In the development of mineral resources and in manufactures, higher education is paying even larger proportionate returns than in agriculture. Practically the entire $2,000,000,000 yearly mineral production of the United States is directly due to a few chemical and electrical processes which were worked out by highly educated scientists. For example, the cyanide process of extracting gold, worked out in the laboratory in 1880 by McArthur and Forrest, is responsible for fully one-third of the world’s gold production, making possible the five million annual production of the Homestake mine in North Dakota and the one hundred and forty-five million of South Africa, and many other similar cases. The Elkinton electrolytic process of refining copper is in the same way used now in producing 700,000,000 pounds of copper annually in the United States. The Bessemer and the open-hearth processes of producing steel, by which nearly all of our 23,000,000 tons are produced annually, are due to the scientific researches of Sir Henry Bessemer, of Thomas and Gilchrist, and of Siemens. Birmingham, Pittsburg, and a host of wealthy cities could never have come into being but for these discoveries. James Gayley’s discovery taught the practical steelworkers how they could save one-third of their coke and at the same time increase the output of their furnaces by a new process of extracting the moisture from the blast. This alone means the saving from now on of 10,000,000 tons of coal annually in the United States.—New York Evening Post.
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DISCOVERY, FORTUNATE
“Here’s the last quarter I’ve got in the world. Give me some oysters, and go as far as you like,” was the combination of announcement and request with which John Olson, a sailor employed on the Scandinavian-American Line, greeted William Gau, proprietor of a market on Washington Street, Hoboken, as he entered that establishment.
Mr. Gau proceeded to open oysters. The sailor looked hungry, so he made haste.
As the third oyster was pried apart Mr. Gau uttered an exclamation. There was a big pearl. “Well, that’s the best luck I’ve had in a long time,” he observed. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
“Wait a minute,” piped up Olson. “Didn’t I buy the oysters, and didn’t you take the money? My oyster, my pearl. Hand ’er over.”
The oysterman protested, but the sailor argued so convincingly that Mr. Gau finally acquiesced. They journeyed at once to a jeweler, who appraised the jewel at $200, and threw in an exclamation of admiration upon its white color for good measure. It weighs about three carats.
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DISCRETION