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Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

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Title: Checking the Waste: A Study in Conservation

Author: Mary Huston Gregory


        
Release date: February 24, 2007 [eBook #20653]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHECKING THE WASTE: A STUDY IN CONSERVATION ***




Produced by Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by the Library of Congress)









CHECKING THE WASTE

A STUDY IN CONSERVATION

_By_

MARY HUSTON GREGORY

* * *

_What you would weave into the life of the nation,
put into the public schools._

--EMPEROR WILLIAM I.

* * *

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1911
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

* * *




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                   PAGE

I WHAT IS CONSERVATION?      1

II SOIL                     10

III FORESTS                 42

IV WATER                    86

V COAL                     124

VI OTHER FUELS             144

VII IRON                   164

VIII OTHER MINERALS        181

IX ANIMAL FOODS            198

X INSECTS                  217

XI BIRDS                   236

XII HEALTH                 265

XIII BEAUTY                302

XIV IN CONCLUSION          312




PREFACE


Much has been said and written on the subject of conservation and many
excellent ideas have been advanced, but as yet too little has been
accomplished in the way of practical results. Probably this is due
largely to the fact that most people think of conservation as a problem
for the federal and state governments, mine owners, great lumber
companies, owners of vast tracts of land, and large corporations; and
have not realized how much the responsibility for the care of our
natural resources and the penalty for their waste rest with the whole
people, that every one has a part in this work which has been called
"the greatest question before the American people."

One cause of the failure to realize this personal responsibility is that
while there have been college text-books and scientific treatises on
various branches of the subject, such as Forestry, there has been no
book treating of the entire problem of our natural resources, their
extent, the amount and nature of their use, their waste, and what may be
done to conserve them, prepared in a way that can be readily understood
by the ordinary reader, and dealing with the practical, rather than the
technical, side.

It is to supply the need for such general knowledge, and to show how
such saving may be accomplished, that this book has been written. It is
designed as a short but complete statement of the entire conservation
question, and should be of service for study in teachers' reading
circles, farmers' institutes, women's clubs, the advanced grades in
schools, and for general library purposes.

Every statement of fact bears the weight of authority, for no facts or
figures are given that have not been verified by government reports,
reports of scientific societies, etc.

Information has been gathered from many sources, chief among them being
the Report of the Conference of Governors at the White House, in May,
1908; the Report of the National Conservation Commission, the Report on
National Vitality, the Report of the Inland Waterways Commission, of the
Geological Survey, the Census Reports, and many government departmental
pamphlets.

M. H. G.

Indianapolis, November 24, 1910.

* * *




CHECKING THE WASTE




CHAPTER I

WHAT IS CONSERVATION?


A Nation's Riches lie both in its people and in its natural resources.
Neither can exist in its highest estate without the other. Goldsmith
predicted the certain downfall of lands "where wealth accumulates and
men decay," but, in the truest, broadest definition, there can be no
national wealth unless the men and women of the nation are healthy,
intelligent, educated and right-minded. On the other hand it is equally
true that if the people of a country are to make the most of themselves
in mind and body; if they are to get the most comfort and happiness out
of life and to become in the highest degree useful, they must develop
its natural resources to the greatest possible degree.

The United States is particularly fortunate in its abundant riches of
soil, forest and mine, and in the fact that from the beginning of the
nation these have been the inheritance not of a people slowly learning
the use of tools and materials, and emerging from ignorance and
savagery, but representing the most advanced and enlightened ideas and
spiritual ideals of the time.

The result of these conditions has been inventions and discoveries that
have developed a great nation at home and have done much to better the
condition of the world. But the very magnitude of our natural wealth has
made us careless, even prodigal, in its use, and thoughtful men are
beginning to realize that with the natural increase of population which
is to 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 prosper when they can no
longer be had for use in manufacturing. The length of time they will
last at the present rate of use can be easily calculated. It is a long
time for us to look forward, for it is longer than the lifetime of any
man now living, or of his children, but it is within the life of his
grandchildren, and that is a very short time in the history of a nation.

