22 SEVENTH REPORT. 



while, therefore, to see, as the.y do at the Agricultural College, 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 our 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 to develop substitutes: 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. 

 The I'ureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture at Wash- 

 ington is hard at work seeking for fibres which may replace the wood 

 pulp. 



We may hope that by the time our present iron ores are becoming ex- 

 hausted our scientific chemists will have found some economic method (if 

 smelting 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. Our geologists may have found for us new ranges or extensions 

 of the old ones under the Paleozoic mantle.^ So, for instance, we might 

 appropriately tax a foreign corporation like the fish trust, catching or 

 buying Michigan fish, for the purpose of supporting our fish commission, 

 which studies our fish and stocks our rivers and lakes, which are not 

 producing a tithe of the fish food they might. 



Moreover, as we have said, we should see that the necessary consump- 

 tion is 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. I am well aware that there are 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 propor- 

 tion of the resources in order to get the utmost possible returns to him- 

 self. It is very easy by legislation to accomplish just this result by tax- 

 ing not according to the income or return, but according to some fixed 

 valuation, especially if excessive, so that the jiroblem for the individual is 

 to get the utmost income in the shortest time and avoid the most taxes. 



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

 lated property to leave the State and transfer the money which they 

 may have made from its resources to some other clime, and their inter- 

 ests to other institutions, will not correct any error which may be sup- 

 posed to have been made in allowing them to accumulate that wealth 

 in the first place. 



It is often proposed to correct and control the excessive accumula- 

 tion of wealth and the power of wealth by competition but it must be 

 remembered that competition is a most potent source of waste. The 

 different iron ores are used together to produce a maximum amount of 

 iron from a minimum amount of iron ore, because they are all owned 

 by the same parties, regardless of the fact that some of the ores can 

 be produced much more cheaply than others. But if the ore belonged 

 to different parties and there were free and unrestricted competition 



^Lines of magnetic attraction show that the iron ranges extend down to Green Bay under a thick- 

 ness of not over 1 000 feet of Paleozoic mantle. 



