104 Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



forever, as far as we can see, not only his progress, but his continued 

 existence on earth. How stands the inventory of property for our own 

 people? The resources of the sea furnish less than five per cent of the 

 food supply, and that is all. The forests of this country, the product of 

 centuries of growth, are fast disappearing. The best estimates reckon 

 our standing merchantable timber at less than 2,000,000,000,000 feet. 

 Our annual cut is about 40,000,000,000,000 feet. The lumber cut rose 

 from 18,000,000,000 feet in 1880 to 34,000,000,000 feet in 1905 ; that is, 

 it nearly, doubled in twenty-five years. We are now using annually 500 

 feet board measure of timber per capita, as against an average of 60 for 

 all Europe. The New England supply is gone. The Northwest fur- 

 nishes small growths that would have been rejected b} r the lumbermen 

 of thirty years ago. The South has reached its maximum production 

 and begins to decline. On the Pacific coast only is there now any con- 

 siderable body of merchantable standing timber. We are consuming 

 yearly three or four times as much timber as forest growth restores. 

 Our supply of some varieties will be practically exhausted in ten or 

 twelve years; in the case of others, without reforesting, the present 

 century will see the end. When will we take up in a practical and 

 intelligent way the reforestation of our forests? * * * 



The exhaustion of our coal supply is not in the indefinite future. 

 The startling feature of our coal production is not so much the magni- 

 tude of the annual output as its rate of growth. For the decade ending 

 in 1905 the total product was 2,832,402,746 tons, which is almost exactly 

 one half the total product previously mined in this country. For the 

 year 1906 the output was 414,000,000 tons, an increase of 46 per cent on 

 the average annual yield of the ten years preceding. In 1907 our pro- 

 duction reached 470,000,000 tons. Fifty years ago the annual per 

 capita production was a little more than one quarter of a ton. It is 

 now about five tons. It is but eight years since we took the place of 

 Great Britain as the leading coal-producing nation of the world, and 

 already our product exceeds hers by over 43 per cent, and is 37 per cent 

 of the known production of the world. Estimates of coal deposits still 

 remaining must necessarily be somewhat vague, but they are approxi- 

 mately near the mark. The best authorities do not rate them at much 

 over 2,000,000,000,000 tons. If coal production continues to increase 

 as it has in the last ninety years, the available supply will be greatly 

 reduced by the close of the century. Before that time arrives, however, 

 resort to Blower grades and sinking of mines to greater depths will 

 become necessary, making the product inferior in quality and higher in 

 price. Already Great Britain's industries have felt the check from a 

 similar cause, as shown in her higher cost of production. Our turn will 

 begin probably within a generation or two from this time. Yet we still 

 think nothing of consuming this priceless resource with the greatest 



