THE WEALTH OF THE COMMONWEALTH 171 



mill as much a source of power as the water-wheel. Thus as earlier 

 sources of power, lumber waste and coal are exhausted, one may turn 

 to oil or gas, or use water power to develop electric heat or grow fuel 

 either as four-foot wood or as peat, whichever shall be proved by scien- 

 tific experiment to be the most economical. 



A Frenchman has recently suggested setting a coal mine on fire 

 and pumping down just enough air to make water gas and then burn- 

 ing this gas as it comes to the surface. If this idea proves feasible 

 it will add untold millions to the wealth of this state in seams which 

 it will not now pay to burn. But in any case by the time our coal is 

 gone we should be ready with our streams already dammed and copper 

 cables covering the land to furnish more power from water than we 

 now use from coal. 



So again little by little the unfertilized farm will become less fertile, 

 for in spite of all the care and skill of the Michigan farmer, the wheat 

 product per acre of the lower four tiers of counties of Michigan does 

 not bear the same ratio to that of the state that it once did. It is 

 well worth while, therefore, to see that we are getting our money's 

 worth in buying fertilizer to replace the fertility. It should be worth 

 while to see that we do not squander valuable potash salts in making 

 table salt, or burning lumber waste, etc. Again, as the forests depart, 

 not only should we cherish what is left, but with the proceeds, before 

 we are left naked, poor and desolate, we should plan and develop sub- 

 stitutes, tile and slate for shingle, cement, sand-brick and stone for 

 building, stone, cement and steel bridges for wooden, and paving brick 

 and macadam for cedar block and corduroy. 



So too by the time the present iron ores are becoming exhausted 

 scientific chemists should have found some economic method of smelt- 

 ing leaner ores or, better yet, of handling that vast bulk of iron ore, 

 of which we now know, that is made refractory by only a few per cent, 

 of titanium, and geologists may have found for us new ranges, or ex- 

 tensions of the old ones. Moreover the necessary consumption should 

 be as little wasteful as possible. Legislation which is such that 'we 

 skin through as fast as we can and then throw the land back on the 

 state ' is not wise legislation. There are, indeed, two parties in 

 politics and in economics as to whether the state should hold for itself 

 these natural resources. But if it be granted that the state should 

 put these in the hands of individuals to exploit, it is certainly short 

 sighted to then so legislate in the hope of getting back again ' unearned 

 increments ' by taxation that the individual is tempted or even forced 

 to rush through the development, squandering a large proportion of 

 the resources, in order to get the utmost possible returns to himself. 



In the same way the policy of taxation which leads those with 

 accumulated property to leave the state and transfer the money which 

 they may have made from its resources to some other clime and their 



