OUR INLAND WATERWAYS 303 



its own bigness yield the van of progress to lesser contemporaries. 

 The cost of relief will be large, as the nation is broad and its pro- 

 ductions opulent; yet from the standpoint of traffic alone the game 

 will be worth far more than the candle. In addition, the prevention 

 of soil-wash and the purification and clarification of the streams will, 

 as the value of water increases with multiplied population by natural 

 growth and orderly development, more than balance the entire cost; 

 if the works be planned to utilize the incidental water-power, it alone 

 will (with a moderate working capital) not only pay the entire cur- 

 rent cost but replace our rapidly decreasing mineral fuels as a source of 

 energy; and a dozen incidental advantages and values clamor to be 

 entered on the credit side of the ledger. Eventually, if not to-day, the 

 nation must take stock not merely of its land but of the 150,000,000,- 

 000,000 or 200,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of water annually falling 

 from the heavens on the 2,000,000,000 acres of that land and giving 

 it value — must conserve and control the boon in such manner as to 

 minimize destruction and loss and maximize benefits for citizens and 

 country: and any present step should take the right direction. Other 

 resources, too, demand conservation — especially the timber and coal 

 and oil and iron supplies already largely gone. The sole obstacle 

 to-day is precisely that which confronted Washington and his con- 

 temporaries in the earlier waterway agitation — the doubt as to who 

 should act in the public interest. The obstacle was overcome one 

 hundred and twenty years ago : Can its present phase then deter 

 the nation made great by the infant effort ? That is the question to be 

 weighed by the executives of states and nation in joint conference in 

 the White House next May. 



Fortunately the later statesmen hold a point of vantage; for 

 America has become a nation of science. The sum of knowledge has 

 gained a hundred per cent, and knowledge of the country and its re- 

 sources has grown a hundred fold since 1787. The lands have been 

 explored and surveyed; the mines have been opened and tested; the 

 rainfall and rivers have been measured; several of the sciences have 

 taken form and placed facts and principles at command; and under 

 the stimulus of a far-sighted patent law invention has harnessed 

 natural forces in a manner inconceivable even a century ago. The 

 early ideas were of extension and diffusion; the present needs are 

 for intensive development and conservation. And while the later stress 

 may be less than the earlier it is attended by wider experience and 

 surer modes of thinking, so that action ought to be easier and safer. 

 Certainly the stress will increase until relieved; and there are those 

 who feel that the present issues and the prospective conference may 

 well mark another epoch in national policy and national growth. 



