Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 99 



stock of its patrimony; the next to manage the assets in such manner 

 that none shall be wasted, that all be put to the greatest good of the 

 living and their descendants. Now, we have just begun to take stock 

 of our national patrimony ; and it is with the deepest sense of responsi- 

 bility imposed upon me by the invitation to this meeting, to the nation, 

 and to coming generations of all time, that I speak as one of the junior 

 solicitors. In my opinion, we should watch closely all the assets and 

 begin both to save and to use them more wisely. 



Let us begin with iron: We must in all possible ways lessen the 

 demands upon it, for it is with iron ore we are least adequately pro- 

 vided. One of the chief uses of this metal is connected with transporta- 

 tion, mainly by rail. Moving 1,000 tons of heavy freight by rail 

 requires an 80-ton locomotive and twenty-five 20-ton steel cars (each 

 of 40-ton capacity), or 580 tons of iron and steel, with an average of, 

 say, ten miles of double track (with 90-pound rails), or 317 tons 

 additional; so that, including switches, frogs, fish-plates, spikes, and 

 other incidentals, the carrier requires the use of an equal weight of 

 metal. The same freight may be moved by water by means of 100 to 

 250 tons of metal, so that the substitution of water-carriage for rail- 

 carriage would reduce the consumption of iron by three fourths to 

 seven eighths in this department. At the same time the consumption 

 .of coal for motive power would be reduced 50 to 75 per cent, with a 

 corresponding reduction in the coal required for smelting. No single 

 step open to us to-day would do more to check the drain on iron and 

 coal than the substitution of water-carriage for rail-carriage wherever 

 practicable, and the careful adjustment of the one to the other through- 

 out the country. 



NATURAL GAS. 



Dr. White, the State Geologist of West Virginia, presented in vivid 

 fashion a picture of the waste of our purest form of fuel. This is of 

 interest to us in California, because we, too, have great fields of petroleum 

 and natural gas being used in similar ways. In Fresno and Kern coun- 

 ties are many thousands of acres of open oil reservoirs from which the 

 most valuable parts of the oil are evaporating by night and by day. 

 Gushers throw up to the sky vast columns of oil and gas, drenching 

 the country for miles around with the precious fuel, and wasting it into 

 the upper air. Every feature in the West Virginia account below Is 

 repeated and repeated in our own State. The loot of California's oil 

 fields is said to have made more than two hundred sudden millionaires. 

 Are they worth what they have cost? 



A great geologist once said, ' ' The nations that have coal and iron will 

 rule the world. ' ' Bountiful nature has dowered the American people 

 with a heritage of both coal and iron richer by far than that of any 

 other political division of the earth. 



