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Statement of the Vice President of the United States on Mineral and Fuel Research, Carbondale, IL

October 28, 1960

Add up the amounts appropriated by the Federal Government for research on minerals and fuels in the 8 Truman years. Then add up the amounts appropriated in the Eisenhower years. What do you find? The Eisenhower dollar figure - more than $217 million - outstrips the Truman figure by 30 percent.

Specifically, the Eisenhower administration has invested more in coal research than any other administration in the history of this country.

And that's not all. The Eisenhower administration has launched a program, new this year, which goes beyond the traditional long-term basic research done by the Bureau of Mines of the Department of the Interior.

In April of 1958, the administration requested the Congress controlled by Senator Kennedy and his followers to authorize the establishment of an Office of Coal Research in the Department of the Interior - an office which would undertake a crash program to find new uses for coal and thus to give the industry a shot in the arm and materially increase employment.

On July 7, 1960, President Eisenhower signed H.R. 3375 which his administration had supported into law and the way was clear for the new Office of Coal Research to become a reality.

Now, what will this new program do? For the first time in our history the Secretary of the Interior will have authority to contract for coal research - make contracts with universities and private research organizations for investigations of specific ways to make new and better uses of coal. These investigations are applied research, supplementing the basic research already underway on a scale unmatched in our history.

We must discover new uses for coal, both to provide more employment in the coal fields and to help strengthen America for the future.

For work this current year, the Office of Coal Research has an appropriation of about $1 million ; for next year, we will ask the Congress to double that figure. But remember this: Ii Congress had passed the authorization 2 years ago, when we first requested it, that the first and second and third million dollars would already be at work; scientists and engineers in a score of institutions could already be on the way to breakthroughs which might well give the U.S. coal industry forward thrusts such as it has never had before.

Let's get on with this job. I promise you that if elected, we will do just that.

Richard Nixon, Statement of the Vice President of the United States on Mineral and Fuel Research, Carbondale, IL Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/273929