THE WASTEFUL WEST 



Oh, we are civilized, we Americans, and we are 

 rich, rich! Otherwise we could not have afforded 

 all our incredible waste, our incredibly brutal ex- 

 travagance, our unrighteous haste in squandering 

 our own resources. We are the most reckless peo- 

 ple in the world today, no doubt, as we are the rich- 

 est. Let us not ponder upon the fact that in time 

 the spendthrift goes broke, and that "spendthrift" 

 may be as fair a denomination for a nation as 

 for an individual. Let us forget our excesses as 

 things unpleasant or as things humorous, whichever 

 one likes. We do not mourn about a million dollars 

 why grieve about a million hides? We do not 

 ponder upon the extinction of the white pine as a 

 forest tree why trouble ourselves about the wiping 

 out of a race or of a species? We are rich, rich; 

 we can afford it. We can even, in our careless be- 

 lief, afford to be de- Americanized. 



As to the process of our wastefulness in the de- 

 struction of the buffalo, there was a curiously sys- 

 tematic organization about it. It was necessary to 

 kill and skin every buffalo on the Western plains 

 at the first possible moment ; wherefore, the Ameri- 

 can mind swiftly reduced it to a science. The mar- 

 kets of the world could use this great shaggy robe 

 could, to some small extent, use the leather made 

 from the hide. Hence dealers set about the problem 



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