16 BULLETIN 102, PART 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
trial expansion within the United States, once world conditions have 
again been restored to normal. With industrial life as with other 
forms, static condition is impossible short of death. The question is 
not one of whether or not American industrial activity will be able 
to hold what it has, but that of whether or not it will continue to 
expand or presently begin to lapse. The expanding coal-product 
industry is the one most frequently mentioned in this connection. 
The answer is that a coal-product industry is not the outcome of 
vacillating chance. 
The chance of current events has given rise to a special oppor- 
tunity, a most extraordinarily auspicious one, in fact, but unless or 
until the employment of scientific guidance in the commercial follow- 
ing of the trails blazed by scientific exploration becomes an ingrained 
principle in the directorship of industry, both governmentally and 
privately, American industrial progress is bound to go astray and 
fail through inefficiency when exposed once more to the test of com- 
petition against the developments from consistent scientific guidance 
abroad, excepting where, as in the past, natural advantages of re- 
source have been sufficiently great to overcome the handicap of mis- 
control. Coal-product manufacture, despite the advantage of enor- 
mous resources, has not been able to make place for itself in this latter 
category. 
The present opportunity is a passing one and one which, it is to be 
hoped, despite the advantages afforded, will not recur soon. To 
impart stability to the expansion it has given rise to, public opinion 
must recognize that what in the last anatysis is best for the industries 
engaged in converting the resources of the country into usable form, 
is also in the last analysis best for the individual, and then act accord- 
ingly. Once that realization is fully established, and no clearer 
illustration of its truth could be desired than that afforded by the 
coal-product situation, the nature of the resultant action is fore- 
ordained. It will lie in the direction of scientific control of chemical 
industries. Lack of it has been the stumblingblock for American 
enterprise in the past, and continuance along the old lines of pro- 
cedure implies a negative answer to the popular question as to 
whether expansion of the chemical industries in general, and the 
coal product one in particular, will continue toward an adequate 
realization of their enormous potentiality following the world’s 
return to normal conditions. This means the relapse to a state of 
industrial instability, inefficiency, wastefulness, and subservience, 
a calamatous prospect when the magnitude of the opportunity at 
hand is considered. Hope looks toward the establishment of a defi- 
nite economic policy giving the encouragement of an appreciative and 
understanding public support in the coordination of industrial 
development. 
o 
