MINERAL INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES— COAL PRODUCTS. 15 
itself in the branching out of the opportunities open to industrial 
procedure. Twenty-five years ago a raw resource commonly lent 
itself to characterization as a commodity plus impurities ; but to-day 
it offers instead a composite of ingredients, some recoverable to ad- 
vantage under existing conditions, others not open to profitable 
recovery, but all possessing definite individual properties, open to 
employment in meeting the widening needs of civilized man. The 
term “ waste ” employed in designating the discards from industrial 
procedure is more than a name ; it is a highly significant characteriza- 
tion. A very large numerical percentage, including even the more 
important commodities in current use, are of by-way derivation ; and 
the rate at which their numbers increase marks the industrial prog- 
ress of a people, for therein lie the greatest of all potentialities, not 
only for practicable resource conservation but for all-round economic 
efficiency as well. 
The results of this broader conception find their expression in the 
extended application of methods for the recovery of these so-called 
by-products as soon as the requisite demand is created. In some in- 
stances a given by-product is recoverable by itself independently of 
its associates, but, in the nature of things, it more frequently happens 
that a whole series of by-products are linked together and they must 
find place for development as a group or remain as a group amongst 
the industrial outcasts, discarded under the classification of waste. 
Each of these groups, moreover, is inseparably connected with other 
similar ones, both providing ingredients essential to the others and 
dependent in turn upon the ingredients the others provide. Thus, 
from offering so many simple, direct, individually distinct lines of 
procedure, the conversion of a country’s raw resources has come to 
constitute a vast industrial labyrinth of ramifying, interconnecting, 
and interdependent chemical procedures, the whole constituting the 
industrial fabric of the country, and, incidentally, the basis for what 
the individual has of material comfort and prosperity. The channels 
do not follow chance directions at random; in so far as they are 
opened up, they follow courses mapped far in advance by chemical 
research. Just in proportion as the opening up and maintenance of 
these channels of interdependence is provided for in accordance with 
the advances of chemical research, efficiency, conservation, and sta- 
bility are assured to industrial development; and, conversely, just in 
the proportion that the necessary provisions are not looked to con- 
sistently as an obligation of fundamental importance to national 
existence, inefficiency, wastefulness, instability, and subservience are 
bound to remain characteristics in the industrial life of a country. 
America offers no exception. 
Public opinion has of late been disposed to manifest a special 
degree of interest in speculating on the stability of the current indus- 
