Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/286

282 and developed notable deposits of the metals, have invariably taken a prominent position among their contemporaries, and have reached a higher physical and intellectual plane than those dependent alone upon agriculture or on commerce. Food crops quickly disappear. Fabric crops are worn out in a year or two. Fuel crops burn up about as quickly as they come into the market. There must be an annual harvest of these or trouble ensues. Commerce is the science of the distribution of crops, and is dependent on them for its existence. The various metal crops, however, are of the nature of permanencies. They go into use and not into consumption, and a very considerable part of each year's addition to the world's stock become articles or structures that are capable of earning interest for their owners. Probably in this lies the explanation of the prosperity that invariably results from an active metallic production. These substances can not be eaten up like wheat, they can not be worn out like cotton or wool, they can not be burned up like coal or lumber or tobacco. They remain and accumulate, are perhaps remelted and used yet another time, and even such parts as are apparently lost in the chemical arts, or in plating or ornamentation, are very extensively recovered from time to time. As a nation, we are producing about 35 per cent, of the world's crop of aluminum, 58 per cent, of that of copper, 23 per cent, of the gold, 33 per cent, of the lead, 43 per cent. of the iron, 26 per cent, of the mercury, 30 per cent, of the silver, and 29 per cent, of the zinc. This is a remarkable record for a community that has existed for less than a hundred and fifty years, and it means that not only are we in possession of a part of the globe that has great mineral resources, but that our form of government and the nature of our laws are such as to foster and encourage that individualism that alone permits a people to develop the best that is in them. The metal era has but just begun. The earth beneath us is a storehouse abundantly full of them. Heretofore man has been content to utilize only those things that were on the surface of the planet. We have now begun to call upon the earth for its very heart blood. Heretofore the mason and the woodworker have been almost the sole executors of the will of the architect and the artist, but now the founder and the smith are becoming his main interpreters. Substances that can be liquefied and molded, rolled and hammered and drawn into form, are taking the place of those that with painful and long effort must be chiseled and sawn. Materials that seem to be capable of taking on life, that can be made to pulsate and vibrate, that will transport energy and light and sound and other forms of force, are being substituted for inert stone and brick and mortar, wherever strenuous life exists or is to be protected. In its future evolution