In a time of stress it is not enough to be able to say that the United States contains more than one-half of the known world supply of coal; that we, while only 8 per cent of the world's population, produce annually 46 per cent of all coal that is taken from the ground; that 35 per cent of the railroad traffic is coal; that in less than 100 years we have grown in production from 100,000 tons to 700,000,000 tons per annum; that if last year's coal were used as construction material it would build a wall as huge as the Great Wall of China around every boundary of the United States from Maine to Vancouver, down the Pacific to San Diego and eastward following the Mexican border and the coast to Maine again; and that this same coal contains latent power sufficient to lift this same wall 200 miles high in the air, according to one of our greatest engineers (Steinmetz). Such facts are surely startling. They serve to stimulate a certain pride and give us a great confidence in our industrial future; yet they are not as immediately important, when the mines threaten to close, as would be a few figures showing how much coal we have in stock piles and where it is! And months since we called upon Congress to grant the money that we might secure these figures, but no notice was taken of the urged requests until, late in the summer, a committee of the Senate awoke to this need and indorsed our petition. NATIONAL STOCK TAKING. The Government should have a more complete knowledge of the coal and of other foundation industries than can be found elsewhere, and we should not fear national stock taking as a continuing process. It is indeed the beginning of wisdom. The war revealed to us how delinquent in this regard we had been in the past. One day when the full story is told of the struggle of the Army engineer to meet war emergency demands, and this is supplemented by the tale of the effort made by the Council of National Defense and the War Industries Board, it will be realized more seriously than now how little of stock taking we have done in this generous, optimistic land.