The American Revolution had its origin in part in economic causes, 

 and it produced economic results of tremendous reach and weight. 

 The Civil War also arose in large part from economic conditions, and 

 it has had the largest economic consequences. But in each case there 

 was a higher and more compelling reason. So with the third great 

 crisis of our history. It has an economic aspect of the largest and 

 most permanent importance, and the motive for action along that 

 line, once it is recognized, should be more than sufficient. But that 

 is not all. In this case, too, there is a higher and more compelling 

 reason. The question of the conservation of natural resources, or 

 national resources, does not stop with being a question of profit. It 

 is a vital question of profit, but what is still more vital, it is a ques- 

 tion of national safety and patriotism also. 



We have passed the inevitable stage of the pillage of natural re- 

 sources. The vast wealth we found upon this continent has made us 

 rich. We have used it, as we had a right to do, but we have not 

 stopped there. We have abused, and wasted, and exhausted so much 

 that there is the gravest danger that our prosperity today will have 

 been made at the price of the suffering and poverty of our descendants. 

 We may now fairly ask ourselves a reasonable care for the future and 

 a natural interest in those who are to come after us. No patriotic 

 citizen expects this nation to run its course and perish in a hundred, 

 or two hundred, or five hundred years ; but, on the contrary, we 

 expect it to grow in influence and power, and, what is of vastly greater 

 importance, in the happiness and prosperity of our people. But we 

 have as little reason to expect that all this will happen of itself as 

 there would have been for the men who established this nation to 

 expect that a United States would grow of itself without their efforts 

 and sacrifices. It was their duty to found this nation, and they did it. 

 It is our duty to provide for its continuance in well-being and honor. 

 That duty it seems as though we might neglect. Not in willfulness, 

 not in any lack of patriotic devotion, when once our patriotism is 

 aroused, but in mere thoughtlessness to drop the interests of the 

 moment long enough to realize that what we do now will decide the 

 future of the nation. For, if we do not take action to conserve the 

 natural resources, and that soon, our descendants will find them gone. 



Let me use a homely illustration: We have all known fathers and 

 mothers, devoted to their children, whose attention was fixed and 

 limited by the household routine of daily life. Such parents were 

 actively concerned with the common needs and precautions and rem- 

 edies entailed in bringing up a family, but blind to every threat that 

 was at all unusual. Fathers and mothers such as these often remain 

 serenely unaware while some dangerous malady or injurious habit is 

 fastening itself upon a favorite child. Once the evil is discovered, 

 there is no sacrifice too great to repair the damage which their un- 

 witting neglect may have allowed to become irreparable. So it is, I 

 think, with the people of the United States. Capable of every devo- 

 tion in a recognized crisis, we have yet carelessly allowed the habit 

 of improvidence and waste of resources to find lodgment. It is our 

 great good fortune that the harm is not yet altogether beyond repair. 



The profoundest duty that lies upon any father is to leave his son 



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