An American Fable 



347 



Now what have we done with these 

 resources which have made us great, and 

 what is the present condition in which 

 this marvelously vigorous nation finds 

 itself ? The keynote of our times is "de- 

 velopment." Every man, from' New 

 York to San Francisco, wants the devel- 

 opment of the natural resources, the ad- 

 vantages, the opportunities which sur- 

 round him, his neighbors, and his 

 friends. Any one who questions the 

 wisdom of any of the methods we are 

 using in bringing that development to 

 pass, because he believes we are making 

 mistakes that will be expensive later, is 

 in danger of being considered an enemy 

 to prosperity. He is in danger of hav- 

 ing it thought of him that he does not 

 take pride in our great achievements, 

 that he is not a very good American. 

 But in reality it is no sign that a man 

 lacks pride in the United States and the 

 wonderful things our people have done 

 in developing this great country because 

 he wants to see that development go on 

 indefinitely. On the contrary, real pa- 

 triotism and pride in our country make 

 it the first of all duties to see that our 

 nation shall continue to prosper. In 

 sober truth, we have brought ourselves 

 into a present condition in which a very 

 serious diminution of some of our re- 

 sources is upon us. 



WHAT A TIMBER FAMINE WOULD MEAN 



A third of this country was originally 

 covered with what were, all in all, the 

 most magnificent forests of the globe — 

 a million square miles of timber land. In 

 the short time, as time counts in the life 

 of nations, that we have been here, we 

 have all but reached the end of them. 

 We thought it unimportant until lately 

 that we have been destroying by fire as 

 much timber as we have used. But we 

 have now reached the point where the 

 growth of our forests is but one-third of 

 the annual cut, while we have in store 

 timber enough for only twenty years at 

 our present rate of use. This wonder- 

 ful development, which would have been 

 impossible without the cutting of the for- 



ests, has brought us where we really face 

 their absolute exhaustion within the 

 present generation. And we use five or 

 six times more timber per capita than the 

 European nations. A timber famine 

 will touch every man, woman, and child 

 in all the land ; it will affect the daily life 

 of every one of us ; and yet without con- 

 sideration, without forecast, and without 

 foresight, we have placed ourselves, not 

 deliberately, but thoughtlessly, in a posi- 

 tion where a timber famine is one of the 

 inevitable events of our near future. 



Canada cannot supply us, for she will 

 need her timber herself. Siberia cannot 

 supply us, for the timber is too far from 

 water transportation. South America 

 cannot supply us, because the timbers of 

 that vast continent are of a different 

 character from those we use, and ill- 

 adapted to our needs. We must suffer 

 because we have carelessly wasted this 

 great condition of success. It is impos- 

 sible to repair the damage in time to es- 

 cape suffering. 



But forests only begin the story of our 

 impaired capital. Our anthracite coals are 

 said to be in danger of exhaustion in fifty 

 years, and our bituminous coals early 

 in the next century ; some of our older 

 oil fields are already exhausted ; the nat- 

 ural gas has been wasted — burning night« 

 and day in many towns of this country 

 until the supply has failed. Our iron 

 deposits grow less each year. Our 

 ranges in the West, from which we first 

 drove the buffalo to cover them again 

 with cattle and sheep, are capable of sup- 

 porting but about one-half what they 

 could under intelligent management ; 

 and the price of beef is raised. Nearly 

 every one of our wonderful resources we 

 have used without reasonable foresight 

 and reasonable care, and as each be- 

 comes exhausted a heavier burden of 

 hardship will be laid upon us as a people. 



Now what is our remedy? The rem- 

 edy is the perfectly simple one of com- 

 mon sense applied to national affairs as 

 common sense is applied to personal af- 

 fairs. This is no abstruse or difficult 

 question. We have hitherto as a nation 



