Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 107 



more corn that year than had ever been grown in the United States in 

 a single year before. But the average yield per acre was less than it 

 was in 1872. We are barely keeping the acre product stationary. The 

 average wheat crop of the country now ranges from twelve and one half, 

 in ordinary years, to fifteen bushels per acre in the best seasons. And 

 so it is on down the line. 



Not only the economic but the political future is involved. No people 

 ever felt the want of work or the pinch of poverty for a long time with- 

 out reaching out violent hands against their political institutions, 

 believing that they might find in a change some relief from their dis- 

 tress. Although there have been moments of such restlessness in our 

 country, the trial has never been so severe or so prolonged as to put us 

 to the test. It is interesting that one of the ablest men in England 

 during the last century, a historian of high merit, a statesman who saw 

 active service and a profound student of men and things, put on record 

 his prophecy of such a future ordeal. Writing to an American corre- 

 spondent fifty years ago, Lord Macaulay used these words: "As long as 

 you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your labor- 

 ing population will be found more at ease than the laboring population 

 of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be as low 

 and will fluctuate as much with you as they do with us. Then your 

 institutions will be brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the 

 laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with 

 eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that 

 one man should have a million and another can not get a full meal. 

 The day will come when the multitudes of people, none of 

 rtiom has had more than half a breakfast or expects to have more than 

 ilf a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what 

 >rt of legislature will be chosen? * * * There will be, I fear, 

 >oliation. The spoliation will Increase the distress; the distress will 

 >roduce a fresh spoliation. * * * Either civilization or liberty will 

 )erish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of govern- 

 lent with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered 

 ind laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman 

 Impire in the fifth." We need not accept this gloomy picture too 

 literally, but we have been already sufficiently warned to prevent us 

 -om dismissing the subject as unworthy of attention. Every nation 

 ids its hour of peril when there is no longer free access to the land, 

 >r when the land will no longer support the people. * * Far may 

 this day be from us. But since the unnecessary destruction of our land 

 nil bring new conditions of danger, its conservation, its improvement 

 the highest point of productivity promised by scientific intelligence 

 and practical experiment, appears to be a first command of any political 

 economy worthy of the name. 



