Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - ISGS New Mineral Lab [PAGE 7]

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EASTERN RESEARCH LABORATORIES

Three new research laboratories dealing with raw mineral materials have recently been organized in the East. Two of these, the Fuel Laboratory of Carnegie Institute of Technology at Pittsburgh, and the laboratories of the School of Mineral Industries at Pennsylvania State College, will carry on researches on eastern minerals that are competitive with Illinois sources, while the Battelle Memorial Foundation of Columbus, Ohio, is organized to be more general in geographic scope. Illinois must meet the outcome of these searching investigations, and must not delay in becoming fully informed regarding its own basic resources and must also be aware of those that exist elsewhere, whether they be competitive or supplementary.

T H E NECESSITY OF AN EXTENDED MINERAL RESEARCH PROGRAM

The foregoing conditions make imperative an extended mineral research program of an intensive character, a program that will be kept constantly oriented with the needs of the industries and of the Commonwealth. Additional fundamental data are needed on the constitution and properties of coal, which may be applied to problems of utilization and manufacture; on the occurrence of source beds of petroleum, on structures favorable for the accumulation of oil and gas, and on the reserves of oil left in the oil sands but not recoverable by ordinary pumping methods; on the constitution of clays suitable for a wide range of ceramic products, of cement-making materials, concrete aggregate, limes, structural stone, highway materials, pigments, mineral fillers, absorbents, rock products for the manufacture of chemicals, fluxes, soil-conditioning and soil-nourishing materials, and other earth substances—which information will serve as the background of reference for exploration in the search for certain specific adaptable crude materials and for handling problems of utilization and synthetic manufacture. The welfare and prosperity of more than one-third of our State, the southern portion, is dependent very largely on its mineral resources. The new technique of science must be employed here to ascertain the occurrence, constitution, properties, and commercial possibilities of its mineral deposits, if this area is to attain the industrial positon that these resources seem to warrant. The northern and central portions of the State also have a variety of mineral resources, the possible uses of which are only partially known.

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