EDITORIAL 



The Conservation Commission 



FOLLOWING closely upon the mem- 

 orable Conference of the Govern- 

 ors, at the White House in Washington, 

 comes the announcement by President 

 Roosevelt of the appointment of a Com- 

 mission on the Conservation of Natural 

 Resources. In another part of this is- 

 sue of Forestry and Irrigation will 

 be found the President's letter of ap- 

 pointment, together with the list of 

 members of the new Commission. 



America — or, to speak more definite- 

 ly, the United States — has long been 

 known among the nations as a nation of 

 extravagance. Nationally and individ- 

 ually, wastefulness has been a leading 

 characteristic; and, when one comes to 

 think of it, this is a peculiar fact. De- 

 scended as we are, from the careful 

 peoples of the Old World, our blood a 

 blending of the blood of Puritans, of 

 Scotch, Irish, English, French, Ger- 

 man, Swede, Dutch, and all the other 

 blood-lines of the continent of Europe, 

 it is strange that we should have — and 

 should have earned — such a characteri- 

 zation. Ancestrally we are a saving 

 people ; a frugal, even a parsimonious, 

 people; but actually, we are the most 

 improvident — the spendthrift among 

 nations. 



It is interesting to trace the develop- 

 ment of this spirit of wastefulness — 

 this idea of taking absolutely no heed 

 for the morrow. Coming as we do 

 from races whose every tendency, 

 whose whole training, has been in ex- 

 actly the opposite direction, it is a won- 

 derful thing to consider that within a 

 single generation the effects of all ra- 

 cial tendency toward thrift is lost — to 

 consider that within much less than the 

 lifetime of an individual we, as a peo- 

 ple — of blood amalgamated of every 

 thrifty, frugal race if Europe— have 

 eone as far toward wastefulness as did 



our ancestors, through hundreds of 

 years, toward niggardliness. 



The very abundance of natural 

 wealth with which America has been en- 

 dowed is the basic cause of this depart- 

 ure from type. When those frugal an- 

 cestors of ours reached the shores of the 

 North American continent they found a 

 land wherein nature had lavished every 

 form of potential wealth she possessed. 

 They found forests of such magnitude 

 and magnificence as to be beyond com- 

 parison, so far as their previous experi- 

 ence had reached. They found mines, 

 rivers, soils of such fertility as to as- 

 tound them : and by the time their chil- 

 dren succeeded them, the habit of re- 

 garding these resources as inexhausti- 

 ble had become fixed. Trees and for- 

 ests existed only to be cleared away, 

 cut down and destroyed to make room 

 for farms ; soils were so rich that no 

 idea of conservation or renewal of fer- 

 tility ever entered their heads ; water- 

 powers were so abundant that they were 

 un worth V of mention or of serious con- 

 sideration. So the forests of the East 

 were destroyed ; those of the Middle 

 West went in like manner — deadened, 

 cut down, and burned, in vast holo- 

 causts. When, at last, the fertile farms 

 of the East began to lose their fecund- 

 ity, there was plenty of land left in 

 other regions and the young men were 

 advised to "go West, and grow up with 

 the country." The Nation gave to 

 every man asking for it one hundred 

 sixty acres of as good land as ever lay 

 outdoors ; all that was necessary, in or- 

 der to possess it, was sufficient money to 

 make the trip and pay the trivial fees 

 required. 



The vast hardwood forests of the 

 Middle West followed those of the 

 East, going the way of destruction 

 without a hand being raised to prevent. 

 Wood, for fuel, went out of use when 



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