Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 97 



with gullies or heaping them with sand? Would not any single one of 

 these calamities bring upon us incalculable losses and suffering? 



And yet these suppositions are not imaginary. We need to look only 

 a very little way ahead, as things are going now, in order to see them 

 realized, in effect. True, the failure of our resources will not come 

 suddenly, and such of our resources as can be renewed need never fail 

 if we use them wisely. But the exhaustible resources, chief among 

 which are the mines, are coming to an end as certainly as if the end 

 were to-day, while those resources whose exhaustion is due not to 

 necessity, but to folly, have no future unless we insure it by our own 

 provision. 



It is clear, therefore, that the question how we shall make the best 

 use of our natural resources, renewable and not renewable, is a pressing 

 question of the hour. Where renewal is impossible, there is need of the 

 strictest economy; and where renewal can be secured by prudence and 

 foresight, the very existence of the nation demands that prudence and 

 foresight be exercised. 



This is the significance of the Conference of Governors on the Con- 

 servation of Natural Resources held at the White House, May 13-15, 

 1908, which took up for the first time the problem of conservation in 

 all its details. 



TREAD WELL CLEVELAND, JR. 



A NEW PATRIOTIC IMPULSE. 



The World's Work Magazine summed up the Governors' Conference in 

 its editorial correspondence as follows. 



It was the most notable company of men that has come together in 

 our country in recent times. The official head of the nation, the 

 Cabinet, the Supreme Court, certain members of Congress, the heads 

 of the states, and, besides these, many of the most distinguished scientific 

 men that we have and men of a sound grasp of public subjects who 

 came as " advisers" to the Governors two or three of the most note- 

 worthy citizens of every state among them the presidents of many of 

 our foremost universities and schools of science; and, besides these, 

 representatives of all the most important national organizations of 

 scientific and commercial bodies. 



About the general proposition that this extraordinary meeting was 

 called to emphasize there was no difference of opinion. And the wealth 

 of facts that were presented put the subject in every mind in a new 

 way, and aroused every man to an argent purpose. When one subject 

 was put into every mind as the foremost subject of public action that 

 this generation can have, and was so presented and emphasized as to 

 win universal assent and to arouse a patriotic purpose, then all the 

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