EDITORIAL 



605 



sion respecting ownership or distribu- 

 tion of values which has no logical rela- 

 tion to conservation, and may even be 

 incompatible with its highest realiza- 

 tion." 



Let it be conceded that the problems 



of conservation and those of ownership 



"center in separate fields," and see what 



this concession amounts to. It amounts 



to a logical distinction between the own- 



ership of resources and the uses to 



which they are put. It does not amount 



to a real separation of ownership from 



use in actual practice ; it throws simply 



no light whatever upon the problem of 



the relation of ownership to use. We 



think that no one will withhold assent 



to the proposition that ownership of a 



plot of ground is something quite clis- 



tinct from the use to which the ground 



is put ; that while one is a legal title to 



a definite parcel of real property, the 



other is the application of more or less 



intelligence and energy to a given set 



of physical conditions. It should 



hardly have been necessary for Pro- 



fessor Chamberlin to point out to us 



so elementary a distinction. But it is 



a very different thing to assert that, as 



a matter of human experience, title to 



the land and the use which is made of 



the land have no practical relation. The 



sophistry becomes more evident when 



we develop the argument, as Professor 



Chamber lin does, and maintain that be- 



cause "the best conservation of the soil 



is not necessarily dependent on the most 



desirable partition of the land," there- 



fore, by implication, conservation of the 



soil is in no way dependent in actual 



practice on the partition of the land, 



In this whole contention we are dealing 



with the ancient fallacy which held that 



a logical concept was identical with the 



thing conceived, the fallacy by detecting 



which, according to our recollection, 



Kant first made himself famous. Own- 



ership and the use of a resource are 



logically distinct, but in reality they are 



closely interdependent. Historically this 



fact is so well known that one of the 



very first classifications which the stu- 



dent of economic history finds it con- 



venient to make is the* classification of 



the land tenures. Has not Professor 



Chamberlin, to paraphrase his own most 

 ingenious sentence, by either "a care- 

 less lapse into confusion of thought, or 

 else a wilful perversion of what is le- 

 gitimate in the art of persuasion," 

 glided without a note of warning from 

 an elementary distinction which com- 

 mands universal assent to a real separa- 

 tion which has no actual reference to 

 such a distinction, and may even be 

 incompatible with sound reasoning? 



Moreover, Professor Chamberlin mis- 

 construes the program of conservation 

 when he tells us, with an air of crush- 

 ing finality, that "to divide Alaska into 

 90,000,000 moieties and give each of 

 us one, would not settle the problem of 

 the highest utilization of the Alaskan 

 resources." Who, besides the opponent 

 of straw whom Professor Chamberlin 

 has made that he may destroy him, 

 has ever contended that such a 

 course would lead to such a result? 

 The mere title to a resource will not 

 necessarily conserve it by a process of 

 logical illation, as every one would 

 promptly concede ; but we are not at 

 ' present concerned with the logical Im- 

 plications, but, on the contrary, with the 

 practical results, of ownership. Are we 

 prepared to affirm, for instance, that 

 the prevailing system of individual own- 

 ership of land in the United States has 

 had no bearing historically on the de- 

 velopment of the resources of the United 

 States? Again, it is surely significant 

 that the reasoning by which Professor 

 Chamberlin attempts to separate own- 

 ership from the conservation of re- 

 sources has been most loudly applauded 

 by representatives of those corporate in- 

 terests which own most resources, and 

 use them with least regard for the gen- 

 eral welfare. 



But there is an even more important 

 weakness in the argument which would 

 erect a barrier between the scientific and 

 technical aspects of conservation, on 

 the one hand, and the political and so- 

 ciological aspects of conservation, on 

 the other. It was Mr. Roosevelt who 

 first pointed out that our natural re- 

 sources are our national resources as 

 well. Conservation is no mere academic 

 question ; it is a national issue, because 



