Development of Home Resources; Gray & Hemingray mentioned

Development of Home Resources.

Mention was made in our paper a few days ago, of some very clear and beautiful glassware manufactured at the glass-works opposite the east front of the Gazette buildings, on Hammond street, from sand brought from Minnesota. That sand is considered superior to the celebrated Sr. Genevieve sand, and will doubtless become an important article of commerce.

Since seeing the articles referred to, we observe in the Nashville Banner, a notice of a tumbler made in Pittsburgh from silex discovered near Huntsville, in Tennessee, by Dr. Troost, the Public Geologist of that State. The Banner states that while this Tennessee article commands $14 per ton delivered in Pittsburgh, the best St. Genevieve sand, upon which the glass manufacturers of Pittsburgh have heretofore largely depended, brings but $8. The newly discovered Tennessee article is represented "to be the best in the United States."

We regret to see, that there is some talk of dispensing with the office of State Geologist of Tennessee. In a State whose mineral treasures are so great as are those of Tennessee, this ought to be one of the last pieces of public economizing attempted. It is manifesting the suggestion of a "penny wise and pound foolish" spirit, and should be scouted by the intelligence and enterprise of the State.

If every State in the Union would keep a good Geologist constantly in its employ, the result would show that in every period of ten years he had by his discoveries of mineral treasures, his suggestions to agriculturists with reference to the preservation of their soils, and his agency in de­veloping the natural resources of the State generally, repaid to the people four times or ten times the amount which his maintenance had abstracted from the public treasury.

If people in different sections are desirous of re­ducing the expenses of their State Government, let them insist on short sessions of their local legisla­tures, let them see that large sums are not squan­dered on partisan editors for public printing, let them demand for the fewest number of officers connected with the machinery of government that are compatible with a full and prompt execution of the laws and a safe and intelligent supervision of the revenues, but not strike at those agencies whose office is development. In new States, especially, a policy like this ought to pre­vail. In such, the Superintendent of Schools, and the Public Geologist, should always be found. — These are the great agencies for developing the re­sources of the mind and the treasures of the soil, and should be the least interfered with, when economical fits attack the people, or, as is commonly the case, a few local legislators want new hobbies upon which to ride into new place of honor and profit.

To a new State, the two offices of which we speak are manifestly of the first importance. In the uneducated mind of its youth lie the creative energies that are to make its future, in the rich but not inexhaustible soil that is turned by men ignorant of its constituents and capacity, and in the hills whose broken sides and rocky bases and their covering of earth unfit them for the plow, lie the crude materials of that future's comforts and wealth. To destroy the means, therefore, of de­veloping the dormant strength of that mind, and of opening the recesses of those hills, and displaying the position and the character of their hidden treasures, is the supremest of folly.

We hope the day is not distant, when every State in the Mississippi Valley will have its Superintendent of Public Schools and its State Geologist. Then, and not till then, will commence the true Development of Home Resources.