34» 



The National Geographic Magazine 



taken the same course as did at first the 

 young man who came into possession of 

 his new property. It is time now for a 

 change. 



It is true that some natural resources 

 renew themselves, while others do not. 

 Our mineral resources once gone are 

 gone forever. It may appear, therefore, 

 at first thought that conservation does 

 not apply to them, since they can be used 

 only once ; but this is far from being the 

 fact. Methods of coal mining, for in- 

 stance, have been permitted in this coun- 

 try which take out on the average but 

 half of the coal, and then in a short time 

 the roof sinks in on the other half, which 

 thereafter can never be mined. Oil and 

 natural gas also have been and are being 

 exploited with great waste, and as 

 though there never could be an end to 

 them. The forests we can replace at 

 great cost and with an interval of suffer- 

 ing. The soil which is washed from the 

 surface of our farms every year to the 

 amount of a billion tons, making, with 

 the further loss of fertilizing elements 

 carried away in solution, the heaviest tax 

 the farmer has to pay, may in the course 

 of centuries be replaced by the chemical 

 disintegration of the rock; but it is de- 

 cidedly wiser to keep what we have by 

 careful methods of cultivation. We may 

 very profitably stop putting our farms 

 into our streams, to be dug out at great 

 expense through river and harbor appro- 

 priations. Fertile soil is not wanted in 

 the bed of a stream, and it is wanted on 

 the surface of the soil of the farms and 

 the forest-covered slopes of the moun- 

 tains ; yet we spend millions upon mil- 

 lions of dollars every year removing 

 from our rivers what ought never to 

 riave got into them. 



A MONOPOLY OF OUR GREATEST NATURAL 



RESOURCE, WATER POWER, SHOULD 



BE PREVENTED 



Besides exhausting the unrenewable 

 and impairing the renewable resources, 

 Ave have left unused vast resources which 

 are capable of adding enormously to the 

 -wealth of the country. Our streams 



have been used mainly in the West for 

 irrigation and mainly in the East for 

 navigation. It has not occurred to us 

 that a stream is valuable not merely for 

 one, but for a considerable number of 

 uses ; that these uses are not mutually 

 exclusive, and that to obtain the full ben- 

 efit of what the stream can do for us we 

 should plan to develop all uses together. 

 For example, when the national govern- 

 ment builds dams for navigation on 

 streams, it often disregards the possible 

 use, for power, of the water that flows 

 over those dams. Engineers say that 

 many hundred thousand horse-power are 

 going to waste over government dams in 

 this way. Since a fair price for power, 

 where it is in demand, is from $20 to $80 

 per horse-power per year, it will be seen 

 that the government has here---devel- 

 oped yet lying idle — a resource capable 

 of adding enormously to the natural 

 wealth. So, also, in developing the 

 western streams for irrigation, in many 

 places irrigation and power might be 

 made to go hand in hand. 



If the public does not see to it that the 

 control of water power is kept in the 

 hands of the public, we are certain in the 

 near future to find ourselves in the grip 

 of those who will be able to control, with 

 a monopoly absolutely without parallel 

 in the past, the daily life of our people. 

 Let us suppose a man in a western town, 

 in a region without coal, rising on a cold 

 morning, a few years hence, when in- 

 vention and enterprise have brought to 

 pass the things which we can already 

 foresee as coming in the application of 

 electricity. He turns on the electric 

 light made from water power ; his break- 

 fast is cooked on an electric stove heated 

 by the power of the streams ; his morn- 

 ing newspaper is printed on a press 

 moved by electricity from the streams ; 

 he goes to his office in a trolley car 

 moved by electricity from the same 

 source. The desk upon which he writes 

 his letters, the merchandise which he 

 sells, the crops which he raises, will have 

 been brought to him or will be taken to 

 market from him in a freight car moved 

 by electricity. His wife will run her 



