THE PRACTICAL DEVELOPMENT OF OUR RESOURCES.
resources in coal and iron are unlimited. Both in quantity and quality they are superior to all competition. The rest of the world combined will not compare with our single country in the one nor the other. We possess thirty-four times the quantity of coal and iron possessed by England, and perhaps double as much as that possessed by all other portions of the earth. These resources are availably located; they are in proximity with the widest plains and richest soils known to man. They are developed by ocean-like lakes, or magnificent rivers, and are, or will be, traversed by railroads from ocean to ocean. Their value is incalculable, their extent boundless, their quantity immeasurable, and their richness unequalled. The wealth they represent cannot be told in figures. The dynamic power they intrinsically possess is beyond computation. They offer us the control of the world,—its wealth, power, and destinies. We may profit by the power thus offered us, and benefit mankind, or we may ruin ourselves, and entail greater misery on the poor and oppressed. We may multiply and scatter these bountiful provisions of Providence; we may ignorantly reject them, or basely, wantonly, squander them. On our intelligence, prudence, and industry will depend our welfare and the profit we may derive from the magnificent resources at our command.
" Knowledge is power,"—notwithstanding the doubtful shaking of heads among mere "book-worms," or the students of the "dead languages,"—that knowledge which "teaches us to pierce the bowels of the earth and bring forth from the caves of the mountains metals which give strength to our hands, and subject all nature to our use and pleasure."
That knowledge is power which enables us to multiply our productiveness, to sub stitute the iron limb and rib and wheel for human thews,—to increase our strength a hundredfold, and exchange our thoughts, our labor, and our productions, so as to profit most by the diversity of our wealth, and diffuse that wealth through the community.
We did not and do not intend to inflict our readers with a lecture on Political Economy; but, having displayed and illustrated the magnitude of our mineral resources, it is now proper and appropriate to illustrate their practical development, and the ways and means of making them available to our domestic industry and our political economy.
We will try to be concise and practical. We will not treat the subject scientifically, because older and wiser heads than ours have been confused over the subject. Adam Smith and the English have been trying to teach us for the last hundred years, by science, metaphysics, and coercion, that it is profitable for us to sell them "rabbit-skins at sixpence, and buy back their tails at a shilling." The policy of England has been wise, but selfish; profitable, but oppressive. She has grown rich by keeping the world poor. We do not advocate her policy; but, by showing how she acquired wealth, power, and influence, though circumscribed, limited, and insignificant in resources when compared with ours, we may best illustrate the practical development of our fields of coal and mountains of ore.