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a gas well within six miles of his father's home that was permitted to 

 burn almost a year before the flow was stopped. The gas wasted from 

 that well alone would be sufficient to supply a city of moderate size for 

 a hundred years. Truly we are reaping where we have not sown, and 

 are leaving but little of the harvest for future generations. To realize 

 the truth of this statement you have but to consider the enormous de- 

 velopment in the use of mechanical energy during this generation, and 

 the necessarily enormous consumption of oil and coal required to supply 

 that energy. 



The one-horse buggy has been superseded by the thirty horsepower 

 runabout, the two-horse carriage by the forty-horse touring car. the two- 

 horse wagon by the sixty-horse auto truck, the two-horse stage coach by 

 the five-hundred horsepower locomotive. The horse car has given place 

 to the electric car, the sail ship to the steamship or dreadnought, the 

 canoe to the motor boat, the bicycle to the motorcycle, the foot or hand 

 press to the power press, the typesetter to the linotype, the tallow candle 

 to the electric lamp. 



Once man ate what his own fields produced ; now much of his food 

 comes to him from the ends of the earth. Once man was content to worship 

 in the little church at the cross-roads ; now he must attend conventions 

 in Boston or Los Angeles. Once he thought twenty miles a journey; now 

 he travels a thousand miles to see a ball game. 



Now the house wife must have her electric irons and cookers, power 

 washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. The farmer must have his feed 

 choppers, shredders, threshers, and pumps, all operated by power, lately by 

 gas engine power. The thousands of windmills that dotted the country 

 twenty years ago have disappeared — replaced by gas motors. The grocer 

 grinds the coffee by electricity and delivers it with an automobile. The ab- 

 surd extremity to which we have gone in the application of power is illus- 

 trated when an auto delivery wagon calls for and delivers a ten cent 

 package of laundry. These things are little things, but they illustrate 

 the spirit of the age. We do nothing ourselves that we can get Nature 

 to do for us. We give no consideration to the fact that we are burning 

 the condensed sunshine of bygone ages. Our only question is, 'What does 

 it cost?" What does it cost usl Not what it has cost Nature, or what it 

 will cost future generations. 



The value of coal is fallaciously reckoned on what it costs to mine 

 and transport it. The fact that coal represents energy stored by Nature 



