EDITORIAL 



505 



tiful that retains the love of its citi- 

 zens," and William Morris, who urged 

 humanitarian efforts, "until the contrast 

 is less disgraceful between the fields 

 where the beasts live and the streets 

 where men live." 



Such suggestions lead directly to the 

 thought of conserving human resources, 

 including physical health. The Nezv 

 Haven (Conn.) Journal-Courier says 

 editorially : 



It is now generally recognized that bodily 

 health is quite as much to be enumerated 

 among the resouces of the human race as 

 are the forests, the mines, or the streams. 

 * * * But, like many good institutions, the 

 resources movement has kept on developing. 

 Its latest department of activity is in the 

 realm of safety. It is not difficult to see that 

 bodily safety is quite as important as bodily 

 health. Both diseases which can be pre- 

 vented and dangers which can be averted 

 have in the past made great inroads among 

 the numbers of our skilled workmen and our 

 most useful citizens. 



Mention is made of the efforts of Ger- 

 many to make industrial conditions of 

 life in factories safer. The Director of 

 the Imperial German Bureau of Statis- 

 tics is quoted as saying: 



One million marks, in wage-earning effi- 

 ciency annually, we save Germany through 

 our museums of safety, sanatoria, and other 

 forms of social insurance. 



The Journal-Courier continues: 



Much more will certainly be heard in th.^ 

 immediate future as to possible meauo of 

 safeguarding the lives and limbs of Amer- 

 ican workmen in their shops and factories. 

 It is a great problem which concerns ihe 

 employers, who are held strictly to account 

 in these days under the employers' liability 

 laws, quite as much as it does the employees. 



At the White House Conference, Mr. 

 John Mitchell, speaking of the wasteful 

 production and consumption of coal, 

 said: 



Our extravagant wastefulness in the use 

 of our fuel supply, both in production and 

 consumption, is equaled only by our crim- 

 inal disregard of the personal safety and 

 the lives of the men who toil in the mines. 

 For every 190,000 tons of coal produced, a 

 mine worker is killed and several are seri- 

 ously injured; for each 1,000 men employed 

 3.40 are killed annually. Last year nearly 

 2,500 men were killed and more than 6,000 

 were seriously injured in the mining industry 



of our country. No other country in the 

 vv'orld shows so large a percentage of fatali- 

 ties. Indeed, in those foreign countries in 

 which mining is most hazardous, the propor- 

 tion of men killed to the number employed 

 is from fifty per cent to seventy-five per cent 

 less than in our country. It is a sad com- 

 mentary on our vaunted civilization that 

 niore men are killed or crippled in mining 

 in the United States than in any other nation 

 on earth. 



As a matter of fact, there seems to 

 be no logical stopping place for the con- 

 servation movement short of the conser- 

 vation of all those materials, forces, 

 agencies and conditions which make for 

 the highest, completest well-being of 

 every human soul, and of the race itself. 



«r' ^ &' 



Governor Fernald's Proposal 



Gov. Bert. M. Fernald, of Maine, in 

 his inaugural address, said : 



Under state direction, the time is at hand 

 when we must replant forests carelessly de- 

 stroyed. The state can produce pine and 

 spruce trees for a very small sum per thou- 

 sand. A state water-supply commission nat- 

 urally would cooperate with the forest and 

 game commission to establish nurseries of 

 forest trees. 



This is an up-to-date proposal. Fol- 

 lowing it, Collier's Weekly presents a 

 plan to afforest over 800,000 acres of 

 abandoned, forestless land in New 

 Hampshire, meeting the expense by a 

 long-term bond issue. It is estimated 

 that the investment would prove profit- 

 able financially thirty or fortv years 

 hence, in addition to which the timber 

 resources of the state would be greatly 

 increased, and waste land utilized. 



With these two proposals may be 

 placed that of Great Britain's budget ap- 

 propriating $1,000,000 to reforest waste 

 lands in England, Scotland and Ireland. 

 These are examples of the types of gov- 

 ernment which the present age demands 

 — a government which, instead of 

 merely playing policeman, strips off its 

 coat, rolls up its sleeves, and aggress- 

 ively attacks the problem of making 

 state or nation more habitable, and life 

 better worth the living for every citizen, 

 present and to come. 



