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during the past century from a new perspective. The same
basic question asked by other studies has underlain this
one: Why is the United States so rich while much of
the rest of the world is so poor? But rather than
asking what parts of the American experience might
be shared with others, it has been our purpose to
examine to what extent the American experience might
have been fundamentally unique. By studying the role
of metals in United States economic growth, we have
attempted to pierce the veil of numbers that has
surrounded growth and deal with it not as an entity
distinct in its own right, but as a reflection of real
activities occurring in the physical world.
Many who have dealt with economic growth have
not considered resources at all, and some even have
gone so far as to discount the importance of resources
almost entirely. Others who have considered problems
of resources have reached conflicting conclusions. Our
purpose has been to gain a sense of proportion.
Many other factors have been important to United
States economic growth, but so, too, have been resources.
By forgetting them and assuming instead that the
economic growth of the United States resulted primarily
from cleverness, we have become presumptuous about
development; and our egotism may have been our undoing
in prescribing for others what they probably cannot