LEADERSHIP 605 



usually followed in the pulpit. He believed* the truth should 

 be emphasized that good farming is a good way of serving God, 

 and that passing down to future generations a well-kept farm, 

 unimpaired in fertility and adapted to the nourishment of a 

 happy, wholesome life, is in itself an act of worship and the 

 best possible sort of partnership in the purposes of the Almighty, 

 who the Scriptures assure us gave the earth to the children of 

 men. 



He believed, and for much more than a generation he taught 

 every week to many thousands of his followers, that the earth 

 God gave to the children of men was given not to this generation 

 only, to be mined, robbed, exploited and ruined by greed, but to 

 all future generations of the children of men as well ; and that 

 to rob mankind a thousand years hence is just as bad as to rob 

 our neighbors to-day. 



"Who is thy neighbor ? Those on earth to-day only ? No, said 

 Uncle Henry, thy neighbor is the human being who comes after 

 thee just as truly as is the one who walks at thy side. 



It was this philosophy which made him the president of the 

 National Conservation Congress, and constituted him a tower 

 of strength to the Conservation movement. It needs him to-day 

 more than ever before, and will suffer by his loss. He wanted 

 the coal, the lands, the minerals, the gas, the oils, the forests 

 and the water power of the nation conserved for the use of the 

 c-hildren of men to whom they were given, and not for some 

 of the children of men. But mainly he spoke for the soil. 



In a little book, "Letters to the Farm Folk," published not 

 long before his death, he said in a passage on the social life of 

 the country people: 



But, you say, this would make us all stockmen. Well, that's what we 

 ought to be, and will have to be sooner or later, if we are to have any 

 satisfactory social life in the country. Growing grain for sale off the 

 land starved the soil. I am speaking now for- the voiceless land. It will 

 not fe<d you unless it is fed; we will then become poorer and mpre dis- 

 couraged; and how can we have any satisfactory social life among poorly- 

 fed and discouraged people? 



Do you think Uncle Henry in this passage was speaking of 

 a danger of to-morrow only? Not so. He saw when he wrote 

 this passage all the centuries of the future. He was in the 



