1908 



OUR HERITAGE 



151 



renewable; the coal, the iron, the oil, 

 the gas, once gone, can never be re- 

 newed. 



Our timber, even at the present rate 

 of consumption, so far as we can meas- 

 ure it, and giving every opportunity 

 for covering mistakes by large esti- 

 mates, is likely to last us between twen- 

 ty and thirty years. And our timber 

 is scarcely less necessary for us than 

 ■our coal. Our forests, from which the 

 timber comes, are vastly more neces- 

 sary for us than our coal, for from the 



present, that the forests were absolute- 

 ly essential to our welfare; that our 

 industries could not be prosecuted; 

 that transportation, mining, manufac- 

 turing, and all the varied occupations 

 which give our people bread and shel- 

 ter, were necessarily related to the 

 forest, and in its absence would be im- 

 possible. That is true. But the inti- 

 macy of the relation of the forest to 

 the daily life of the individual now, is 

 as nothing to what it will be when the 

 coal, oil, and gas are exhausted ; when 



Water Power on Saluda River at Pelzer, South Carolina 



forests will ultimately come the one 

 great source of power which is renew- 

 able, and the only one of any great 

 amount — that is, water power. And in 

 ■our forests, through our water power, 

 we shall find the great support of our 

 future civilization. After a while, 

 when coal is exhausted, and oil and gas 

 are gone, the only great source of 

 power, so far as our knowledge of the 

 physical universe now goes, will be 

 water power ; and the water power is 

 absolutely and completely dependent 

 upon the forests. 



We have been in the habit of say- 

 ing, as things stand in the country at 



our great source of power and heat 

 comes, all of it instead of part of it, out 

 of the forest; and when the daily life 

 of every man is intimately aflfected by 

 the resources, the revenues, the utili- 

 ties, produced from water powers orig- 

 inally in the forests, when a man's 

 house is lighted and heated, and his 

 food is cooked, and he himself and the 

 freight upon which he depends are 

 transported, and the goods that he 

 uses are manufactured, and the paper 

 that he reads is printed, all by electric- 

 ity derived from water flowing out of 

 the forests. I tell you that however 

 close the relation of the forest to our 



