14 BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
to individual activities ; there is no community of interest in the mat- 
ter ; the responsibility may be ignored, but it can not be delegated. In 
the realm of industry, competition affords the incentive for meeting 
this responsibility. The incentive, in general, has been sufficient for 
all practical purposes, and the specific application of this principle 
constitutes one of the chief interests in the shaping of industrial 
enterprise. Since power is a mineral derivative, the mineral indus- 
tries provide a logical field for comparison. Here is found scarcely 
an instance of consequence where the raw mineral values are not con- 
centrated to their utmost before shipment and where every available 
refinement of procedure is not employed toward the advance elimina- 
tion of weight. The whole field of ore dressing has grown up under 
the incentive of this principle, not to mention the applications of 
metallurgy in this respect. The only noteworthy exceptions occur in 
rare connections, where competition for the placement of the end- 
products is a negligible factor . 1 
The third principle of transportation calls for the full utilization 
of the material hauled. American economic practice has regarded 
this, along with the advance elimination of weight, as a matter to be 
left to industrial determination and application. This policy is nat- 
ural enough and, in general, works out satisfactorily, for the two 
principles are complementary. What is usable at the manufacturing 
end obviously determines what represents value and non-value at 
the raw material source; conversely, the degree of separation prac- 
ticable at the source specifies the range of material for which use is 
to be sought. The whole epoch-marking development in the field 
of by-product manufacture finds much of its stimulus in the effort to 
derive returns from what would otherwise be the waste in transpor- 
tation. But, with certain notable exceptions offered by some of the 
large industrial combinations, there is much to be desired and little 
to be proud of, so far as American achievement in this direction goes. 
The superfluous transportation that results from the failure at the 
manufacturing end to make full utilization of the whole range of 
values held in the raw material hauled amounts to many millions of 
tons each year. Instances are plentiful where the loss is due to a 
blind nonrecognition of opportunity on the part of the interests 
directly concerned. But in the main the default rests upon the in- 
1 Perhaps the most notorious example of failure on this score is afforded by anthracite 
coal during the past season, when millions of tons of waste slate were permitted to 
accompany the outgoing shipments of coal from the mines. The same thing was essen- 
tially true of bituminous coal during the past winter, only, as bituminous coal in the 
natural state is cleaner in respect to slate than is anthracite, the relative proportion of 
waste hauled was less in the case of soft coal. The outcome, then, should be accredited 
more to natural conditions than to lack of enterprise in this direction on the part of the 
bituminous producers, who, in common with the anthracite producers, displayed a ready 
response to the temporary nullification of competition as regards the placement of their 
products. 
