66 FINAL, ACT OF SECOND PAN AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 



Nations must depend, the American Governments realize the vital need of 

 arresting the inroads improvidently or unnecessarily made upon their 

 natural wealth. They comprehend also that, as to many of their national 

 resources, more than a merely conservative treatment is required; that 

 reparatory agencies should be invoked to aid the processes of benefi- 

 cent nature, and that the means of restoration and increase should be sought 

 whenever practicable. They see that to the task of devising economical 

 expenditure of resources, which, once gone, are lost forever, there should 

 be superposed the duty of restoring and maintaining productiveness wher- 

 ever impaired or menaced by wastefulness. In the northern part of the 

 American hemisphere destruction and waste bring other evils in their 

 train. The removal of forests, for instance, results in the aridity of vast 

 tracts, torrential rainfalls break down and carry away the unprotected 

 soil, and regions once abundant in vegetable and animal life become barren. 

 This is a lesson almost as old as the human race. The older countries of 

 Europe, Africa, and the Orient teach a lesson in this regard which has been 

 too little heeded. 



Unfortunately the international conference which had been proposed 

 by Secretary BACON, pursuant to the direction of President ROOSEVELT, 

 was not held as its august initiators had hoped, but the reasons which 

 prompted it then exist to-day, and indeed make a stronger appeal than 

 its proposers could have anticipated. The United States, therefore, 

 recurred to Secretary BACON'S proposition and decided to enlarge the 

 scope of the Second Pan American Scientific Congress, which was to meet 

 in Washington, in order that it might include in its various sections the 

 subjects which would have been embraced in the program of the original 

 Conservation Conference, and thus to bring them to discussion in the 

 Congress, which would, as far as this topic was concerned, properly be 

 considered as a conference of the American Republics on the Conserva- 

 tion of Natural Resources. 



It will therefore be found on reverting to Section III, which naturally 

 covers a very wide range of subjects, that the keynote of conservation runs 

 through the entire program. This is not the reckless conservation which 

 would restrict the use of resources by the present generation regardless of 

 economic laws, but the wise method based upon the recognition of the 

 fact that conservation implies necessarily the means with which to con- 

 serve, which may be entirely lacking in a primitive community. Accord- 

 ingly the Section opened with a discussion of conservation and economic 

 theory. The inevitable law of sacrifice was cited that the conser- 

 vation !of [natural (resources meets [everywhere its sharp limitation in 

 human resources. No doubt industrious farmers could in a short time 

 double or treble the agricultural output of the Americas, but they 

 would have to be assured either of an increase of prices or of a greatly 



