A good illustration of the monetary value of higher education
in chemistry and mining is seen when one compares Germany and
England. Both countries have the same kind of iron ore and the
same coal supply. England has the advantage of having her coal
nearer the iron fields. In 1880 England mined and produced
8,000,000 tons of pig-iron per year, while Germany’s product was
only 3,000,000. Since that time Germany has supported handsomely
her great technical universities and sent out each year into
her industries a stream of highly-trained experts, with the
result that in 1907, while England’s production had risen from
8,000,000 to only 9,000,000 tons per year, Germany’s had risen
from 3,000,000 to 13,000,000. It is more significant still that
from 1900 to 1908 German iron brought on the average nearly
$19 per ton, while English iron brought only $13 per ton, a
difference of nearly 50 per cent in favor of the iron made by
the better-educated German producer. This one result of these
great German technical institutions would alone add $190,000,000
per year to German wealth if the iron were sold as raw pig-iron.
As a matter of fact, a large part of this iron is made up into
all sorts of manufactured products, made possible by their high
technical education, and these products are exported and sold at
many times the price of the raw pig-iron--New York _Evening
Post_.
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