Checking the Waste | Page 2

be expected, we shall, if the present rates of use and waste continue, find ourselves no longer rich, but facing poverty and even actual want. But it is not too late to save ourselves from the results of our past extravagance. We are only beginning to see the danger into which we have almost plunged, but we see enough to make us realize that every one must do his part in checking the waste. Before this can be intelligently accomplished we must understand something of the great national movement for the conservation of our national resources.
Let us go back for a moment to the beginning of our history as a nation, the days of Washington.
Invention at that time was little advanced over what it had been three hundred years before. The same type of slow-sailing vessels carried all the commerce. Wind and water were the only powers employed in running the few factories. Only a little iron was used in this country, and in fact almost its only use anywhere at that time was for tools. There was little machinery, and that of the simplest description.
Anthracite coal was known in this country only as a hard black rock. Bituminous coal, gas, and oil were unknown.
The forests stretched away in unbroken miles of wilderness. The wood was used for the settlers' homes, their fuel, and their scanty furniture, but they needed so little that it grew much faster than it could be used. The man who cut down a tree was a public benefactor. The trees, though so necessary to life, were regarded as a serious hindrance to civilization, for they must be cleared away before crops could be planted.
To the pioneers as to us the soil was the most valuable of all resources. The rivers were necessary to every community for carrying their commerce, and turning the wheels of their saw and grist mills; while the fish, game, and birds made a necessary part of their living.
Under these conditions, with every resource to be found in such abundance that it seemed impossible it could ever be exhausted, and with a small scattered population to draw on all these riches, careless habits of using were sure to spring up. Our forefathers took the best that the land offered, and that which was easiest to get, and gave no thought to caring for what remained. Their children, and the new immigrants who came in such numbers, all practised the same wasteful methods.
In the century and a quarter that has passed since then, a great change has come over the world. By the magic of the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone, all the nations of the earth are bound more closely to one another now than were the scattered communities of a single county in those days, or than the states of the Union before the Civil War.
The forests have been cut away and in place of endless miles of wilderness there now stretch endless miles of fertile farms, yielding abundant harvests.
Slow-going sailing vessels have given place to steamboats which now carry the river and lake commerce. But men are no longer dependent on the rivers, for swift railway trains penetrate every part of the country. The stage-coach is replaced by the trolley-car, and the horseback rider, plodding over corduroy roads with his saddle-bags, is succeeded by the automobile rider speeding over the most improved highways.
Farm machinery of all descriptions has revolutionized the old methods of doing farm work. The fish, game, and birds are largely gone and in their place are the animal foods raised by man. Modern houses, filled with countless devices for labor-saving and comfort, have replaced the simple homes of colonial days.
What has brought about this change? The energy and industry of American men and women, aided for the most part by American inventions, and made possible by the wonderful natural resources of America.
No one could wish to have had our country's development checked in any way. These great results could be obtained only by using the materials that could be had easiest and cheapest, even if it meant great waste in the beginning. Labor was scarce and high in this country, abundant and cheap in Europe. In order to make goods that could be sold at prices even above those of European countries, it was absolutely necessary to have cheap lumber, coal and iron.
But the time has come when we can no longer continue this waste without interfering with future development. Some of the resources have been so exhausted that a few years will see the end of their use in large commercial quantities. Others, such as coal and iron, will last much longer, but when they are gone they can never be replaced; and so far as we can now foresee, the country will cease to