388 FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



coal began to be mined, and in large more of the land and take a larger and 

 sections of the country, natural gas sup- still larger toll of human life and man- 

 planted coal. In the use of all these made wealth. And it is all our fault ; 

 wood, coal, and gas the same spirit of it is all because we Americans have iu>t 

 criminal wastefulness prevailed, and seen, and will not see, the folly of the 

 now the evil results are becoming mani- course we are following, 

 fest. Indeed, to thinking, seeing men. Men of science tell us that the coal in 

 these results have been apparent for our mines is approaching exhaustion, 

 years. Who among those who read this and that a very few hundred years will 

 ever use wood as fuel, excepting it be see the end of the supply. \Yasteful 

 while on a camping or vacation trip? methods of mining, wastefulness in con- 

 But turn your mind's eye back a few sumption, go on unchecked absolutely 

 years; think of the time when you, unheeded. Who cares? If we lose, in 

 reader, lived at home with father and power production, ninety per cent, of 

 mother, perhaps on the old farm, \\hat our coal, why worry? There will be 

 was the fuel then ? Wood, most likely plenty for us. and "after us, the 

 burned in the old-fashioned fireplace, in deluge." Let those who follow us warm 

 the form of great logs. Later came themselves by the rays of the sun ; let 

 coal, and the grates, coal stoves, and our descendants invent sun motors for 

 "base burners." Then, for those of you transportation and power purposes ; we 

 who live west of the Alleghanies and shall not be here to suffer, and if the 

 east of the Mississippi, came the gas. children of our children are made mis- 

 Now, you have gone back to coal again, t-rable. we shall not know it. There is 

 You haven't wood any longer; you your American spirit a spirit as far 

 wasted the gas, of which there was from altruism as is the North Pole from 

 enough, had it been properly used, to the South. 



last five hundred years, and now you But now this orgy of destruction, this 

 are burning coal. Two of your candles saturnalia of extravagance, is to be 

 are gone, and you are burning the third ended. The whisperings of a new Na- 

 at both ends. tional policy have been running through 

 The days when our rivers and water- the land for years, and at last these 

 ways were crowded with a vast and whisperings are growing more distinct, 

 ceaselessly busy traffic are well within A tVw years ago they began to take 

 the memory of living men. Shrunken definite form to become coherent and 

 as it is to a small fraction of its former audible, and then we set about preserv- 

 magnitude, the inland water traffic of ing, as best we could, the forests that 

 the United States is still magnificent, remained to us. Then they grew loud- 

 But American heedlessne--. American e r, and the Inland Waterways Coinmis- 

 wastefulne American carelessness sion was born. The fuller note was 

 has brought this water traffic to its heard in the Conference of the Govern- 

 present pitiable state pitiable as com- ors ; and now comes the deep-lunged 

 pared to its former immensity. Hill- challenge to the Spirit of Unthrift in 

 sides ravished with ax and saw and fire, the appointment of the Commission for 

 laid bare to the storms and the floods, the Conservation of Natural Resources, 

 have vomited their soil into the rivers, A new commandment has been given 

 there to form bars and shallows that unto the American people, and it is 

 turn former water-highways into sue- this : "Thou shalt not waste the lands 

 cessions of pools. Low water, in the nor the resources that the Lord has 

 Ohio and the Mississippi, the Wabash given thee." 

 and the Kanawha, and all the other riv- ^ ^ ^ 

 ers of the Middle West to say nothing "United We Stand" 

 of those farther east or farther west- 

 lasts now from May to December; the A M< )NG the most noticeable features 

 rest of the year the rivers are raging ^~*- of the White House Conference 

 floods, that each year devour more and was the idea, often repeated, that no 



