The Fight for Conservation | Page 9

not live to see, there will never be
any more of it than there is now. But coal is in a sense the vital essence
of our civilization. If it can be preserved, if the life of the mines can be
extended, if by preventing waste there can be more coal left in this
country after we of this generation have made every needed use of this
source of power, then we shall have deserved well of our descendants.
Conservation stands emphatically for the development and use of
water-power now, without delay. It stands for the immediate
construction of navigable waterways under a broad and comprehensive
plan as assistants to the railroads. More coal and more iron are required
to move a ton of freight by rail than by water, three to one. In every
case and in every direction the conservation movement has
development for its first principle, and at the very beginning of its work.

The development of our natural resources and the fullest use of them
for the present generation is the first duty of this generation. So much
for development.
In the second place conservation stands for the prevention of waste.
There has come gradually in this country an understanding that waste is
not a good thing and that the attack on waste is an industrial necessity. I
recall very well indeed how, in the early days of forest fires, they were
considered simply and solely as acts of God, against which any
opposition was hopeless and any attempt to control them not merely
hopeless but childish. It was assumed that they came in the natural
order of things, as inevitably as the seasons or the rising and setting of
the sun. To-day we understand that forest fires are wholly within the
control of men. So we are coming in like manner to understand that the
prevention of waste in all other directions is a simple matter of good
business. The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives
upon.
We are in a position more and more completely to say how far the
waste and destruction of natural resources are to be allowed to go on
and where they are to stop. It is curious that the effort to stop waste,
like the effort to stop forest fires, has often been considered as a matter
controlled wholly by economic law. I think there could be no greater
mistake. Forest fires were allowed to burn long after the people had
means to stop them. The idea that men were helpless in the face of
them held long after the time had passed when the means of control
were fully within our reach. It was the old story that "as a man thinketh,
so is he"; we came to see that we could stop forest fires, and we found
that the means had long been at hand. When at length we came to see
that the control of logging in certain directions was profitable, we
found it had long been possible. In all these matters of waste of natural
resources, the education of the people to understand that they can stop
the leakage comes before the actual stopping and after the means of
stopping it have long been ready at our hands.
In addition to the principles of development and preservation of our
resources there is a third principle. It is this: The natural resources must

be developed and preserved for the benefit of the many, and not merely
for the profit of a few. We are coming to understand in this country that
public action for public benefit has a very much wider field to cover
and a much larger part to play than was the case when there were
resources enough for every one, and before certain constitutional
provisions had given so tremendously strong a position to vested rights
and property in general.
A few years ago President Hadley, of Yale, wrote an article which has
not attracted the attention it should. The point of it was that by reason
of the XIVth amendment to the Constitution, property rights in the
United States occupy a stronger position than in any other country in
the civilized world. It becomes then a matter of multiplied importance,
since property rights once granted are so strongly entrenched, to see
that they shall be so granted that the people shall get their fair share of
the benefit which comes from the development of the resources which
belong to us all. The time to do that is now. By so doing we shall avoid
the difficulties and conflicts which will surely arise if we allow vested
rights to accrue outside the possibility of governmental and popular
control.
The conservation idea covers a wider range than the field of