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20                           MINERAL RESOURCES, 1916----PART I.
FUTURE SOURCES.
As already indicated the world's supply of platinum requires careful thought and immediate attention. Platinum metals are practically indispensable to the chemical industry, are of great use in the electric industry, and are more or less essential in many minor industries. Manufacturing jewelers contend that no substitutes can replace plati­num in their products, but, realizing the industrial need for this metal, they have agreed to restrict its use. The chemists, on the other hand, maintain that a metal of prime industrial use should not be diverted at the whim of fashion and that laws should be passed in all countries prohibiting this use of a metal whose future supply is so problematic.
On the authority of Duparc, the known Russian fields at the present rate of output can last only 12 years, and Russia produces 95 per cent of the world's output. The Australian Provinces, Tasmania, New South Wales, and New Zealand, have made small additions to the world's supply, but these fields as now known are not capable of sup­plying a hundredth part of the world's demands, and some of them are reported to be nearly exhausted. Borneo's fields have been little worked but seem to be of small area. The small annual output from North America appears to be capable of some increase but does not hold much hope for the future. The Spanish deposits give some promise but are apparently not large. South America, especially Colombia, possesses a considerable reserve, and more scientific work­ing of the deposits will unquestionably help the situation. The search for new platiniferous fields in the Urals has not yet been highly successful. Little, however, is known of the possibilities of the Siberian placer fields.
The question of the future supply of platinum for the United States resolves itself then into three problems—first, an inventory of our present supply, particularly the unmanufactured platinum metals; second, the systematic search for new sources of supply; and third, the scientific development of these deposits to assure the maximum yield from their operation. The first two of these problems are now being attacked by the United States Geological Survey, and it is hoped that the technologic question may be in part answered by the inves­tigations already started under Government and private auspices.