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a gas well within six miles of his father’s home that was permitted to 
burn almost a year before the flow was stopped. The gas wasted from 
that well alone would be suflicient to supply a city of moderate size for 
a hundred years. Truly we are reaping where we have not sown, and 
are leaving but little of the harvest for future generations. To realize 
the truth of this statement you have but to consider the enormous de- 
velopment in the use of mechanical energy during this generation, and 
the necessarily enormous consumption of oil and coal required to supply 
that energy. 
The one-horse buggy has been superseded by the thirty horsepower 
runabout, the two-horse earriage by the forty-horse touring car, the two- 
horse wagon by the sixty-horse auto truck, the two-horse stage coach by 
the five-hundred horsepower locomotive. The horse car has given place 
to the electric car, the sail ship to the steamship or dreadnought, the 
‘anoe to the motor boat, the bicycle to the motorcycle, the foot or hand 
press to the power press, the typesetter to the linotype, the tallow candle 
to the electric lamp. 
Once man ate what his own fields produced; now much of his food 
comes to him from the ends of the earth. Once man was content to worship 
in the little church at the cross-roads; now he must attend conventions 
in Boston or Los Angeles. Once he thought twenty miles a journey; now 
he travels a thousand miles to see a ball game. 
Now the house wife must have her electric irons and cookers, power 
washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. The farmer must have his feed 
choppers, shredders, threshers, and pumps, all operated by power, lately by 
gas engine power. The thousands of windmills that dotted the country 
twenty years ago have disappeared—replaced by gas motors. The grocer 
grinds the coffee by electricity and delivers it with an automobile. The ab- 
surd extremity to which we have gone in the application of power is illus- 
trated when an auto delivery wagon calls for and delivers a ten cent 
package of laundry. These things are little things, but they illustrate 
the spirit of the age. We do nothing ourselves that we can get Nature 
to do for us. We give no consideration to the fact that we are burning 
the condensed sunshine of bygone ages. Our only question is, ‘‘What does 
it cost?’ What does it cost ws? Not what it has cost Nature, or what it 
will cost future generations. 
The value of coal is fallaciously reckoned on what it costs to mine 
and transport it. The fact that coal represents energy stored by Nature 