It may be said that while other nations have passed into decay, none has
ever exhausted its resources so early in its history, and surely this
great rich nation can not so soon face actual need. But we must remember
that no other nation has ever used its resources as we have used ours.
We are using in years what other nations have used in centuries.

It is not possible now, it probably never will be possible, to use every
particle of a resource. This would be too expensive, would mean a labor
cost far beyond the value of the thing saved.

In the beginning, as we have shown, the vast wastes were not wanton, but
absolutely necessary, and we have not yet reached the point where we can
afford to use the low-grade ores, to use all lumber waste and to
practise many other economies that may sometime become necessary. But in
the case of the forests we should provide enough trees for use in coming
years, and in the case of all minerals, the refuse should be left in
such condition that it can easily be ready for possible future use.

If conservation meant leaving our resources untouched, and checking
development in order that there might be an abundance for future
generations, it would be both an unwise and unacceptable policy; but it
must be thoroughly understood that this is not what is desired.

Conservation does not mean the locking up of our resources, nor a
hindrance to real progress in any direction. _It means only wise,
careful use._

It does not mean that we shall cease to cut our timber, but it does mean
that we shall not waste two-thirds of all that is cut, as we are doing
at present. It means, too, that we shall take better care of articles
manufactured from it, and most of all, it means that, when a tree is cut
down another shall, whenever possible, be planted in its stead to
provide for the needs of the future.

It means that we shall not allow the farms of our country to lose five
hundred million dollars in value every year by letting the rich top-soil
drain off into our rivers, because we have cut away the trees whose
roots held the soil in place. It also means that we shall not steadily
rob the land of the elements that would produce good crops, and put
nothing back into the soil.

It means that we shall not kill the birds that destroy harmful insects
and thus invite the insects to destroy the crops that we have cultivated
with such care.

It does not mean that we shall let our mines of coal and iron lie
unused, as the miser does his gold, but that we shall, while taking what
we need, leave as little waste in the mine as possible, and shall use
what we take in the most economical way. This means a saving of money to
the user, as well as a conservation of resources. It means, too, that we
shall not allow our water-power to remain unused, while we burn millions
of tons of coal in doing the work that water-power would do better.

It means that we shall not allow enough natural gas to escape into the
air every day to light all the large cities in the United States. It
means that we shall take better care of the life and health of the
people.

This is the true conservation.

In the following chapters we shall take up each of the great resources
in turn, shall see what we have used, what we have wasted, what remains
to us, how long it will continue at the present rate, how it may be used
more wisely, and how it may be replaced, if that be possible, or what
may be used instead of those which can not be renewed.

We shall study how we may make the most of all that nature has given us
and develop our country to the highest possible point, how we may rise
far above our present level in comfort, convenience, and abundance, and
yet do all these things with much less waste than we now permit.




CHAPTER II

THE SOIL


The soil is the greatest of our natural resources. We may almost say
that it is greater than all the others combined, for from it comes all
of our food; a large part of it directly as plants which grow in the
soil and which we eat in the form of roots, leaves, grains, berries,
fruits, and nuts; and a part of it indirectly as animals, which have
received their food supply from the plants.

But this is not all. The soil supplies almost every known need. We build
our homes from the trees of the forest; combined with the iron that
comes from the soil they furnish our fuel, our ships, our cars, our
furniture, and countless other things. Our clothing is made from the
cotton or flax which grows from the soil, the wool from the sheep that
feed on the pastures, or from the silk-worms that feed on leaves.

So it is to the earth that we turn for every need, and Mother Nature
supplies it. But it is of the soil as it gives us our food supply that
we shall speak in this chapter, and we must first learn the nature of
the soil, and the process of its making, in order to understand the need
of extraordinary care in its management, and also how to use it so that
it will not wear out, or become exhausted, but will increase in value
for years and even centuries, as it will if properly cared for.

The earth's surface is constantly being renewed. Although the great
formative movements occurred ages ago, yet earthquakes, volcanic action,
wind, frost and water are working continual changes. Hills and mountains
have been thrown up, and nature has gone to work at once to shave down
the mountains and fill up the valleys. The whole earth is as carefully
adjusted and balanced as the wheels of a watch, but these adjustments
take place in long periods of time. In a lifetime, or even a century,
the changes of the earth's surface seem few and small, but they are none
the less sure.

