CONSERVATION 



1552 



CONSERVATION 



in furnishing power make its use and control 

 one of the important problems of conservation. 

 Surplus water must be stored and made avail- 

 able in time of drought ; forest areas that retain 

 the water that would otherwise cause the 

 streams to overflow their banks must be pro- 

 tected from the lumberman's ax; water power 

 must be developed and be protected from pri- 

 vate exploitation; streams must be purified for 

 water supply; and swamp and overflow lands 

 must be drained and made useful. 



Forests, minerals and products of the soil all 

 belong to the resources which are limited in 

 their supply. The destruction of vast quanti- 

 ties of timber through the ax and the flames 

 of forest fires went on century after century 

 before the world came to a realization of the 

 danger that menaced one of its most valuable 

 assets. In Europe adequate systems of con- 

 serving the forest areas have been devised by 

 Germany, France, Austria, Denmark and Bel- 

 gium, and in this work Germany carries off first 

 honors. Every German state has its forest 

 organization, and there are in the country sev- 

 eral schools of forestry. France established a 

 school of forestry at Nancy in 1824, and its 

 Department of Forestry has an admirable sys- 

 tem of replanting and cultivating timber lands. 



Of the minerals, coal is the most important 

 from an industrial standpoint. This valuable 

 fuel has for years been mined as if the supply 

 were inexhaustible, and official figures show 

 that there has been about one ton wasted to 

 every ton mined. It has been the policy to 

 leave in the ground whatever is not easily 

 mined and to ignore vast quantities of material 

 of a lower grade, much of which has been made 

 inaccessible by the caving in of abandoned 

 shafts. Through the conservation movement 

 man is learning how to mine coal with less 

 waste, and he is learning another lesson, equally 

 important, that water power may be utilized 

 to develop electrical energy and thus lessen the 

 consumption of coal. Wherever electric power 

 generated by water is used instead of steam for 

 transportation, h'eating or factory purposes, 

 there is a proportionate saving of the world's 

 coal supply. 



Conservation in the United States. In Amer- 

 ica, the conservation movement had its birth 

 in the movement to save the forests, the rapid 

 destruction of which was pointed out as early 

 as 1873 by the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science. As a result of the 

 agitation then begun, a Bureau of Forestry was 

 created in the Department of Agriculture, and 



in 1891 the government began to set apart 

 national forest reserves. At the present time 

 the United States has over 185,000 acres of 

 national forest area. 



The greatest pioneer in the work of pre- 

 serving the country's natural wealth was Gif- 

 ford Pinchot, under whose leadership the 

 United States Forest Service (formerly the 

 Bureau of Forestry) developed to a position of 

 first importance. Pinchot had the vision to see 

 and the courage to declare that the resources 

 of the nation were inseparably bound up in 

 each other and that the country's natural 

 wealth must be protected from two evils 

 waste and unrestrained and selfish monopoly. 



The White House Conference. It was for- 

 tunate for the conservation movement that 

 when public sentiment was becoming thor- 

 oughly aroused on the subject open-minded 

 and far-seeing statesmen were in national offi- 

 cial positions. Acting on Pinchot's suggestion, 

 President Roosevelt brought the underlying 

 forces of the movement to a focus by calling, 

 in May, 1908, a White House conference, or 

 "Conference of the Governors." This historic 

 assembly, which marks the beginning of a 

 definite and recognized public policy in regard 

 to the preservation of the country's resources, 

 was attended by governors from thirty-four 

 states and by numerous distinguished men in- 

 terested in or connected in some way with the 

 movement. 



Shortly after the White House conference, 

 President Roosevelt created a National Con- 

 servation Commission, consisting of forty-nine 

 men prominent in political affairs, the indus- 

 tries and science. This commission was divided 

 into four sections, which reported respectively 

 on minerals, waters, forests and soils. The 

 results of their investigations, published in 

 1909, gave the United States the first inventory 

 of natural resources possessed by any nation, 

 for the report contains a statement as to the 

 country's natural wealth, the amounts already 

 used and the probable duration of their future 

 life. 



What Has Been Accomplished. During 

 Roosevelt's administration more than 234,000,- 

 000 acres of the government domain, including 

 timber, coal and phosphate lands and lands 

 containing valuable water-power sites, were 

 withdrawn from the possibility of private own- 

 ership. This is representative of the present 

 policy of the government and is one of the 

 most important results of the conservation 

 movement. Another achievement of the con- 



