9G Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



and happy only as the wild crop of field and forest are plentiful. He 

 rises and lies down with the sun. He survives only as he observes nature 

 and fits himself to her ways. 



But as -savagery gives place to civilization, man frees himself more and 

 more from those bonds which bound him so closely to nature. Slowly 

 and painfully at first, and then far more rapidly and easily, he learns 

 to control his material surroundings. He breaks the prairie with the 

 plow, makes the beasts of the field his servants, strikes the pick into the 

 mountain and the axe into the veteran of the forest. He now no 

 longer waits upon the seasons. He builds himself a house against the 

 cold and warms himself to the point of comfort in the midst of the 

 winter blast. Instead of passively accepting the wild fruits as they 

 ripen he compels the soil to yield a harvest a millionfold more abundant, 

 and this harvest he stores up against days of want. Instead of migrat- 

 ing with the birds he fixes his home where he will, and pursues his 

 work and his pleasure in his own time. 



Discovery and invention place new implements in his hands. With 

 his intelligence quickened and his body trained by new experience and 

 new occupations, he continues to increase his mastery over time, tem- 

 perature, and place. New material riches become available. He is able 

 to satisfy his wants more readily and more certainly than ever before. 

 The standard of his living is raised. He now possesses and enjoys, 

 besides all that his fathers required, a host of things of which they knew 

 nothing. Wants multiply with prosperity, till his life becomes highly 

 complex. He is lord of nature, because he has learned how to appro- 

 priate her resources. 



But if the resources of nature should fail, where would be his 

 mastery then? 



This is the point which we commonly overlook. Man has laid nature 

 under tribute, and has become powerful because nature was rich. 

 Impoverish nature and her tribute stops. Ingenuity, capacity, labor, 

 are incapable of extracting wealth.from the gutted mine, from the fire- 

 scorched brush land, from the sun-baked stream bed, from the impover- 

 ished soil. Civilization is achieved by the use of the resources of nature ; 

 it can endure no longer than the resources upon which it depends. 



Living as we do to-day in the midst of conveniences which give us 

 apparent independence of nature, it is almost inevitable that we should 

 lose sight of this truth. It is difficult for us to realize that we, standing 

 at the height of western civilization, are in fact vastly more dependent 

 upon tributary nature than is the savage of the South Seas. Suppose 

 the coal supply should give out in the middle of winter? Suppose a 

 huge conflagration should sweep our forests from the hillsides? Sup- 

 pose sudden floods should lay waste our fertile farm lands, scoring them 



