29
Matanuska coal 32
Save and develop Americans 32

NOTE.

The plea for constructive policies contained in the report of the
Secretary of the Interior to the President deserves a hearing also by
the engineers and business men who are developing the power resources of
the country. The largest conservation for the future can come only
through the wisest engineering of the present.

The conditions under which the utilization of natural resources is
demanded are outlined by Secretary Lane, and it will be noted that the
program recommended calls for the cooperation of engineer and
legislator. To bring this power inventory to the attention of the men
who furnish the Nation with its coal and oil and electricity, this
extract from the administrative report of the Secretary of the Interior
is reprinted as a bulletin of the United States Geological Survey.

CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING[1]

By FRANKLIN K. LANE.

In an age of machinery the measure of a people's industrial capacity
seems to be surely fixed by its motive power possibilities. Civilized
nations regard an adequate fuel supply as the very foundation of
national prosperity--indeed, almost as the very foundation of national
possibility. I am convinced that there will be a reaction against the
intense industrialism of the present, but as it must be agreed that the
race for industrial supremacy is on between the nations of the world,
America may well take stock of her own power possibilities and concern
herself more actively with their development and wisest use.

THE COAL STRIKE.

The coal strike has brought concretely before us the disturbing fact
that modern society is so involved that we live virtually by unanimous
consent. Let less than one-half of 1 per cent of our population quit
their work of digging coal and we are threatened with the combined
horrors of pestilence and famine.

It did not take many hours after it was realized that the coal miners
were in earnest for the American imagination to conceive what might be
the state of the country in perhaps another 30 days. Industries closed,
railroads stopped, streets dark, food cut off, houses freezing, idle men
by the million hungry and in the dark--this was the picture, and not a
very pleasant one to contemplate. There was an immediate demand for
facts.

How much coal is normally mined in this country?

B