Excerpt from Political and Commercial Geology and the World's Mineral Resources: A Series of Studies by Specialists The purpose of the accompanying series of studies is to shed light upon the vast importance of commercial control of raw materials by different powers, or by the citizens of those powers, through invested capital. The question of domestic and foreign governmental policies of the United States is closely involved. It appeared to many of us who were engaged (as all the authors of these papers were) in studying the mineral problems during the war, that our Government had never grasped the vast political significance of commercial domination, and especially of the control of mineral wealth; and that other more seasoned nations had done so, and thereby affected the interests of America and her policy very deeply, without her being aware of the circumstance. With the rapid increase of the world's population and the exploring and exploiting of the hitherto undeveloped natural resources, competition for this wealth has become and will still become keener. In past ages war, pestilence, and starvation held down the earth's population; and in the last few years all these grim spectres have returned in force, suggesting the possibility of a permanent return of the old primitive days. Nevertheless, modern science and organization, if not quenched by vast social disorders, will so safeguard life, as in recent times, that the world is in a fair way to become crowded. All of us, like Germany, yearn for our "place in the sun, '' and our share of comfort and power. Of all the fundamental necessities for this, nothing is so much in the nature of a fixed and unmultipliable quality as the metals; they constitute the basis and foundation of our modern civilization and power over man and natural forces. Other raw materials arc of vegetable or animal origin; they propagate and duplicate themselves in successive incarnations according to the law of life; they are born in some magical fashion of air and water, with a minimum of the earth, and they return their loans faithfully to air and water and earth with the passing of each generation and the dawning of a new. There is the hint of such a law of growth in the mineral kingdom, but it is so vastly slow that the evanescent animal man has no personal interest in it; for all his purposes and by all his standards of measurement it is inert, and these riches, once dug and used, will never again be available. The treasures of commercially valuable ore-deposits have been hid by nature whimsically throughout the earth, here and there, by no rule of geography or latitude, and with a great disregard of equality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.