20 Conservation of Natural Resources in California 



in such case ? Not the boys who throw stones through the windows nor 

 the petty thieves who carry off the fence for kindling wood but the 

 people who own it and are responsible for it. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE. 



[E. H.] 



TEACHING CONSERVATION. 



But how can a teacher teach Conservation? By exuding it through the 

 pores! If it gets in it will come out! 



A wise teacher will find a hundred ways to drop good ideas into the 

 hearts of her children. 



For instance, in the careful use of the school supplies. Economy and 

 wise care are virtues greatly to be desired in all our citizenry. The 

 teacher is not working for the sake of saving a few* cents for the school 

 fund ; but for the habits of the children, their way of looking at things, 

 during all their future lives. Carelessness, extravagance, recklessness, 

 are dangerous to the nation. The difference between conservation and 

 reckless waste may be taught in the use of such a common thing as 

 paper, for example. Indeed, paper is really one of our national 

 resources, as it is made of wood pulp, and wood pulp is made from trees. 

 A big edition of a Sunday newspaper requires perhaps a dozen acres 

 of woodland. Every sheet of paper, every desk, every box, every 

 splinter of wood that we see or use, represents trees, trees that were 

 chopped from our forests. Every one of our eighty million people 

 use more than seven times as much wood per year as do the people 

 all over Europe. Every big city fire destroys a great and splendid 

 forest. Millions upon millions of acres of woodland continually go 

 into the ties along our railroad lines. Countless other forests are rotting 

 away deep under ground in the coal mines and gold mines. 



The teacher who goes into the subject with interest himself will find 

 no lack of striking and interesting and valuable things to pass along 

 to his flock; things that point to civic patriotism; things more vital to 

 their fatherland than the waving of battle flags and defiance of the 

 foreign foe! [E. H.] 



