The argument presented in this thesis is that

economic progress can be viewed only as economic change

and that economic change cannot be divorced from the

particular circumstances of people, place, and time. In

this sense, the economic experience of the United States

during the past hundred years, from which so many develop-

ment schemes have been abstracted, must be viewed as

exceptional; not least because of its initial abundance

of natural resources; much of what has come to be called

economic growth really has represented nothing more than

the rapid exploitation of natural wealth; to a large

degree, production has represented extraction.

 Demands for resources encompass a wide variety of

materials; but no resources have been more important to

the current machine age than metals. Of the various metals,

iron and copper have been particularly important, not only

because of their use in many different kinds of production,

but also because they are used in great quantity. They

represent the bulk metals used for production in a

modern economy. In this study an analysis of their

supply and disposition serves to illustrate the role metals

extraction has played in the growth of the United States

economy.

 In analyzing the relation between production and

the extraction of metals, overall levels of output and

changes in output by categories are compared over the past

century. With the changing nature of production estab-

lished, metals needs relative to production are then