it might have been producing those things itself, if it had only thought of it. It would have been much richer if it had done so. Wounded in its pride, this country has at last awakened to its opportunity. The story of this awakening one day will make one of the biggest chapters in America's industry. I can, now, tell only of the birth of a few ideas. I cannot clothe them in the detail of machinery and organization which must come soon. It is to go far too minutely into the

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quick when we learned from the Department of the Interior that these elements are available in quantity in this country and have been all along.

Our steel makers give the assurance that before the war is over, they will have developed the deposits which yield those elements. This will make for the real independence—and hence the greater riches of this country. This is the beginning of our home program.

Another shock to commercial and

self-contained America came when it discovered that while the tin can is the emblem of cheapness, and while tin is the foundation of some of our richest industries, we mine no tin. All of it that we have and use comes from "the other side".

other side". The supply was interrupted for a time and we were in a panic. I know of one man who went away on a vacation and returned to find himself richer by twenty-five thousand dollars because he had a stock of tin plate on which the price had risen. It was with a sensation akin to pain that we learned that we have tin here and should have been working in it years ago. To wipe out this national disgrace-this in a commercial sense-I am told that enterprising citizens of Cincinnati have said they intend to produce our tin. That will add to our riches. Surely, it will help to complete our home trade program.

These things hurt, but one of "the

connection with the thing which, with us, is almost as common as dirt. The United States produces about forty per cent of the total coal output of the world. This giant coal pile is a mine of riches. Last spring, I made a partial enumeration of the commercial products which are made from a lump of coal. When I was interrupted-after two weeks of constant work-I had counted one hundred and seventeen separate articles. All of these things we have burned-or thrown through the chimney in smoke-to get the three elementary things-light, heat, and

power.

For example, all of the aniline dyes are by-products of coal. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Cleveland belch great vats of gorgeous colors into the air daily and then send all the way to Germany to buy a supply.

I found also that creosote oil is a by-product of coal. This is used to preserve wood and adds from two hundred to five hundred per cent to its life. We buy between fifty million and sixty million gallons of it each year from Germany. This element in the coal we

So soon as these and dozens of similar facts became known, I began to get all sorts of suggestions of coal byproducts that are going to be produced in the United States. One engineer in Chicago has invented a coke oven. Besides the customary yield of coke and gas, he will reclaim creosote oil from coal. Another engineer residing in Milwaukee has worked for years to persuade the gas companies in the larger cities to put in the additional apparatus that will make the aniline dyes. He says now that his plan must at last succeed. A group of Indiana farmers have for the last year and a half been at work on a series of coke ovens. These will be erected at a city in Eastern Indiana and will-in addition to coke and gas-surrender the fertilizer which is so readily reclaimed from coal. Also, a big chemical house in New York has made even more sweeping statements as to what it intends to do. While the United States -aroused and ashamed-is doing and planning to do these big things which will renovate this industrial nation to its foundation and make it, finally, in

"She gave me an inspiration the other day. Most of our toys have come from Germany. You folks, I suppose, cannot get along without toys. There are millions just like you. Still, you cannot get toys, now that Germany is shut in by the war. I am going to organize a toy company. Tomorrow, I am going to run up to Milwaukee to hire some German workmen; they know how to do such things. The next day, I am going to Cincinnati to hire some others. I have rented a factory. I know where I can get plenty of cheap raw material."

Two weeks later, the owner of a factory which makes pottery was in Chicago.

He went home with the same idea; he is going to employ his artists in designing small animals in clay. He will make those for the holiday trade.

Meanwhile, there are moving to completion, under the impulse of present necessity, some great programs. These have been taking form for years. One

readers of TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE will recall that, a little more than a year ago, an article under the caption "Duke, Benefactor?"-a discussion of a development in the Carolinas-appeared in this magazine. Around the water-power plants of the Blue Ridge Mountains a great cotton-spinning industry was prophesied. It was intimated that this movement never could realize its possibilities until a big selling organization-one that had as much scope as its English competitors-was formed to distribute the product of these mills. When that came, it would be possible to keep the raw cotton at home and to ship the manufactured product to all the world. Because we lacked such effective selling for all mills, England was making more profit than we were off our raw cotton. England was, in fact, buying our raw cotton and was selling to us the finished cotton goods.

England, today, is fighting quite as hard to keep its hold on the cotton

market as it is to end militarism in Europe. It wants to avoid giving the United States any necessity to convert its raw cotton into the finished product to satisfy the world's need. But, But, England is being drawn more and more into the vortex in Europe. Its manufacturing business is languishing for lack of the workers who are turning soldiers. The United States, to satisfy a world need for cotton goods and to find a market for its raw cotton, is being forced to build more cotton mills. Those mills, because their local selling organizations cannot cope with the situation, are distributing their product through the big New York and Boston selling agencies. In this way, we are solidifying our cotton business and are giving to it the one thing that it needed. Incidentally, we are making a home-trade program at the same time.

This thing is bigger than it seems to be when first studied. We respond to what appears to be a simple necessity. That seems to end the incident. But, it doesn't. We are becoming a world commercial power without an effort. Cotton goods go everywhere. Selling organizations which specialize in cotton goods must keep in touch with the cotton market everywhere. They trade in China and Japan as well as in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. They do a business in South America as well as in Canada. Such expansions of the commerce of a people in any line must widen the whole trade field of that nation. Since

we are rapidly acquiring an international trade in one line, others must follow. Such things can do nothing but speed the ultimate tremendous prosperity and riches of this country.

We are, right now and in the simple things which make up the everyday life of the individual, building big and strong, a national trade structure that must prevail and grow steadily for generations to come. We are building a new foreign-trade program. We are filling out our old home-trade program of past years.

We are making a feverish dash to master South America's markets and we thus are moving to consolidate the western hemisphere into a complete commercial unit. That is a tremendous thing even to think about. At the same time, we are being forced to reach out across the Atlantic and the Pacific to supply growing and imperative needs in both directions. That is opening friendly markets to us against the time when we will need them as an outlet for the products of this hemisphere. We are playing the game big by doing only the simple thing which comes immediately to hand.

After seeing these things, I have come to this conclusion of the whole matter. From 1897 to 1907, we expanded internally as no nation on earth had ever done. From 1914 to 1924, we shall grow both at home and abroad so tremendously that the world will forget the glory of other periods while. marveling at what will have been done. in those ten years.