EDITORIAL 



437 



cover less readily than those which had 

 less to lose. The procession of Amer- 

 ican farmers that have moved recently 

 into the country just north of our west- 

 ern states should point the moral. They 

 were wasters, or the children of wasters, 

 who had exhausted nature's bounty and 

 were moving on. Take care of your 

 soil before it is too late, and it will take 

 care of you and sustain and increase 

 your prosperity forever. Neglect and 

 waste it, and no earthly power can save 

 you from the consequences." 



Mr. Hill also called attention to the 

 great salmon industry, capable of such 

 splendid development on the coast, yet, 

 like other industries directly dependent 

 upon natural resources, already men- 

 aced by wasteful consumption. He 

 called attention to the possible wealth 

 of the West in water-power. Speak- 

 ing- of Alaska, he said : "Among its 

 mountains and scattered through yours 

 all the way down to Mexico there is 

 water-power enough undeveloped to 

 perform all the work done west of the 

 Mississippi. Are these resources be- 

 ing guarded for posterity, or are they 

 being so disposed of that their future 

 employment will be conditioned upon 

 the payment of a perpetual tax to their 

 appropriators?" 



It is a notable fact that the im- 

 pressiveness of a sermon depends pri- 

 marily not upon the text, nor even the 

 matter, but upon the preacher. Others 

 have said such things as Mr. Hill said 

 on this occasion. From them, how- 

 ever, the warnings have too often been 

 regarded as the mouthings of an alarm- 

 ist, or the vain imaginings of a theorist. 

 Not always, especially in America, have 

 the words of the expert, the specialist, 

 the man of science been accorded due 

 weight. Here, rather, it is to the busi- 

 ness man, the captain of industry, the 

 successful man of afifairs, that we have 

 turned for advice and guidance. That 

 Mr. Hill is such a man, no one can 

 question. His utterances, therefore, 

 upon such a question as that of the hus- 

 banding of our resources carry peculiar 

 weight. It is to be hoped that they may 

 be widely quoted, repeated, and re- 



enforced until they have produced the 

 conviction that influences conduct. 



i^ ^ ^ 



Destruction of Fish 



IN LINE with the warning given by 

 President Hill to the people of the 

 great Northwest regarding the destruc- 

 tion of their salmon, comes a warning 

 from the East regarding a similar de- 

 struction of fish. Says the Nezv York 

 Herald in its issue of June 7 : 



"Here is the great Delaware River, 

 once prolific in fish and making fertile 

 its banks ; to-day pollution of its waters 

 by the waste of factories makes the sur- 

 viving fish unfit to eat and menaces the 

 health and comfort of those who live 

 near. And the Government, ever pa- 

 ternal, proposes to restock the river 

 with fish from abroad, while it does 

 nothing to stop the pollution. The very 

 repairing of loss is likely to prove a 

 waste. 



"Cases of much the same character 

 could be found nearer home. In tidal 

 waters, such as encompass this city, the 

 results of pollution are much less se- 

 rious, but the problem will be pressing 

 before many decades." 



The one discordant note in this edito- 

 rial is that regarding the "paternalism" 

 of the Government. With the evidence 

 already piled mountain-high all about 

 us, and daily climbing higher, that gov- 

 ernmental "do-nothingism" is, through- 

 out the civilized world, now out of date, 

 and that governments in future must, 

 at the least, earn their keep to justify 

 their existence, the talk of "paternal- 

 ism" has a strangely Rip Van Winkle- 

 like ring. 



Further, as has been already stated 

 in these columns, the term "paternal- 

 ism" has no place in speaking of the 

 government of a republic. In an abso- 

 lute monarchy, in which a Louis XIV 

 can say, "I am the State;" can refer 

 to the people of the nation as "his chil- 

 dren," and treat them as such, the gov- 

 ernment may properly be spoken of as 

 "paternal." Where, however, as in the 

 France of to-day, and in the Ignited 

 States, the people have attained their 



