38 Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



There is something wrong in this. It is legal at present, but it is not 

 moral. No one should have a right to destroy the Homes of the future. 

 It is against the general good. We have a right to use the land but 

 not to destroy it. It is easily possible to dredge the land in such way 

 that the good soil will remain on top, the cobblestones below but that 

 costs more money and the profits are cut down. It is also possible that 

 a share of these ill-gotten profits might induce unpatriotic lawyers to 

 hinder and delay the passage of restrictive laws on this matter for 

 many years, while many future homes pass out of the world forever. 



[E. H.] 



THE LOSS OF OUR SOIL. 



This striking statement is from The Outlook, edited by Lyman Abbott. 



We are in the habit of speaking of the solid earth and the eternal 

 hills as though they, at least, were free from the vicissitudes of time, 

 and certain to furnish perpetual support for prosperous human life. 

 This conclusion is as false as the term ' ' inexhaustible ' ' applied to other 

 natural resources. The waste of soil is among the most dangerous of 

 all wastes now in progress in the United States. In 1896 Professor 

 Shaler, than whom no one has spoken with greater authority on this 

 subject, estimated that in the upland regions of the states south of 

 Pennsylvania three thousand square miles of soil had been destroyed 

 as the result of forest denudation, and that the destruction was then 

 proceeding at the rate of one hundred square miles of fertile soil per 

 year. No seeing man can travel through the United States without 

 being struck with the enormous and unnecessary loss of fertility by 

 easily preventable soil wash. The soil so lost, as in the case of many 

 other wastes, becomes itself a source of damage and expense, and must 

 be removed from the channels of our navigable streams at an enormous 

 annual cost. The Mississippi River alone is estimated to transport 

 yearly four hundred million tons of sediment, or about twice the amount 

 of material to be excavated from the Panama Canal. This material is 

 the most fertile portion of our richest fields, transformed from a 

 blessing to a curse by unrestricted erosion. 



