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same reasonable foresight in dealing with our great natural resources 
that would be shown by any prudent man in conserving and wisely 
using the property which contains the assurance of well being for him- 
self and his children. 
The natural resources I have enumerated can be divided into two 
sharply distinguished classes accordingly as they are or are not capable 
of renewal. Mines if used must necessarily be exhausted. The minerals 
do not and cannot renew themselves. Therefore, in dealing with the 
coal, the oil, the gas, the iron, the metals generally, all that we can do is 
to try to see that they are wisely used. The exhaustion is certain to 
come in time. 
The second class of resources consists of those which cannot only 
be used in such manner as to leave them undiminished for our children, 
but can actually be improved by wise use. The soil, the forests, and 
the waterways come in this category. In dealing with mineral re- 
sources, man is able to improve on nature only by putting the resources 
to a beneficial use. which in the end exhausts them; but in dealing with 
the soil and its products man can improve on nature by compelling the 
resources to renew and even reconstruct themselves in such manner as 
to serve increasingly beneficial uses — while the living waters can be so 
controlled as to multiply their benefits. 
Neither the primitive man nor the pioneer was aware of any duty 
to posterity in dealing with the renewable resources. When the Ameri- 
can settler felled the forests, he felt that there was plenty of forest 
left for the sons that came after him. When he exhausted the soil of 
his farm he felt that his son could go West and take up another. So it 
was with his immediate successors. When tne soil-wash from the 
farmer's fields choked the neighboring river he thought only of using 
the railway rather than boats for moving his produce and supplies. 
Now all this has changed. On the average the son of the farmer 
of today must make his living on his father's farm. There is no diffi- 
culty in doing this if the father will exercise wisdom. Xo wise use of a 
farm exhausts its fertility. So with the forests. We are over the 
verge of a timber famine in this country, and it is unpardonable for 
the Nation or the states to permit any further cutting of our timber 
save in accordance with a system which will provide that the next 
generation shall see the timber increased instead of diminished. (Ap- 
plause.) Moreover, we can add enormous tracts of the most valuable 
possible agricultural land to the national domain by irri- 
gation in the arid and semi-arid regions and by drainage 
of great tracts of swamp lands in the humid regions. We can enormous- 
ly increase our transportation facilities by the canalization of our 
rivers so as to complete a great system of waterways on the Pacific, 
Atlantic and Gulf coasts and in the Mississippi Valley, from the Great 
Plains to the Alleghenies and from the northern lakes to the mouth of 
the mighty Father of Waters. But all these various cases of our na- 
tural resources are so closely connected that they should be coordinated, 
and should be treated as part of one coherent plan and not in haphazard 
and piecemeal fashion. 
It is largely because of this that I appointed the Waterways Com- 
mission last year and that I have sought to nerpetuate its work. I wish 
to take this opportunity to express in heartiest fashion my acknowledg- 
ment to all the members of the Commission. At great personal sacrifice 
of time and effort they have rendered a service to the public for which 
we cannot be too grateful. Especial credit is due to the initiative, the 
energy, the devotion to duty and the farsightedness of Gifford Pinchot 
(great applause), to whom we owe so much of the progress we have al- 
ready made in handling this matter of the coordination and conservation 
of natural resources. If it had not been for him this convention neither 
would or could have been called. , 
We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the Na- 
tion to guard its own future in the essential matter of natural re- 
