30 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1254 



are an economic necessity in large and small 

 operations. 



One great lesson in conservation peculiarly 

 applicable to our nervous, energetic, and al- 

 vrays hard-working people, we bave not yet 

 adopted, because we are so constituted tbat as 

 a nation or a race we will not learn it, is that 

 of the better conservation of our vital re- 

 sources. 



Tbe National Conservation Congress, in its 

 several yearly sessions, bas taken, among 

 others, as subjects for study and discussion: 

 Forestry, The Improvement of Farm Condi- 

 tions, "Water Powers and The Vital Eesouxces 

 and Health of our People. "When will we learn 

 the lessons of the last, the vital importance to 

 ouj people of learning to conserve their 

 strength. No one has better epitomized the 

 American wastefulness of vital energy than 

 dear old Mark Twain, who (writing from 

 Naples in 1867), sent us these words, pregnant 

 with the lesson of the higher conservation of 

 life: 



We walked up and down one of the most popu- 

 lar streets for some time enjoying other people's 

 comfort and wishing we could export some of it 

 to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts 

 at home. Just in this one matter lies the main 

 charm of life in Europe — comfort. In America, 

 we hurry, which is well; hut when the day's work 

 is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, 

 we plan for the morrow, we even carry our busi- 

 ness cares to bed with us, and toss and worry 

 over them when we ought to be restoring our 

 racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn 

 up our energies with these excitements, and either 

 die early or drop into a mean and lean old age, 

 at a time of life they call a man's prime in 

 Europe. When an acre of ground has produced 

 long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a 

 season; we take no man clear across the conti- 

 nent in the same coach in which he started; the 

 coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its 

 heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; 

 when a razor has seen long service and refuses to 

 hold an edge, the barber lays it aside for a few 

 weeks and the edge comes back of its own accord. 

 We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate ob- 

 jects but none upon ourselves. What a robust 

 people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if 



we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occa- 

 sionally and renew our edges. 



Surely Mark was right in this. 



"We owe a duty of watchfukiess to the men, 

 devoted to public service, who ably lead great 

 movements for the betterment of conditions 

 among our people — ^men who are not only cap- 

 tains of industry, but generals in the army of 

 public service, and leaders and exemplars in 

 the pursuit of public duty. They become in 

 leading these great movements, in a measure, 

 the custodians of the public welfare, but 

 " Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" "Who shall 

 care for these very generals, and see that they 

 conserve the store of intelligence, patriotism 

 and energy, that goes out from them to public 

 welfare, that it may not be prematurely ex- 

 hausted? Surely we should take measures to 

 have them feel how the nation values them as 

 a public asset, and how they owe it to their 

 country as well as to their homes to heed and 

 to preach to others the wise words of Mark 

 Twain. 



"We perhaps can not conclude that the great 

 war has really taught us to better conserve our 

 vital resources in our men and women, for 

 they have been prodigal in expenditure of their 

 strength in national service, but may we not 

 hope that following the past one hundred years 

 of uninterrupted peace between the English- 

 speaking peoples of the world, the closer bond 

 that the war has promoted between our Eng- 

 liA brethren and ourselves, while giving them 

 a better and closer estimate of us, may bring to 

 us a better appreciation of the value of con- 

 serving life as they conserve it, giving our na- 

 tion the valued services in their advanced 

 years of men who, under our more intensive 

 life, would have reached their limit of useful- 

 ness. 



To our engineering profession is due the 

 early study of the doctrines of conservation, 

 later taken up by our publicists and legisla- 

 tors. Conservation is primarily an engineer- 

 ing question. At the first, the organization 

 meeting of the American Institute of Mining 

 Engineers, held in May, 18Y1, now nearly half 

 a century ago, which I attended, a committee 

 was appointed " to consider and report on the 



