COAL PRODUCTS: AN OBJECT LESSON IN EESOTJBCE 
ADMINISTRATION. 1 
By Chester G. Gilbert, 
Curator of Mineral Technology, United States National Museum . 
Civilization’s foremost function is the nourishment of human life 
and manufacture is the expression of man’s effort toward providing 
the broadened means toward this end. The mere vision of smoke 
and grime and the grinding away of human lives in the purely selfish 
search for material profit is superficial. The deeper significance of 
manufacturing industry is that of providing the essentials for multi- 
plying humanity, and to make the most of potentialities toward man- 
ufacture is not merely to set up a goal of self-aggrandizement ; it is 
one of the profoundest obligations of a people in behalf of posterity, 
even in behalf of the world at large to-day. If this is true of industrial 
enterprise as a whole in its relationship to national responsibilities, it 
applies with altogether distinctive emphasis to the activities involv- 
ing a country’s coal resources. Mankind is dependent upon coal in the 
home ; but more than that, coal contributes the muscle and sinew for 
industry whereby practically every other material necessity of life is 
rendered available to use ; and even in addition to being the fuel de- 
pendency of the age, it is capable of being made to yield an almost 
indefinite number of other necessities without sacrifice from the 
fuel element. 
Coal in short is the nucleus around which the material growth of 
civilization builds. Thus an explanation opens up to the fact that 
Europe is the center of present-day civilization. Coming into ex- 
istence there, the civilization of the present era found, when the 
need developed, ready at hand in the form of adequate coal resources, 
the means toward the evolution of its destiny. Thus the series of 
cubes shown on plate 3, sized proportionately to the coal resources 
of the various continents, is highly suggestive with reference to the 
future indicated for the maturing aspects of this civilization in its 
spread toward world inclusiveness. One sees a vast industrial re- 
habilitation in Asia, while the responsibilities of South America and 
Africa are indicated as lying essentially in the provision of raw 
1 Interpretation of the Coal Products Exhibit in the U. S. National Museum. 
3 
