TOO Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



It was formerly supposed that China would prove the great store- 

 house from which the other nations could draw their supplies of carbon 

 when their own had become exhausted, but the recent studies of a 

 brilliant American geologist in that far-off land, rendered possible by 

 the generosity of the world's greatest philanthropist, tell a different 

 story. The fuel resources of China, great as they undoubtedly are, 

 have been largely overestimated, and Mr. Willis reports that they will 

 practically all be required by China herself, and that the other nations 

 can not look to her for this all-important element in modern industrial 

 life. 



A simple glance at a geological map of the United States will convince 

 any one that nature has been most lavish to us in fuel resources, for we 

 find a series of great coal deposits extending in well scattered fields 

 almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific, frcm the Lakes to the Gulf, 

 while even over much of New England and the coastal plains, vast 

 areas of peat, the primal stage of coal, have been distributed. But coal 

 of every variety from peat to anthracite is not all of nature's fuel gifts 

 to fortunate America. Great deposits of both petroleum and natural 

 gas occur in nearly every state where coal exists, and in some that have 

 no coal. What greater dowry of fuels could we ask when we find them 

 stored for us within the bosom of our mother earth in all three of the 

 great types coal, petroleum, and natural gas only awaiting the tap of 

 the pick and drill to bring them forth in prodigal abundance ? 



What account can we as a nation give of our stewardship of such 

 vast fuel treasures? Have we carefully conserved them, using only 

 what was necessary in our domestic and industrial life, and transmitting 

 the remainder, like prudent husbandmen, unimpaired to succeeding 

 generations? Or have we greatly depleted this priceless heritage of 

 power and comfort, and source of world-wide influence, by criminal 

 waste and wanton destruction? The answer should bring a blush of 

 shame to every patriotic American, for not content with destroying our 

 magnificent forests, the only fuel and supply of carbon known to our 

 forefathers, we are with ruthless hands and regardless of the future 

 applying both torch and dynamite to the vastly greater resources of 

 this precious carbon which provident nature has stored for our use in 

 the buried forests of the distant past. The wildest anarchists, deter- 

 mined to destroy and overturn the foundations of government, could not 

 act in a more irrational and thoughtless manner than have our people 

 in permitting such fearful destruction of the very sources of our power 

 and greatness. Let me enumerate some of the details of this awful 

 waste of our fuel resources that has been going on with ever-increasing 

 speed for the last forty years. 



First, let us consider how we have wasted natural gas, the purest 

 form of fuel, ideal in every respect, self-transporting, only awaiting 



