By "mining" the living resources of the earth instead of husbanding and 

 cultivating them, we have produced ugly, desolate holes. We have replaced 

 luxuriant and balanced life-communities with scavenger and decay organisms. 

 The results of his handiwork force man to move on. Only as such results 

 accumulate have we gradually come to recognize the danger of some day 

 pushing ourselves off the earth. To keep ourselves going, we must keep the 

 earth continuously fertile and fruitful. 



How Can We Meet Our Needs without Destroying the Sources? 



The Conservation Idea^ Those who enjoy hunting and fishing, or who 

 sell what they kill or catch, find it very difficult to see why anyone should 

 want to interfere with their sport or business. After all, hunting and fishing 

 are very ancient vocations and very ancient modes of enjoying life. There 

 were hunters before there were farmers and long before there were foresters 

 and game wardens. Present-day hunters and fishers feel close to nature and 

 close to "natural law". But modern man, having learned to write and to 

 figure, is able to look ahead more than a lifetime and backward more than a 

 generation. He is able to calculate the danger of trying to Hve like a hunter 

 and fisherman in a world of growing populations, automatic machines, air- 

 plane transportation and radio communication. It is impossible for the earth 

 to maintain its present population (to say nothing of the future) on the sim- 

 pler basis (see pages 534-535). 



Forest ControP Before the beginning of the present century it became 

 evident that we were destroying forests faster than they could grow. There 

 was a movement for conserving the forests, for introducing more economical 

 methods of using the natural but limited resources, and for developing meth- 

 ods to replace with new growth what was removed each year. This movement 

 met with much opposition. Those who agitated for conservation were easily 

 discredited as cranks. Every effort to protect the public's interest in the for- 

 ests as a national resource was denounced as interfering with private business. 



Theodore Roosevelt, during his Presidency (1901-1909) supported Gif- 

 ford Pinchot in his attempt to educate the public, as well as forest-owners and 

 forest-operators, to a more scientific — and in the long run a more productive — 

 policy. Research and practical development since then have made more and 

 more people recognize that the forest is something more than a lot of trees 

 that happen to be on somebody's acres for him to use as he sees fit. 



We all depend upon the products and the inhabitants of the forest, as well 

 as upon the water and soil that are influenced by the living trees. Control of 

 the forest, therefore, becomes a matter of national concern. In the past, pri- 



iSee Nos. 3 and 4, p. 598. «Sce No. 5, p. 598. 



590 



