tunity to develop
their ideas.

The yearly products of the mines of the United States are now valued at
more than $2,000,000,000. Sixty-five car-loads of freight out of every
hundred carried by our railroads are made up of mineral products. More
than a million men are employed at the mines, and more than twice that
number in handling and transporting mine products.

Of every one hundred tons of coal mined in the whole world, the United
States produces forty-three tons. We supply forty-five tons out of every
hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver,
thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eight tons of the zinc, about
fifty-five tons of the copper, and sixty-three tons of the petroleum
consumed by all civilized countries.

This would be a cause for great national pride if we did not need also
to consider the shameful fact that our wastes or losses in the mining,
handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than
$1,500,000 per day, or, for the year, the gigantic sum of $547,500,000.
That is, more than one-fourth of the entire output is wasted!

Of all our minerals, the fuels which supply heat, light, and power for
domestic and manufacturing purposes, are the most necessary and
important. Other materials can not be manufactured without their aid.
Almost every particular of modern life would be changed if we no longer
had plenty of fuel. Its use means its immediate and complete
destruction, which is true of no other resource, and the use of fuels is
increasing and will increase so rapidly that their conservation is
becoming a serious problem.

The principal fuels are coal, gas, oil, peat, alcohol, and wood, and of
these, coal is at present by far the most important. The first record of
coal mined in this country was in 1814, when twenty-two tons of
anthracite, or hard coal, were mined in Pennsylvania. An increasing
amount was mined each year, but until 1821 the production was less than
five hundred tons per year. In 1822 the production advanced to nearly
60,000 tons, and since that time has increased by leaps and bounds.

During the seventy-five years from 1820 to 1895, nearly 4,000,000,000
tons were mined by methods so wasteful that 6,000,000,000 tons were
destroyed or allowed to remain in the ground so that it could never be
recovered. Within the next ten years as much was produced as in the
entire seventy-five preceding years, and in this period 3,000,000,000
tons wer