JAMES J. HILL 



The railroad magnate of the Great Northern is recognized not only 

 as a captain of industry, but as a high authority on the land and 

 resources of the United States. His thoughts are well worth weighing. 



* * Of all the sinful wasters of man 's inheritance on earth, ' ' said the 

 late Professor Shaler, "and all are in this regard sinners, the very 

 worst are the people of America." This is not a popular phrase, but 

 a scientific judgment. It is borne out by facts. In the movement of 

 modern times, which has made the world commercially a small place, 

 and has produced a solidarity of the races such as never before ex- 

 isted, we have come to the point where we must to a certain extent 

 regard the natural resources of this planet as a common asset, com- 

 pare them with demands now made and likely to be made upon them, 

 and study their judicious use. Commerce, wherever untrammeled, is 

 wiping out boundaries and substituting the world relation of demand 

 and supply for smaller systems of local economy. The changes of a 

 single generation have brought the nations of the earth closer together 

 than were the states of this Union at the close of the Civil War. If we 

 fail to consider what we possess of wealth available for the uses of 

 mankind, and to what extent we are wasting a national patrimony that 

 can never be restored, we might be likened to the directors of a com- 

 pany who never examine a balance sheet. 



The sum of resources is simple and fixed. From the sea, the mine, 

 the forest and the soil must be gathered everything that can sustain 

 the life of a man. Upon the wealth that these supply must be con- 

 ditioned forever, as far as we can see, not only his progress, but his 

 continued existence on earth. How stands the inventory of property 

 for our own people? The resources of the sea furnish less than five 

 per cent of the food supply, and that is all. The forests of this coun- 

 try, the product of centuries of growth, are fast disappearing. The 

 best estimates reckon our standing merchantable timber at less than 

 2,000,000,000,000 feet. Our annual cut is about 40,000,000,000,000 

 feet. The lumber cut rose from 18,000,000,000 feet in 1880 to 34,- 

 000,000,000 feet in 1905 ; that is, it nearly doubled in twenty -five years. 

 We are now using annually 500 feet board measure of timber per 

 capital, as against an average of 60 for all Europe. The New England 

 supply is gone. The Northwest furnishes small growths that would 

 have been rejected by the lumbermen of thirty years ago. The South 

 has reached its maximum production and begins to decline. On the 

 Pacific coast only is there now any considerable body of merchantable 

 standing timber. We are consuming yearly three or four times as 

 much timber as forest growth restores. Our supply of some varieties 

 will be practically exhausted in ten or twelve years ; in the case of 

 others, without reforesting, the present century will see the end. 

 When will we take up in a practical and intelligent way the reforesta- 

 tion of our forests? * * * 



The exhaustion of our coal supply is not in the indefinite future. 

 The startling feature of our coal production is not so much the magni- 

 tude of the annual output as its rate of growth. For the decade end- 

 ing in 1905 the total product was 2,832,402,746 tons, which is almost 



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