| OCR Text |
Show A NEW CABINET OFFICER NEEDED. The proposition to have a mining Secretary in the Cabinet is most pertinent. Bankers andbusiness andbusi-ness men generally rate the business of the country coun-try by the price of iron. No purely agricultural country was ever great; the advance, unparalleled, during the past half century in our country has been more due to mining than to all else combined. com-bined. It was the gold and silver from the mines of the West that gave the new Vitality and powor to the country; that caused the rails to be rolled, the tracks to be stretched until American railroads rail-roads exceed in mileage all the outside world's. Those metals gave to the country the means to place its finances on a secure basis; they caused the credit of the country to take first place in the world. They were supplemented with lead and copper and a dozen other metals and minerals that the moment they are above ground represent just so much cash. Of course the immense sovereignty sov-ereignty of iron and coal as the first requisite of national power has always been conceded Of course agriculture takes precedence over everything every-thing else because men and animals must have food, but agriculture cannot make a people great. Barbarous races till the soil in a crude way, the enlightened races in a more scientific way, but it does not quicken the brains of men, what it produces pro-duces is perishable; but. money and the way the world's great industries are carried on are the tests through which a nation's power is estimated. esti-mated. Rome's decline began when her mines in Spain and Asia Minor began to fail; the tin and ' iron and "coal mines have been the salvation of ! Great Britain for years; they have kept her mer- m chant ships moving, have built her factories; enabled en-abled her in the beginning to lead the world in manufacturing and caused her to be reckoned as first among the nations, until the mineral product pro-duct of our own country gave us a right to contest con-test her claim. Since a Secretary of Agriculture was created, the benefits brought to the farmer, planter, stock and fruit grower are most wonderful; the ad vances made in cultivating the soil have been very great. The results that would follow ths creation of a mining secretary would be much greater. All the advances made over the crude mining of fifty years ago have been through individual in-dividual efforts and through individual or company com-pany expense. The discovery of how to work gold ore through the cyanide process may almost be said to have doubled the available gold of the world. That statement will be literally true fifty years hence Then the advances made In the reduction re-duction of silver ores and in mining machinery since the discovery of the Comstock forty-five years ago amount to a transformation. There arc still many knotty problems to be solved. The Government should have an agent to keep the record of the needs and the achievements in the mining world, and in all the mining districts of the United States. The Government needs this on Its own account. There is no other way through which the nation's resources and available power, in case of national disaster can be measured. The Secretary of Agriculture has given a new Impetus to farming. He has been able to demonstrate demon-strate that much land heretofore held as worthies? worth-ies? can be given fertility extraordinary. He has been able to point out the way through which pests can be destroyed and many of the diseases of animals may be arrested and stamped out. His office Is about the most useful under the Government. Govern-ment. The Secretary of Mining could in a brief time be quite as useful. Our delegates to the ' mi Mining Congress ought to be able to get an en- ' IflB dorsement from the Congress recommending the II ( BH creation of a new cabinet officer, a Secretary of Mining. II ! ' OH |
