by criminal Avaste and wanton destruction ? The answer should bring 

 a blush of shame to every patriotic American, for not content with 

 destroying our magnificent forests, the only fuel and supply of carbon 

 known to our forefathers, we are with ruthless hands and regardless 

 of the future applying both torch and dynamite to the vastly greater 

 resources of this precious carbon which provident nature has stored 

 for our use in the buried forests of the distant past. The wildest 

 anarchists, determined to destroy and overturn the foundations of 

 government, could not act in a more irrational and thoughtless man- 

 ner than have our people in permitting such fearful destruction of 

 the very sources of our power and greatness. Let me enumerate some 

 of the details of this awful waste of our fuel resources that have been 

 going on with ever-increasing speed for the last forty years. 



First, let us consider how we have wasted natural gas, the purest 

 form of fuel, ideal in every respect, self-transporting, only awaiting 

 the turning of a key to deliver to our homes and factories heat and 

 light and power. Partial nature has apparently denied this great 

 boon to many other lands. It is practically unknown in France, Ger- 

 many, and Great Britain, our chief competitors in the world of in- 

 dustry. Even wood and coal must first be converted into gas before 

 they will burn, but here is a fuel of which nature has given us a 

 practical monopoly, lavish in abundance, already transmuted into the 

 gaseous stage and stored under vast pressure to be released wherever 

 wanted at our bidding. The record of Avaste of this our best and 

 purest fuel is a national disgrace. 



At this very minute this unrivaled fuel is passing into the air within 

 our domain from uncontrolled gas wells, from oil wells, from giant 

 flambeaus, from leaking pipe lines and the many other methods of 

 w T aste at the rate of not less than one billion cubic feet daily and 

 probably much more. 



Very few appear to realize either the great importance of this hy- 

 dro-carbon fuel resource of our country, or its vast original quantity. 

 Some of the individual wells, if we may credit the measurements, 

 have produced this fuel at the rate of 70,000,000 cubic feet daily, the 

 equivalent in heating value of 70,000 bushels of coal, or nearly 12,000 

 barrels of oil. In my humble opinion the original amount of this 

 volatile fuel in the United States, permeating, as it does, every un- 

 disturbed geologic formation from the oldest to the most recent, rival- 

 ed or even exceeded in heating value, all of our wondrous stores of 

 coal. 



Suppose that it were possible for some Nero, inspired by a mania of 

 incendiarism, to apply a consuming torch to every bed of coal that 

 crops to the surface from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that the 

 entire coal supply of the Union was threatened with destruction with- 

 in a very few years, what do you think would happen? Would our 

 state legislatures sit undisturbed panoplied by such a carnival of fire ? 

 Would the governors of thirty states remain silent while the demon 

 of flame was ravaging the coal resources of the republic? Certainly 

 not; there w r ould be a united effort by the governors and legislatures 

 of all the states in the Union to stay the progress of such a direful 

 conflagration ; even the sacred constitutional barriers wisely erected 



CO 



