SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII iVi 



there. The state geologist tells us that the gas was wasted at the 

 rate of one forty-five-ton carload of coal dumped into a bottomless 

 abyss, never to be recovered again — how often do you think? Every 

 minute, day and night, for twenty years. And those American people 

 down there allowed that natural resource to disappear right under their 

 hands, without regard to the fact, and now we are to'.d that at the very 

 longest, the natural gas res;ources of this country will be exhausted 

 within another twenty-five years. 



And in the same way we have recklessly gone into the coal de- 

 posits that have been given to us, and the iron; and there never was 

 a sadder story along this line than the v.-ay we have treated our for- 

 ests. In forests, a wealth beyond our power to conceive was given 

 to us, and today, after we have inhabited this country only the short 

 period of a hundred and twenty-five years, we have to shamelessly 

 acknowledge the fact that half of those forests are gone, and half of 

 the half that is gone has been wantonly destroyed by fire and reckless 

 neglect, for which our own people are responsible. 



So when I refer to allowing the soil fertility, which is our greatest 

 of all natural resources, to slide away through our crops and through our 

 streams. I am referring to what seems to be a confirmed habit of the 

 American people, to neglect the greatest wealth that could be given to 

 them. 



I heard a story the other day of the meanest man, and I think this 

 definition was about right. They say the meanest man was one who 

 kept his wife in bed a full month after she got well, so that the neigh- 

 bors would keep sending in things that were good to eat. I believe that 

 man, in a sense, can be compared to the American nation, which has 

 been accepting these good things from a bountifu.1 hand that sooner or 

 later will come to recognize that it has been deceived. 



Now, friends, far be it from me to be an alarmist; I am not that by 

 any means, nor a pessimist, either. They say a pessimist is a person 

 who has a choice of two evils, and chooses them both. I am an optimist, 

 and although I have painted this just as it is, and it always makes me 

 feel rather discouraged when I go into it, there is another side, and I 

 want you to hear something of that. There are two great remedies for 

 these difficulties, and only two; and they are investigation and instruc- 

 tion. Mr. Thorne referred eloquently to the use of the telephone. What 

 a wonderful thing! I never put the long-distance telephone down but 

 what I think what a marvelous thing that a man here may talk with 

 another a hundred or two hundred miles away as clearly as though they 

 were in the same town. How did that telephone come to this marvel- 

 ous state of development? He might have told us that also; doubtless he 

 knows. 



A few weeks ago I was in the laboratory of a gentleman who is an 

 expert along those lines — Doctor Pupin, of Columbia University — by the 

 way, a poor boy from Serbia — poor, down-trodden Serbia. He has been 

 studying this problem for years, and I asked him to show m,e something 

 of the apparatus that he used. And so he took me down into the cellar 



