22 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



The costs of getting oil in this way are higher than the costs of 

 pumping it from wells. These new costs of production will 

 have to be added to the prices of gasoline and other oil prod' 

 ucts. In other words, a diminishing supply of oil will mean 

 increasing costs, unless better methods of producing oil from 

 the low yield sources are invented. In the Texas Panhandle 

 a billion cubic feet of natural gas are simply blown into the air 

 every day. That is enough to light a city like Washington for 

 150 days. Copper, coal, iron, zinc, lead, nickel, all these min' 

 erals are slowly being exhausted. There are but a few minerals 

 such as silica and aluminum of which the supply now seems 

 to be sufficient for all time. 



America has ceased to be a young country. Of this there 

 could be no surer sign than the increasing control of land use 

 by the federal and state governments. The United States De' 

 partment of Agriculture regulates crops, combats soil erosion, 

 promotes land saving programs, administers 170,000,000 acres 

 of National Forest land and buys more land to create new 

 National Forests, helps forest owners to reduce forest fires and 

 grow timber as a crop, studies farm costs and prices, animal 

 production, crop production and marketing. 



The state and the federal governments protect wild life. 

 Public lands are mostly closed to settlers. Under the Taylor 

 Grazing Act 142,000,000 acres of the once free range have 

 been put under restricted use. 19 Petroleum production is in part 

 controlled and the government is seeking to increase this con' 

 trol. The Park Service cares for great scenic and wild areas 

 that have been set aside as National Parks so that Americans 

 can get some idea of what their forefathers really saw when 

 they trekked across the continent. On top of this, the govern' 

 ment is lending money to the farmer, insuring his crops 

 against loss and low prices, promoting foreign markets, assist' 

 ing families stranded on sub'marginal land, reclaiming new 



19 Future of the Great Plains, op. cit., Appendix II, p. 176. 



