CONCLUSION 375 



WASTE AND THEFT OF OTHER RESOURCES 

 Forests are not the only natural resource that has been stolen and 

 pillaged and wasted in this country. All other natural resources have 

 been treated in much the same way — coal, oil, gas, iron, copper, water 

 power, and the tillable soil itself. Wherever a valuable resource is 

 given away, or sold for far less than its real value, it is, as Professor 

 Ely has said, merely "subsidizing the speculator, endowing monopoly, 

 and pauperizing the people." The anthracite monopoly of Pennsyl- 

 vania controls one valuable resource, the Standard Oil Company con- 

 trols the marketing of another ; a few gas companies control what is 

 left of our natural gas ; and all these monopolies may be traced to 

 the unwise policy which has been pursued by the Federal government, 

 and by the states which had valuable resources under their control. 

 Monopolies are not the only result of our unwise policy of alienation, 

 however, nor even the worst result. The criminal and unnecessary 

 waste with which some of our resources have been exploited is even 

 more unfortunate. It has been estimated that we have wasted, ren- 

 dered inaccessible, as much coal as we have taken out of the ground, 

 and the waste of natural gas has been relatively even worse. 



It is true that some of this apparent waste has been unavoidable, 

 in a country where labor is so expensive and resources so cheap ; but 

 if the reservation policy had been applied, not only to forest lands, 

 but to all mineral deposits, some of this waste could have been elimi- 

 nated. The Federal government, and those states which had valuable 

 resources, should have alienated only one thing — the surface of the 

 soil, of ordinary agricultural lands. The policy of reservation should 

 have been applied to everything else, not only to forests and mineral 

 resources, but, in some measure at least, to irrigation lands, swamp 

 lands, and to arid grazing lands. This would have delayed exploita- 

 tion or development, but it would in the long run have resulted in a 

 saner and healthier development of the country. 



It may be noted that Congress recently took a very unwise step 

 in dealing with the grazing lands, by passing the Stock Raising 

 Homestead Act of 1916, which provides for the entry of grazing lands 

 in tracts of 640 acres. The act has already resulted in the alienation 

 of large areas of the public domain, largely to speculators, who take 

 up land with thfe intention of selling later to cattle companies. It is 



