over $100,000,000, of which Europe took over $55,000,000 worth and 

 South America about $25,000,000 worth. All the countries of eastern 

 Europe must import timber to meet the excess of their needs over the 

 home supply. Meanwhile, with an estimated home consumption of 23 

 billion cubic feet of wood annually, our depleted and abused forests 

 are producing by growth probably less than 7 billion feet. The Bu- 

 reau of Corporations of the Department of Commerce and Labor esti- 

 mates the existing supply of saw timber in the United States at less 

 than 3,000 billion board feet, which is equivalent to about 500 billion 

 cubic feet. Economists now recognize that, taking the world over, 

 wood consumption exceeds its growth, and that a crisis approaches. 



ft-'ft'.ft 

 NATURAL GAS 



Dr. White, the State Geologist of West Virginia, presented in vivid 

 fashion a picture of the waste of our purest form of fuel. 



A great geologist once said, "The nations that have coal and iron 

 will rule the world." Bountiful nature has dowered the American 

 people with a heritage of both coal and iron richer by far than that 

 of any other political division of the earth. 



It was formerly supposed that China would prove the great store- 

 house from which the other nations could draw their supplies of carbon 

 when their own had become exhausted, but the recent studies of a 

 brilliant American geologist in that far-off land, rendered possible by 

 the generosity of the world's greatest philanthropist, tell a different 

 story. The fuel resources of China, great as they undoubtedly are, 

 have been largely overestimated, and Mr. Willis reports that they will 

 practically all be required by China herself, and that the other nations 

 cannot look to her for this all-important element in modern industrial 

 life. 



A simple glance at a geological map of the United States will con- 

 vince any one that nature has been most lavish to us in fuel resources, 

 for we find a series of great coal deposits extending in well scattered 

 fields almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the 

 Gulf, while even over much of New England and the coastal plains, 

 vast areas of peat, the primal stage of coal, have been distributed. 

 But coal of every variety from peat to anthracite is not all of nature 's 

 gifts to fortunate America. Great deposits of both petroleum and 

 natural gas occur in nearly every state where coal exists, and in some 

 that have no coal. What greater dowry of fuels could we ask when 

 we find them stored for us within the bosom of our mother earth in 

 all three of the great types coal, petroleum, and natural gas only 

 awaiting the tap of the pick and drill to bring them forth in prodigal 

 abundance ? 



What accounts can we as a nation give of our stewardship of such 

 vast fuel treasures? Have we carefully conserved them, using only 

 what was necessary in our domestic and industrial life, and transmit- 

 ting the remainder, like prudent husbandmen, unimpaired to suc- 

 ceeding generations? Or have we greatly depleted this priceless 

 heritage of power and comfort, and source of world-wide influence, 



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