i74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



erty, like the Adams house, worth a couple of hundred thousand, 

 reverts, and is a very welcome addition to their unrestricted funds. 



Would it not have been, and even now be, a wise policy for the states 

 and their land-owning institutions to have leased much of their lands 

 for a term of years rather than deeded the property outright? Cer- 

 tainly a lot of land would have come back to them, and kept off that 

 mselstrom of useless expense — the delinquent tax list. While this I 

 would merely suggest, what I would urge is more careful and intelligent 

 consideration of our waning natural resources, so that before they are 

 gone we may develop substitute products and replacing industries, and 

 that their proceeds may go in part into permanent improvements, stone 

 roads replacing plank roads, stone or cement bridges wooden bridges, 

 stone or cement dams wooden dams, and into other additions to the 

 permanent wealth of the state. 



It is hard to find any wealth that has been better spent for the per- 

 manent wealth of the community than that which has been spent on 

 educational institutions. They produce intelligent citizens. They 

 draw into the state an intelligent public which spend much money at 

 the time. Many of them stay to help build up the state. Their build- 

 ings and equipment will be more and more Meccas and permanent 

 objects of interest and attraction and resort. Their scientific re- 

 searches will help to develop, to save and to replace our natural re- 

 sources. 



I can picture in my mind two fortunes, and they will be but com- 

 posite photographs drawn from life. The one is built upon a reckless 

 cutting out of the choicest of the lumber, none but the best taken, the 

 brush left around and fired, either purposely or fraudulently, to con- 

 ceal theft. In the path of the first fires is left either a tangled mass 

 of worthless trash, overgrown with bushes and fireweed, ready fuel for 

 the series of conflagrations that sweep through from time to time, or a 

 sandy plain covered with sweet fern and goldenrod, used by speculators 

 to defraud the settlers, who from time to time try to make a livelihood 

 from it. There are here three wastes, the half-gathered crop of timber 

 later burned, the land left in a useless condition, and labor wasted in 

 trying to make it useful. The logs thus gathered are driven to the 

 mill by a crew of loose livers whose hard-earned wages are largely 

 scattered to the dive and brothel in a few weeks. The saw mills devour 

 them and circular saws rip a wide swath of sawdust waste at each cut ; 

 piles of slabs, sawdust and waste of every description are transported 

 in a continuous stream to an ever-burning fire whose pillar of cloud 

 by day and fire by night betokens not the presence of Jehovah, but the 

 demon of destruction. The timber itself is shipped away, and the 

 money thus acquired by one who keeps on making money because he 

 does not know what else to do is squandered by his heirs, who by them- 



