Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 47 



one billion tons! Our balance of trade is going some, isn't it? Also, 

 unfortunately, our soil, which raised that balance of trade, is going 

 some. 



A fraction of the matter transported by the waters is coarse (sand 

 and gravel), but fully ninety per cent consists of rich soil-stuff washed 

 from the surface or leached from the subsurface of fields and pastures 

 and (in less degree) of woodlands. Reckoned on the basis of value as 

 fertilizer, the material could hardly be appraised at less than one dollar 

 per ton ; so that the annual loss to the agricultural interests of the 

 country can hardly fall short of a billion dollars equivalent to an 

 impost as great as most other taxes combined, and one yielding abso- 

 lutely no return. It is worse than that. Most of us have known stocks 

 to pass a dividend. How would you feel if the whole stock and every- 

 thing back of it were wiped out? What would we think of the man- 

 agement that allowed such an event to happen? But this is happening, 

 and under our own management. 



The foregoing are estimates made by a United States soil expert. 

 Other competent Government authorities can offer us definite food for 

 additional thought, if we care to hearken. The greatest loss of our soil, 

 we are told, is from preventable erosion. The total soil-wash of the 

 country is a billion tons a year. This would make a pile of adobe as 

 high as the Washington Monument and a mile long on each of the four 

 sides ! Cleared and plowed lands, the source of food products, are the 

 ones which suffer. 



Most of the soil- wash at least seven hundred and eighty-five million 

 tons every twelve months, probably is dumped into the ocean and lost 

 forever. This would fill four channels as big as the Panama Canal,, 

 according to the original specifications. So says the cold-eyed soil 

 expert. 



Four hundred million tons of soil are washed from the borders of the 

 Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries every year and 

 poured as mud into the Gulf of Mexico. So says the wild-eyed Wash- 

 ington statistician. 



Muddy waters carry more impurities than clear, and so endanger 

 health more. They have greater power for cutting away the banks of 

 streams. Deposits in the channels, drifting sand bars and changing 

 courses are caused entirely by silt in muddy streams. Had you ever 

 thought of that? Read the hymn backward. Thrown out of balance, 

 water and sand im-make the pleasant land. 



From the State of Missouri alone enough soil is carried away an- 

 nually to make a prism one mile square and six hundred feet high. The 

 Missouri River bears into the Mississippi every twelve months enough 

 earth to make a mud-pile a mile square and four hundred feet high. 



