1 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



minerals, popularly accorded great importance, are of distinctly minor 

 significance in their effects on national evolution and strength, and 

 especially since many mineral supplies must be considered as more or 

 less temporary. Gold and silver must be classed among the mineral 

 resources of lesser importance, whatever the merits of their relations 

 to national currency systems, for the reason that they serve man's 

 needs but little when compared with iron, copper or even humble clay 

 products, and consequently their effect on national evolution has been 

 correspondingly less. Gold and silver, it is true, induce men to live 

 where they otherwise would not be found in any large numbers, as in 

 the cold wastes of Alaska and the desert of Australia, but such popu- 

 lations are rarely important or stable. Gold and silver, moreover, when 

 given in exchange, may help to buy necessities for a nation, but all the 

 world's annual output of gold would barely pay for the raw cotton 

 purchased from this country yearly. A nation like Germany, for 

 example, poverty-stricken in its gold and silver deposits, has advanced 

 greatly in every respect in the last forty years despite its necessity of 

 buying food, during the same time that a country like Australia, one 

 of the leading gold localities of the world, has had but unimportant 

 progress. In practically no nation has the possession of the so-called 

 precious metals been a leading, or permanent, determining factor in 

 development. 



On the other hand, the use of stone and clay products in providing 

 shelter, and the use of clay or the baser metal products in providing 

 utensils, tools and the like, have lifted a burden from the soil and 

 allowed more of it to be devoted to the production of the materials of 

 food and clothing. They have also at the same time, through their 

 application in machinery, made it possible to produce food and clothing 

 on a far greater scale. 



The existing scale of dependence on mineral supplies, however, im- 

 plies a rate of consumption likely to exhaust any but the richest or 

 most extensive accumulations at no very distant date, considered in 

 terms of historical periods. Hence, once more it appears that restricted 

 area and their limited natural opportunities are of critical significance 

 in the evolution of nations. For such areas as Britain and Germany, 

 already populated to the limit of soil capacity, with little prospect of 

 expanding their power resources, and not over-stocked with supplies 

 of the minerals which are essential to so many branches of industry, 

 the future holds little or no prospect for further sound national growth. 

 Such nations are to be regarded as having reached practically the 

 culminating point in their evolution, with their future likely to be 

 marked by the gradual adjustment of economic conditions to the perma- 

 nent opportunities for supporting a population. 



Conclusions. — It appears, therefore, that three general conclusions 



