200 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



these increased requirements for comfort civilization could not 

 advance. While true civilization is accompanied by an improve- 

 ment of man's moral and spiritual nature, yet moral and spiritual 

 advancement is conditioned absolutely on a degree of physical com- 

 fort. The material basis of civilization must be acquired before 

 the spiritual improvement can take place. 



The country with slender natural resources stands always at 

 a serious disadvantage in the upward struggle for social, spiritual 

 and intellectual betterment. The country that has been blessed 

 with abundant natural resources, but has allowed them to be ex- 

 hausted by use and abuse, is not only at a disadvantage, but its 

 rulers have committed a crime against nature and their own peo- 

 ple in allowing such exhaustion to take place. It is, moreover, one 

 of the most imperative duties of the authorities in any country 

 to take measures that will insure the preservation, so far as that 

 is consistent with the daily requirements of the people of the 

 country, of its natural resources. It is as much a duty to make 

 use of the material resources of the earth as it is to preserve them. 

 A balance between no utilization at all on the one hand and prodi- 

 gal waste on the other must be maintained. This is not to be 

 accomplished by deprivation. Probably no land has ever been 

 seriously impaired in natural resources through the legitimate 

 though abundant use of man. It has occurred in particular in- 

 stances, no doubt, but waste has occurred more as the result of 

 lack of care and the failure to take precautions against loss through 

 the operation of natural forces. 



The invididual citizen is, as a rule, not vitally interested in 

 the preservation of natural resources. His life is short and his 

 interests are immediate and personal. He does not concern him- 

 self to a great extent with the problem of the future of mankind 

 or its means of maintaining an existence upon the earth. Human 

 society, on the other hand, is, in some form, perpetual. It lives 

 indefinitely and its demand for physical maintenance in the future 

 will be as great as in the past if an equal degree of civilization 

 be maintained. While the individual, therefore, may not feel a 

 vital interest in the preservation and proper use of the material 

 basis of human civilization, human society and its personification, 

 human government, should and must be vitally interested in it. It 

 is unquestionably a legitimate function of the government of every 

 civilized country to take measures toward insuring the permanence 

 of its existence. One of the most evident means of doing so is 

 to determine the nature and amount of its resources and on this 



