590 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



No one would smile when told that a 

 foreign army had made an unprecedented 

 number of miles in a day's march, or had 

 brought into action a gun of unrivaled 

 caliber, or built a ship of unequaled dis- 

 placement or power. These are the very 

 things on which nations pride themselves 

 as revealing their capacity, ingenuity, and 

 resourcefulness. They make for national 

 self-respect and self-confidence. 



the American's mission 



And so it is with the American. His 

 place in the scheme of things is to reveal 

 to the world what can be done in the de- 

 velopment of a new country, and every 

 crop raised, every school - house built, 

 every rail laid, every nail driven is evi- 

 dence that the work he is sent to do is 

 being done. Instead of being the petty 

 boasting of a parochial-minded provin- 

 cial, this spirit is of the very essence of 

 the highest creative quality. 



It is not a figure of speech to say that 

 every American has it in his heart that 

 he is in a small sense a discoverer ; that 

 he is joining in the revelation to the 

 world of something that it was not be- 

 fore aware of and of which it may some 

 day make use. Men work for what they 

 think worth while, and if they find their 

 joy in proving that land has coal, or will 

 raise wheat, or that a refractory ore may 

 be reduced at a practicable cost, and tell 

 about it proudly, they may be serving 

 themselves, but they are also serving the 

 world. 



The clerk in the store or the mechanic 

 in a mill may not consciously engage in 

 any enterprise which makes this appeal, 

 but when he learns that the government 

 of which he is a part has within the year 

 opened a town on the shores of the North 

 Pacific which now has nearly 3,000 in- 

 habitants, and has driven a railroad 

 nearly 40 miles inland toward the Arctic 

 Circle on its way to the coal fields of the 

 Matanuska and the gold fields of the 

 Tanana, he has a feeling that he, too, is 

 participating in the making of this new 



built under general direction of F. E. Wey- 

 mouth, supervising engineer, Idaho district, 

 with Charles H. Paul, construction engineer, 

 in direct charge, and James Munn, superin- 

 tendent of construction. Completed Novem- 

 ber, 1915, under the administration of Franklin 

 K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior." 



world. One might say that this was noth- 

 ing more than sentimental pride. There 

 is a truer and a more dignified word for 

 this quality ; it is the expression of the 

 American instinct for improvement. 



OUR IMAGINATION IS CHALLENGED BY 

 DIFFICULTY 



We have a passion for going into the 

 unknown, for answering the puzzles that 

 are put to us. Our imagination is chal- 

 lenged by difficulty. And the result has 

 been a century of growth, which in its 

 magic and in its largeness casts a spell 

 upon the mind. 



Some months since I sought to learn 

 what I could of the assets of this country 

 as they might be revealed by this depart- 

 ment, where we were in point of devel- 

 opment, and what we had with which to 

 meet the world which was teaching us 

 that war was no longer a set contest be- 

 tween more or less mobile armed- forces, 

 but an enduring contest between all the 

 life forces of the contesting parties, their 

 financial strength, their industrial organ- 

 ization and adaptability, their crop yields, 

 and their mineral resources, and that it 

 ultimately comes to a test of the very 

 genius of the peoples involved. For to 

 mobilize an army, even a great army, is 

 now no more than an idle evidence of a 

 single form of strength if behind this 

 army the nation is not organized. 



WE CAN BUILD A BATTLESHIP ENTIRELY 

 FROM OUR OWN PRODUCTS 



An army is no longer merely so many 

 rifles and men, cartridges and horses ; 

 but chemists and inventors, mines and 

 farms, automobiles and roads, airships 

 and gasoline, barbed wire and turning 

 lathes, railroads and weather prophets — 

 indeed, the complete machinery of an in- 

 dustrial nation's life. And out of the re- 

 ports then made these facts stand out : 



With the exception of one or two 

 minor minerals, the United States pro- 

 duces every mineral that is needed in in- 

 dustry; and this can be said of no other 

 country. We produce 66 per cent of the 

 world's output of petroleum, 60 per cent 

 of its copper, 40 per cent of its coal and 

 iron, and 32 per cent of its lead and zinc. 

 Tin in small quantities is produced in 

 Alaska and platinum in Oregon, Nevada, 



