48 



Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



The billion tons of soil which are washed away every year would spread 

 a layer like Nile mud over Indiana, Illinois or Iowa. But what good 

 does it do buried in the depths of the mighty ocean ? It may help some 

 future Saurus family, but it won't help yours. 



Whole towns have been washed away by the change of currents in 

 silt-laden streams. In some neighborhoods an entire farm has been 

 taken up and carried across to the other side of a river. Within the 

 past year the town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was threatened with 

 destruction, many of the buildings toppling over into the turbid flood. 



Bad plowing is the cause of a great deal of soil-waste. The farmer 



A truck garden ruined by flood. The fertile soil carried away, leaving gullies 

 in some places and great piles of driftwood and gravel in others. 



of America each year digs a Panama Canal with his little plow. Each 

 year he digs out of the heart of his little forty, eighty or one hundred 

 and sixty acres of land a block of dirt really bigger than the entire cut 

 of the whole Panama Canal. The riches of his farm take wings. He did 

 not see them go. He does net understand that he is literally plowing 

 his farm into the mighty ocean. Not only do we waste, but that waste 

 accelerates each year. That is the horrible feature of all these resource- 

 wastes they increase geometrically with awful swiftness. The buffalo 

 went "all at once." The trees, the fish, the ore, will go "all at once." 

 We do not like high prices, but higher prices than we now can dream 



