346 



The National Geographic Magazine 



they are simply good, every-day, average 

 citizens, who are carrying out the duties 

 of the average citizen. 



THE STORY OT OUR NATION 



Now once upon a time there was a 

 young nation which left its home and 

 moved on to a new continent. As soon 

 as the people who formed the first settle- 

 ments began to examine the value and 

 condition of this new continent, they 

 found it marvelously rich in every pos- 

 sible resource. The forests were so vast 

 that they were not a blessing in the early 

 days, but a hindrance. The soil was so 

 rich and there was so much of it that 

 they were able at first only to scratch the 

 edges of their great property. It was 

 quite plain to these people in the early 

 times that however much they might 

 cover, however much they might waste, 

 there w r as going to be plenty left. They 

 found wonderfully rich deposits of ore, 

 great oil fields, and vast stretches of the 

 richest bituminous and anthracite coal 

 lands ; noble rivers making fertile broad 

 expanses of meadow, rich alluvial prai- 

 ries, great plains covered with countless 

 herds of buffalo and antelope, mountains 

 in the west filled with minerals, and on 

 both coasts opportunities richer than 

 any nation had ever found elsewhere 

 before. 



They entered into this vast possession 

 and began to use it. They did not need 

 to think much about how they used their 

 coal, or oil, or timber, or w r ater — it would 

 last — and they began to encroach on the 

 supply with freedom and in confidence 

 that there would always be plenty. The 

 only word with which they described 

 what they had, when they talked about 

 it, was the word inexhaustible. 



Let us see for a moment what the 

 course of development of this young na- 

 tion was. First of all they needed men 

 and women to settle on the land and 

 bring up children and have a stake in 

 the country. That was absolutely neces- 

 sary before there could develop the great 

 nation which some of them saw ahead. 

 As the population spread, there arose a 



need that great systems of transporta- 

 tion should be built to knit the country 

 together and provide for the interchange 

 of its products. These railroads called 

 for iron, coal, and timber in great quan- 

 tities. Then began an unprecedented 

 demand upon the forests. Not only 

 could they not build those transconti- 

 nental railroad lines without millions 

 upon millions of railroad ties cut from 

 the forests of the country, but they could 

 not mine the iron and coal except as the 

 forests gave them the means of timber- 

 ing their mines, transporting the ore, and 

 disposing of the finished product. The 

 whole civilization which they built up 

 was conditioned on iron, coal, and 

 timber. 



As they developed their continent, 

 richer than any other, from the east coast 

 to the west, new resources became re- 

 vealed to them, new interests took pos- 

 session of them, and they used the old 

 resources in new ways. In the East, 

 the rivers meant to them only means of 

 transportation; in the West they began 

 to see that the rivers meant first of all 

 crops ; that they must put the rivers on 

 the land before they could grow wheat, 

 and alfalfa, and fruits, and all the things 

 that make the West rich. They found 

 that to feed the vast population which 

 had grown up in the eastern country 

 they must have the vast ranges of the 

 West to grow meat ; that the resources 

 which produced the wheat, and the 

 meat, and the cotton, and the iron, and 

 coal, and timber, all together made the 

 working capital of a great nation, and 

 that the nation could not grow unless it 

 had all of these things. In taking pos- 

 session of them, our nation used them 

 with greater effectiveness, greater en- 

 ergy and enterprise, than any other na- 

 tion had ever shown before. Nothing 

 like our growth, nothing like our wealth, 

 nothing like the average happiness of 

 our people, can be found elsewhere ; and 

 the fundamental reason for this is, on 

 the one side, the vast natural resources 

 which we had at hand, and, on the other 

 side, the character and ability and power 

 of our people. 



