692 CONSERVATION 



telephones. Its own cement-mill has sources of their continent. The net 

 manufactured 80,000 barrels of cement, result is the modern American billion- 

 and the purchased amount is 403,000 aire and the imminent bankruptcy of 

 barrels. Its own sawmills have cut the continental domain. Whatever grat- 

 3,036,000 feet board-measure of lumber, itude posterity may cherish for insti- 

 and 23,685,000 feet have been pur- tutions bequeathed, may be overcome 

 chased. The surveying parties of the by the indictments of the disinherited 

 Service have completed topographic descendants of those who, in their in- 

 surveys covering 10,970 square miles sane scramble for immediate gain, have 

 an area greater than the combined areas cried, "After us the deluge," and have 

 of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, burned the Nation's patrimony. 

 The transit lines had a length of 18,900 For a President to have discovered 

 linear miles, while the level lines run this ; to have been intelligent and force- 

 amount to 24,218 miles, or nearly suffi- ful enough to have, in a measure, 

 cient to go around the earth. stopped it ; to have guaranteed our 



The diamond drillings for dam sites great-grandchildren the remnants of 



and canals amount to 66,749 feet, or use left of a great geographical inher- 



more than twelve miles. To-day the itance, is quite enough for one man in a 



Service owns and has at work 1,500 lifetime to have accomplished, 



horses and mules. It operates nine lo- The report of the National Conser- 



comotives, 611 cars, and twenty-three vation Committee, now in the hands of 



miles of railroad ; eighty-four gasoline Congress, presents an appalling indict- 



engines, and seventy steam engines. It ment of the political intelligence of the 



has constructed and is operating five American people. 



electric-light plans. There have been Three generations ago the American 



excavated 42,447,000 cubic yards of forest covered an area of a million 



earth and rock. The equipment now square miles, one-third the land surface 



operated by the Service on force- of the United States. Now there is not 



account work represents an investment enough timber left to last the genera- 



of a million dollars. tion playing marbles in the school-yard. 



This work has been carried on with Although the mineral production of 



the following force : the United States is second only to ag- 



Classified and registered service, ricultural value, adding 400000,000 



including Washington office.. 1,126 P er y ear to . the national wealth, the 



Laborers employed directly by waste mmm S and treatment of mm- 



the Government 4,448 eral substances sum up an average loss 



Laborers employed by con- to the American people of about 60 - 



tractors 10 789 000,000 a year. The use of fuels which 



supply light, heat, and power, owing 



or a total of all forces of 16,363. The specially to the fact that manufactur- 

 expenditures now total nearly 250,000 ing has increased so rapidly, has itself 

 per month. As a result of the opera- increased much more rapidly than the 

 tions of the Reclamation Service eight population of the country. 'The avail- 

 new towns have been established, 100 a bl e and accessible supplies of coal in 

 miles of branch railroads have been con- the United States aggregate 1,463,- 

 structecl, and 14,000 people have taken 800.000.000 tons. But this "includes the 

 up their residence in the desert. The poor coal ; we have been using the best 

 Statistician. and most accessible. We have already 

 WASTE used seven and one-half billion tons 



and wasted nine billion tons of coal. 



Nothing in all the history of civilized The anthracite will hardly last twenty 



nations in modern times has shown a years, and the bituminous 100, at the 



wastefulness so reckless, so insensate, present rate. But the use of coal is in- 



so criminal, as the wastefulness of the creasing almost, as it were, in geomet- 



American people with the natural re- rical progression, for in the decade 



