An American Fable 



349 



sewing-machine or her churn and fac- 

 tories will turn their shafts and wheels 

 by the same power. In every activity of 

 his life that man and his family and his 

 neighbors will have to pay toll to those 

 who have been able to monopolize the 

 great motive power of electricity made 

 from water power, if that monopoly is 

 allowed to become established. Never 

 before in the history of this or any other 

 free country has there existed the possi- 

 bility of such intimate daily contact be- 

 tween a monopoly and the life of the 

 average citizen. 



It has not yet occurred to our people 

 that this great power should be con- 

 served for the use of the public. We 

 have regarded it as a thing to be given 

 away to any man who would take it. We 

 have carried over our point of view, de- 

 rived from the early conditions, when it 

 was a godsend to have a man come into 

 the country to develop power, and we 

 were willing to give him anything to in- 

 duce him to come. We have carried 

 over that point of view into a time when 

 the dread of a monopoly of this kind 

 ought to be in the mind of the average 

 man everywhere. That is an instance 

 of a resource neglected from the point of 

 view of the public. 



But this is a time to consider not one 

 resource, but all resources together. 

 Already here and there small associa- 

 tions of citizens have become possessed 

 of certain facts, and have begun to 

 work at certain sides of what is funda- 

 mentally one great problem. We have 

 a drainage association, whose object is 

 to make habitable millions upon millions 

 of acres now lying waste in swamps all 

 over the country, but capable of support- 

 ing millions of people in comfort. We 

 have forestry associations, waterway as- 

 sociations, irrigation associations, asso- 

 ciations of many kinds touching this 

 problem of conservation at different 

 points, each endeavoring to benefit the 

 common weal along its own line, but 

 each interested only in its own particular 

 piece of the work and unaware that it is 



attacking the outside, not the heart, of 

 the problem. 



Now a greater work appears. Since 

 this problem of the conservation of nat- 

 ural resources is a single question, each 

 of these various bodies that have been 

 working at different phases of it must 

 come together on a common platform. 

 By the joining of these units we shall 

 have a mass of intelligent, interested, 

 public-spirited citizens anxious to adopt 

 a new point of view about this country 

 of ours. 



That is the crux of the whole matter — 

 a new point of view about our country. 

 We have been so busy getting rich, de- 

 veloping, and growing, so proud of our 

 growth, that we have let things go on 

 until some intolerable abuse has com- 

 pelled immediate action to cut it off. It 

 is time that we put an end to this kind of 

 opportunism, of mere drifting. We must 

 take the point of view taken by the aver- 

 age prudent business man, or man in any 

 walk of life who has property and is in- 

 terested in it. What the average man 

 does in his own affairs is to foresee trou- 

 ble and avoid it if he can. What this 

 nation of ours is doing in this funda- 

 mental matter of natural resources is to 

 run right up against the trouble and make 

 that trouble inevitable before taking any 

 step to head it off. But it should not take 

 long to reach the stage where we shall 

 deliberately plan to avoid the difficulties 

 which can be foreseen, if we can bring 

 together all who have already begun to 

 concern themselves with one or another 

 aspect of the conservation problem. 



THE PRESENT IS ONE OF THE MOST CRITI- 

 CAL POINTS OE OUR HISTORY 



This nation has, on the continent of 

 North America, three and a half million 

 square miles. What shall we do with 

 it? How can we make ourselves and 

 our children happiest, most vigorous and 

 efficient, and our civilization the highest 

 and most influential, as we use that 

 splendid heritage? Shall not the nation 

 undertake to answer that question in the 



