EXPLOITATION AND CONSERVATION 



319 



their lines of trade met near the mouth of 

 the Ohio. Following came the flatboatmen, 

 then the steamboats, and the Mississippi be- 

 came a great highway of traffic. What 

 would have been the result but for the rail- 

 roads no one can tell ; but the railroads came 

 and the men who had been making use of the 

 river in the past in the development of an 



empire, tied up their boats and yielded tke 

 contest without a struggle. 



The folly of this is now seen. Had the 

 work of using the ^Mississippi been continued, 

 had the labor of controlling the stream been 

 systematically commenced back in the old 

 days there would be a different history to 

 write for the Middle West." 



EXPLOITATION AND CONSERVATION 



An Editorial in "The Survey" 



Exploitation and conservation are master 

 words of current public opinion. They are 

 not new words, but it is a new thing to put 

 them together, back to back. We seem to 

 have arrived in the history of civilization at 

 the point where two mighty currents of social 

 and political policy are about to unite. Ex- 

 ploitation the world has always known. An- 

 cient empires, as a matter of course, ex- 

 ploited their own resources and the resources 

 of conquered nations and provinces, and they 

 fell when there were no fresh resources to 

 exploit. They wept, and had reason to weep, 

 when there were no more worlds to con- 

 quer. Colonization in former generations 

 meant exploitation, first of natives and then 

 of colonists. Our own forefathers talked 

 bravely about political representation, but 

 their half-conscious, ultimate determination, 

 being free-born Englishmen, was that they 

 would not be exploited by their brethren 

 across the seas. Colonial trade and taxation 

 were exploitation scarcely veiled, while 

 slavery and the slave trade represented that 

 policy naked and unashamed. Throughout 

 recorded history we find, now in one form 

 and now in another, the using up of physical 

 resources and of human energy in reckless 

 disregard of individual and collective rights 

 and interests. We find, also, that men re- 

 volted against the hardship and injustice of 

 these exploiting policies, and we see evi- 

 dences of more or less blind and bitter 

 struggle between the exploiters and their vic- 

 tims. Exploitation and the ineffective strug- 

 gle against it interpret more _ of human 

 history than any other key which the his- 

 torians have offered us. 



The policy of conservation is of modern 

 growth. It does not represent primarily the 

 struggle of the exploited in their own de- 

 fense. Conservation is not born of a des- 

 perate attempt to save a few remnants from 

 the despoiler. It is doubtful if any ex- 

 ploited people could ever have worked it out. 

 Rather it is a new economic policy, a new 

 way of looking at all physical and human 

 resources, a new basis for social relations, 

 even for' international relations. Its nat- 

 ural starting point is with a strong, free 



and equal people, conscious of great unex- 

 ploited resources and aroused to the great 

 outlook of the future if those resources are 

 husbanded and conserved, if they are utilized 

 for the common good, and whenever possible 

 increased as they are used. Conservation is 

 a social, as exploitation is an anti-social 

 policy. The striking thing, the inspiring 

 thing, about our situation is that here in 

 America, and especially in the free and re- 

 sourceful atmosphere of the frontier com- 

 munities, the fight against exploitation and 

 the conscious adoption of a policy of con- 

 servation come at the same moment, come 

 as two aspects of a single issue. These are 

 the two great streams of history which here 

 and now unite. This is the stirring moment 

 in the history of civilization, when we see 

 no longer a few weak slaves, or a conquered 

 people struggling in vain against exploita- 

 tion, but rather the intelligent and dominant 

 citizenship arising as a giant in his wrath, let 

 us say rather as a strong man in good- 

 humored consciousness of his strength, to 

 put an end to exploitation. And this democ- 

 racy of ours is to put down exploitation not 

 by fighting or punishing anybody — if that 

 has to be done it is only an incident — but by 

 changing the laws and the administration of 

 the laws, by preventing the prosecution of 

 exploiting policies, by instantly detecting ex- 

 ploiting acts and dealing with them appro- 

 priately. 



Thus for us exploitation and conservation 

 come to stand respectively for very definite 

 things. They become sharply contrasting 

 words, each meaning precisely what the other 

 does not; and each requiring the other as a 

 background to make its own meaning per- 

 fectly clear. Each embodies a whole series 

 of conceptions, interests, public policies, legis- 

 lative acts, and court decisions. We have 

 naturally first applied the test of these words 

 to physical reso'urces. We have determined, 

 not only in the interests of posterity, but in 

 our own and our children's interests, to put 

 an end to exploitation of forests, soils, min- 

 eral ores, and natural power, and to work 

 out policies of conservation. This social con- 

 trol of natural physical resources we rightly 

 deem to be essential to our dignity as a 



