470 



CONSERVATION 



and Jefferson was all but sent to Coven- 

 try when he bought an emph-e for a 

 song — just as within our own memory 

 "Seward's Folly" was a synonym for 

 resourceful Alaska, and even within a 

 decade McKinley and Wilson and Day 

 were derided for opening over-sea lines 

 for our teeming growth Lulled by 

 woodland zephyr and prairie breeze, 

 the pioneer forgot Eden and its penalty 

 in the sweat of his face for the posterity 

 of men ; revelling in boundless acres, 

 he even forgot the line of his loins, and 

 cravenly and impotently sware "Poster- 

 ity be condemned ! Let posterity take 

 care of itself!" Thus he blasphemed 

 the blood of those who fought for Land 

 and Liberty, and foolhardily jeopard- 

 ized the Nation woven of their lives ! 

 So patriotism waned. 



Yet prosperity spread apace over fair 

 America ; for the fruit of the ages was 

 ripe unto harvest. The half of what 

 he did not cat the settler wasted, and 

 most of the rest he turned over to bud- 

 ding trusts to be used in shaping 

 shackles for his own ankles and wrists ; 

 so that after thirteen decades of the 

 freedom for which the Fathers fought, 

 certain seven men — none chosen of the 

 people — hold in their hands the indus- 

 trial and commercial destiny of eighty 

 millions of citizens ! So substance was 

 scattered away and tyranny trained up. 



A new revolution began — for every 

 revolution is at bottom mental — when 

 citizens saw a decade past that ravage 

 of woodlands sacrifices streams. Al- 

 ready the story is old. There is still 

 wood enough to last half a lifetime at 

 the current increasing rate, and it is 

 growing a quarter as fast as cut ; but 

 the homestead spring has dried up, the 

 mill-stream is shrunken to a slimy 

 thread, the old-time dell is torn by 

 storm torrents, the river is beset by bars, 

 the river-side field caves into the flood 

 a rood at a slump, while the richest 

 of the soil washes into the sea at the 

 rate of half a ton each acre-year. Such 

 is the lesson of the disappearing forest ; 

 naturally it led first to uneasiness, later 

 to full awakening; and at last to an 

 inventory of resources, and an analysis 

 of their relations. 



During the thirteen decades of Amer- 

 ican independence, domestic iron pro- 

 duction has increased from nearly noth- 

 ing to over 50,000,000 tons per year ; 

 the consumption from less than ten 

 pounds to 1,300 pounds per capita. 

 The original stock was some 10,000,- 

 000,000 tons ; and while only about 

 750,000,000 tons have been consumed 

 and wasted to date, if the current rate 

 of increase continues the annual pro- 

 duction will within thirty years reach 

 more than half that amount — and be- 

 fore the end of the present century our 

 iron will be gone. 



When the Declaration of Independ- 

 ence was signed there were in what 

 is now mainland LTnited States about 

 2,000,000,000,000 tons of coal — then 

 but a useless black stone, of which lit- 

 tle was used until within a century. 

 Already some 9,000.000,000 tons have 

 been wasted and destroyed, and 7,500,- 

 000,000 tons have been consumed in 

 ways so wasteful that less than five per 

 cent of its heat value has been turned 

 to useful account. The consumption 

 is increasing beyond belief in any ear- 

 lier decade ; the mere increase in 1907 

 over the use in 1906 was greater than 

 the total consumption in that Centen- 

 nial Year (1876) in which America be- 

 came known as a leader among the 

 world's manufacturing nations. In 

 1907 some 450,000,000 tons, or over 5 

 tons per .capita for our 84.000,000, 

 were taken out of the ground ; and if 

 the current rates of production and in- 

 crease continue, all will be gone by the 

 end of the next century. And still 

 more woeful is the tale of oil and gas, 

 already largely squandered! 



The birthright Land of the thirteen 

 Colonies for which the Fathers fought 

 comprised some 200.000,000 acres, of 

 which a full half was felt forever worth- 

 less save for rocks and swamps and 

 trees ; but the remaining hundred mil- 

 lions was thought enough for the Nation 

 for all time. With the Clark-Franklin 

 claim allowed at Geneva, Jefferson's 

 Louisiana Purchase, the Florida acqui- 

 sition, the Oregon discovery and de- 

 mand (less the spiritless surrender of 

 "Fifty-four forty or fight"), the Cali- 



