified by certain perfectl}'' obvious considerations wliich 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 Avealth must be weighed 

 the more recondite products which have seldom entered into the estimate 

 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 comparison 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 unknowu 

 applications to industry and the arts which our commonest geological 

 compounds are competent 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 as 

 ours, the demand for every human need, today actual and tomorrow pos- 

 sible, which is in any way dependent on the rocks of the earth, fully mot 

 here without reliance on any outside source; and it is of eminent impor- 

 tance that the State take counsel with itself to magnify such independ- 

 ence, at the sacrifice of its commercial ease, for dependence in commerce 

 means no less than does dependence in the scheme of nature, that is, 

 degeneration or stagnation. 



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

 within your power, on 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 conseivative development 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. 



