326 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



June 



correspondent fifty years ago, Lord Ma- 

 caulay used these words : "As long as 

 you have a boundless extent of fertile 

 and unoccupied land your laboring popu- 

 lation will be found more at ease than 

 the laboring population of the Old 

 World; but the time will come when 

 wages will be as low and will fluctuate 

 as much with you as they do with us. 

 Then your institutions will be brought 

 to the test. Distress everywhere makes 

 the laborer mutinous and discontented 

 and inclines him to listen with eagerness 

 to agitators who tell him that it is a 

 monstrous iniquity that one man should 

 have a million and another cannot get 

 a full meal. * * The day will 



come when the multitudes of people, 

 none of whom has had more than 

 half a breakfast or expects to have 

 more than half a dinner, will choose a 

 legislature. Is it possible to doubt what 

 sort of legislature will be chosen? * * 

 There will be, I fear, spoliation. The 

 spoliation will increase the distress ; the 

 distress will produce a fresh spoliation. 

 Either civilization or liberty 

 will perish. Either some Caesar or Xa- 

 poleon will seize the reins of govern- 

 ment with a strong hand, or your re- 

 public will be as fearfully plundered and 

 laid waste by barbarians in the twenti- 

 eth century as the Roman Empire in 

 the fifth." \Ve need not accept this 

 gloomy picture too literally, but we 

 have been already sufficiently warned to 

 prevent us from dismissing the subject 

 as unworthy of attention. Every na- 

 tion finds its hour of peril when there 

 is no longer free access to the land, or 

 when the land will no longer support 

 the people. Far may this day 



be from us. But since the unnecessary 

 destruction of our land will bring new 

 conditions of danger, its conservation, 

 its improvement to the highest point of 

 productivity promised by scientific in- 

 telligence and practical experiment, ap- 

 pears to be a first command of any po- 

 litical economy worthy of the name. 



If this patriotic gospel is to make head- 

 way, it must be by just such organized mis- 

 sionary work as is to-day begun. It cannot 

 go on an>l conquer if imposed from without. 

 It must come to represent the fixed idea of 

 the people's mind, their determination and 

 their hope. It cannot be incorporated in 

 our practical life by the dictum of any in- 

 dividual or any officer of Xation or State 

 in his official capacity. It needs the co-oper- 

 ation of all the influences, the help of every 

 voice, the commendation of Xation and 

 State that has been the strength and inspir- 

 ation of every worthy work on American 

 soil for 120 years. We return, for our gath- 

 ering in council and for our plan of action 

 for the future, to the model given us by 

 the Fathers. State and Nation are repre- 



sented here, without jealousy or any ambi- 

 tion of superiority on either side, to apply 

 to the consideration of our future such co- 

 operation as that out of which this Nation 

 was born and by which it has won to 

 worthy manhood. Reviving the spirit of 

 the days that created our Constitution, the 

 days that carried us through civil conflict, 

 the spirit by which all our enduring work in 

 the world has been wrought, taking thought 

 as Washington and Lincoln took thought, 

 only for the highest good of all the people, 

 we may. as a result of the deliberations held 

 and the conclusions reached here to-day, 

 give new meaning to our future; new lustre 

 to the ideal of a Renublic of living federated 

 states; shape anew the fortunes of this 

 country, and enlarge the borders of hope 

 for all mankind. 



Immediately after the conclusion of 

 Mr. Hill's paper, Dr. Thomas C. 

 Chamberlain, President of the Ameri- 

 can Associat : on for the Advancement 

 of Science, head of the department of 

 Geology, University of Chicago, and 

 editor of the Journal of Geology, read 

 a paper on "Soil Wastage." Dr. 

 Chamberlain stated that his studies 

 and investigations have brought him 

 to the belief that the era of the earth's 

 future habitability is vastly greater 

 than we have been wont to think. He 

 stated that it is a familiar deduction of 

 geology that for untold ages rains 

 have fallen on the lands, and soils 

 have grown in depth while the sur- 

 face has been washed away. Produc- 

 tion and removal, he said, have run 

 hand in hand, and yet thev have been 

 controlled to such a degree by the ad- 

 justments of nature that no part of the 

 surface seems ever to have been so far 

 denuded that plants could not grow on 

 it. More than this, it appears, said 

 Dr. Chamberlain, that the ordinary 

 adjustments of nature make for the 

 increasing fertility of the soil, rather 

 than for depletion. Dr. Chamber- 

 lain's address follows : 



The invitation to give thought to the re- 

 sources that affect our future appeals 

 to me with peculiar indeed almost per- 

 sonal force, for my studies of the past 

 decade have led to the belief that the era 

 of the earth's future habitability is vastly 

 greater than we have been wont to think. We 

 have grown up in the belief that the earth 

 sprang from chaos at the opening of our 

 era and is plunging on to catastrophe or to 



