Am*May r'i£oarm' }  Conservation  and  Chemical  Engineer.  233 
loss  or  waste  sustained  through  coal  left  in  the  mines  in  conducting 
mining  operations  amounts  to  50  per  cent,  of  the  quantity  produced 
and  marketed."  Worse  than  this,  when  the  Anthracite  Coal  Waste 
Commission  made  its  report  in  1893  tney  estimated  that  "  for  every 
ton  produced  one  and  a  half  tons  were  lost." 
One  of  our  most  valuable  gifts  of  nature  is  the  natural  gas,  which 
is  associated  more  or  less  directly  with  petroleum,  It  is  a  fuel  of 
the  greatest  value,  being  nearly  pure  hydrocarbon  in  its  composition. 
Yet  we  find  in  the  same  Bulletin  of  the  Geological  Survey  before 
referred  to  the  following:  "  As  to  the  amount  of  natural  gas  which 
is  being  wasted  daily,  no  accurate  statistics  have  been  attempted 
and  the  judgment  of  Dr.  I.  C.  White,  State  Geologist  of  West 
Virginia,  may  well  be  accepted  to  the  effect  that  no  less  than  1,000,- 
000,000  cubic  feet  of  gas  are  wasted  every  twenty-four  hours. 
Of  this,  undoubtedly  the  larger  part  is  wasted  in  the  production  of 
oil."  This  waste,  Dr.  Day  of  the  Geological  Survey  says,  "  practi- 
cally equals  the  annual  consumption  of  natural  gas  reported  for  1907. 
This  waste  should  furnish  light  for  half  the  urban  population  of  the 
United  States." 
The  exploitation  of  our  once  great  timber  resources  and  the 
resulting  denudation  of  great  tracts  of  land  and  the  evils  to  the 
soil  which  have  followed  in  the  train  of  this  ruthless  waste  have 
been  so  graphically  portrayed  by  the  U.  S.  Forestry  Bureau  and 
others  recently  that  I  need  not  more  than  allude  to  this  case  of 
reckless  extravagance. 
It  is  not  my  intention,  however,  to  take  up  this  evening  the 
question  of  the  conservation  of  our  natural  resources  and  the  abso- 
lute need  thereof,  as  so  ably  developed  in  recent  reports  of  the 
"  National  Conservation  Commission,"  the  Forestry  Bureau,  and 
other  official  publications,  nor  yet  the  part  played  by  the  chemist 
in  this  conservation  of  natural  resources  which  has  been  so  ably 
reviewed  by  Dr.  Bogert  in  his  recent  Presidential  address  before 
the  American  Chemical  Society. 
What  I  would  like  to  do  is  to  indicate  that  these  same  three 
stages  of  exploration  or  discovery,  exploitation  or  effort  at  produc- 
tion, and  finally  conservation,  are  to  be  seen  in  the  history  of  every 
great  chemical  industry,  and  to  point  out,  that,  while  it  is  the  part 
of  the  chemical  engineer  to  aid  in  the  exploitation  step,  what  is  still 
more  important  is  his  part  in  counselling  and  indicating  how  the 
wholesome  influence  of  conservation  can  be  applied  so  as  to  broaden 
