60 Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



Our Third National Crisis. 



In the third great crisis of our history, which has now come upon us 

 unawares, our whole people, unconsciously and for lack of foresight, 

 seem to have united together to deprive the nation of the great natural 

 resources without which it can not endure. This is the pressing danger 

 now, and it is not the least to which our national life has been exposed. 

 A nation deprived of liberty may win it, a nation divided may reunite, 

 but a nation whose natural resources are destroyed must inevitably pay 

 the penalty of poverty, degradation, and decay. 



At first blush this may seem like an unpardonable misconception and 

 over-statement, and if it is not true it certainly is unpardonable. Let 

 us consider the facts. Some of them are well known, and the salient 

 ones can be put very briefly. 



The five indispensably essential materials in our civilization are wood, 

 water, coal, iron, and agricultural products. 



"We have timber for less than thirty years at the present rate of 

 cutting. The figures indicate that our demands upon the forest have 

 increased twice as fast as our population. 



We have anthracite coal for but fifty years, and bituminous coal for 

 one hundred. 



Our supplies of iron ore, mineral oil, and natural gas are being 

 rapidly depleted, and manj^ of the great fields are already exhausted. 

 Mineral resources such as these when once gone are gone forever. 



We have allowed erosion, that great enemy of agriculture, to impov- 

 erish and, over hundreds of square miles, to destroy our farms. The 

 Mississippi alone carries yearly, to the sea more than 4,000,000,000 tons 

 of the richest soil within its drainage basin. If this soil is worth a dollar 

 a ton, it is probable that the total loss of fertility from soil-wash to the 

 farmers and forest owners of the United States is not far from a billion 

 dollars a year. Our streams, in spite of the millions of dollars spent 

 upon them, are less navigable now than they were fifty years ago, and 

 the soil, lost by erosion from the farms and the deforested mountain 

 sides, is the chief reason. The great cattle and sheep ranges of the West, 

 because of over-grazing, are capable, in an average year, of carrying but 

 half the stock they once could support and should still. Their condition 

 affects the price of meat in practically every city of the United States. 



These are but a few of the more striking examples. The diversion of 

 great areas of our public lands from the home maker to the landlord 

 and the speculator, the national neglect of great water powers, which 

 might well relieve, being perenially renewed, the drain upon our non- 

 renewable coal; the fact that but half the coal has been taken from 

 the mines which have already been abandoned as worked out and in 

 caving-in have made the rest forever inaccessible; the disuse of the 

 cheaper transportation of our waterways, which involves but little 



