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recent years. Unfortunate it is that this attention was not sooner directed 

 to the conservation of our vast forest resources. In many locaHties they 

 have been exhausted and in many locahties they have been impaired. 

 Perhaps in every locahty until in recent years those resources have been 

 neglected. National interest and patriotism have devoted themselves 

 to the task of arresting this waste, this dissipation of a resource which 

 can be rebuilded only through a long series of years, rising almost to the 

 century mark. Our mines have been wantonly worked and wasted in 

 the past. Unlike the forests, they cannot be recuperated, even with the 

 lapse of centuries. Once exhausted, a mine is always exhausted. It 

 becomes a reminis(^ence. It becomes one of those cemeteries where the 

 dead past continues to bury its dead. We can only reduce, minimize 

 or eliminate waste in the operation of mining and in the use of the out- 

 put of the mine. We cannot restore to life the exhausted mine or the 

 exhausted ore. Waste is the evil to which the soil is equally liable. There 

 are those who mine the soil instead of tilling the soil. This is our greatest 

 resource, resource upon which collective society depends for its existence 

 and upon which every individual depends for his maintenance and for 

 his existence. The growing or grown-up individual must rely upon the 

 soil for his subsistence as relies the babe upon its mother's breast. The 

 beggar in his rags and the prince in his purple depend alike upon the 

 fruits of the soil for existence and for life itself. 



I cannot say more — I need not say more to accentuate the indis- 

 pensable necessity of this resource and of its conservation. The exhaustion 

 of the fertility of the soil is a national calamity. This exhaustion has run 

 rampant in the past in this section and in many sections of the union. 

 The abandoned field is seen as an enduring monument to the waste which 

 has run riot in other days. The fertility of the soil is our greatest patri- 

 mony. It is the national heritage. True, we have ownership of land in 

 severalty in this country, yet every individual and society collectively 

 has a direct interest in the conservation and in the maintenance of the 

 fertility of the soil. 



Improved tillage upon fertilization is the other means and resource 

 upon which we must rely, in order that a fixed land area may meet the 

 requirements of the increasing population, in order that the Malthusian 

 theory may never come to our door as the wolf of want. 



The possibilities of fertilization and of tillage hardly have limits. 

 Their capacity is almost unlimited. I remember in the vicinity of Paris 

 2 7-10 acres which produced 250 tons of vegetable product. In Egypt 

 900 people are maintained on a single square mile under irrigation. The 

 number rises to 1,200 in portions of India, and in the Empire of Japan 

 there are 45,000,000 souls and the tillable land amounts to less than 20,000 

 square miles, less than the area of New Jersey and Maryland combined. 



By proper fertilization and by proper tillage this country will be 

 able to meet and maintain all the requirements of an increasing popula- 



