Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



CALIFORNIA CONSERVATION COMMISSION. 



This fine article by the Chairman of the State Conservation Commission 

 is written in response to a request for a brief statement of what every 

 boy and girl in California ought to know about conservation. 



What would be thought of the man who, owning a coal mine, and a 

 forest, and an oil well, and a stream of water, gave them all away, 

 leaving his sons and daughters to buy, at prices fixed by those to whom 

 he gave his property, their coal, their lumber, their oil, and even their 

 drinking water? 



Coal, forests, oil, water, are merely examples of the thousand-and-one 

 things Nature has given us as natural resources, which we have been 

 giving away from the very beginning of this nation: 



Everybody to whom we have given natural resources makes, of 

 course, a profit on the sale of those natural resources to us ; and as 

 these natural resources come nearer to being exhausted, or as our needs 

 for them become greater, the prices we pay for them grow ever higher, 

 the profits on them always greater. 



Unless we stop giving away our natural resources, the fathers of 

 to-day will be like the father who foolishly gave away all his property ; 

 and the boys and girls of to-day will be like the sons and daughters of 

 that foolish father, stripped of their enormously valuable patrimony 

 and compelled to pay always increasing prices, always greater profits, 

 for the privilege of using that which their fathers gave away. 



Conservation means that none of our natural resources, those that we 

 have given away as well as those that we still own, shall be unnecessarily 

 wasted or destroyed. It means that all our natural resources shall be 

 used, in such quantities and at such times as the needs of the people 

 require. It means that no natural resource shall be hoarded unused by 

 those to whom we gave it, so that, because it is kept unused, the price 

 of that which is used may be kept up and the final price of that which 

 is not being used shall be all the higher. 



Most of our natural resources are limited in quantity ; if we use them, 

 we shall exhaust them. For that reason, if for no other, it is the more 

 necessary that the coal, the iron, the oil, the copper, etc., shall not be, 

 for any reason, unnecessarily wasted or destroyed. 



One wasteable and destructible natural resource, the forests, is espe- 

 cially necessary to the people. It furnishes us lumber, timber, etc. 

 It also protects the streams and springs, from which we get our water 

 supplies for the innumerable uses to which we already put water. Land 

 irrigation, electric-power generation, domestic purposes are some of 

 the necessary uses to which we put water. With every year the neces- 

 sity for water becomes greater. 