The soil or humus, that is, the upper layer of the earth's crust which
is used in farming, has an average depth of about four feet, and has
been formed by decay, first and most important of all by rock decay
which is constantly going on under the surface of the earth and in
exposed places everywhere, and is caused by the action of air and water.
This process is very slow. In places where the rock is already partly
ground up, or, disintegrated, as we sometimes say, it is more rapid, but
the average growth of the soil from beneath by rock decay is scarcely
more than a foot in ten thousand years.

Some waste of this upper layer is constantly taking place from above,
caused by wind and floods, and considerable additions are made to it by
the decay of animal and vegetable matter, but in order to keep the soil
at its best, the average soil waste should not amount to more than an
inch every thousand years.

When this humus is once exhausted there is no way to repair the damage
but to wait for the slow rock-decay. In the river valleys there is no
immediate danger of exhausting the entire body of the soil, but on the
hills and in the higher regions the soil-depth is very much less than
four feet, and the danger of waste much more serious. There are parts of
the earth that were once almost as fertile as ours where great cities
once stood, but where now nothing is left but the bare rock.

So we know that the end is sure, even for the life of man upon earth,
unless we learn to conserve our soil.

The value of our farm crops can not be overestimated. In food value they
are the life of the nation; in money value, our greatest national
wealth. For the year 1909 the total value of farm products was the
amazing sum of $8,760,000,000. It may give some idea of this vast amount
to say that if we could have it in the form of twenty-dollar gold
pieces, stacked in one pile, the column would reach seven hundred miles
high. If they were laid flat, edge to edge, they would extend from
Alaska to the Panama Canal, with enough left over to reach from New York
to San Francisco. If the money could be distributed, it would give us
all, every man, woman and child in the United States, one hundred
dollars apiece. The corn crop was worth $1,720,000,000; the cotton
$850,000,000; wheat comes third with a value of $725,000,000; then come
hay, oats, and other crops in vast amounts worth hundreds of millions of
dollars. The cotton alone was worth more than the world's output of gold
and silver combined. The corn would pay for the Panama Canal, for fifty
battleships, and for the irrigation projects in the West, with a hundred
million dollars left over.

And this is all new wealth. If we build a house, we have gained the
house, but the trees of which we build it are gone. The same thing is
true of every article we manufacture. Something is taken from our store
in the making. But after we have taken these wonderful crops from our
farms the land is still there, and the soil is just as ready to produce
a good crop the next year, and the next, and the next, if we treat it
properly.

This matter of soil conservation is of the greatest importance to every
one of us. If you are to own a farm, or rent a farm, or till a garden,
or plant an orchard ten years from now, it will make a great difference
to you whether the man who owns it from now until then knows how to care
for it so as to make it produce well, or whether, by neglect, he allows
it to become poorer each year. It will make a far greater difference if
twenty years elapse.

It makes a difference to the farmer whether he gets twelve bushels of
wheat to the acre, or whether he gets twenty, for the cost of producing
the smaller amount is just as great as the cost of producing the larger,
and the extra bushels are all profit. It makes a difference whether a
garden furnishes all the fruit and vegetables needed by the family, or
whether it does not even pay for cultivation, and the food must be
bought at high prices. It makes even more difference to the dweller in
the city, who must buy all that he eats, whether food is abundant or
not. If food is abundant, prices are low, but when the yield is small
the demand is so great that prices become high.

Not only the men, but the women and children as well, are affected by
these food values, because it is from the extra money left over after
the actual cost of living is taken out that the clothing, the
house-furnishings, books, pictures, music, travel and all the pleasures
of life must come.

Great as are our harvests, we are not raising much more than enough for
our present needs. Each year we are using more of our food at home, and
have less to export to other countries. In a few years more the public
lands will all be taken, and there will be comparatively little more
land than we now cultivate to supply a population that will be many
times as great as at present.

Men who watch the great movements of the world tell us that the time is
coming before many years when there will not be food enough to supply
all our people, when we shall be buying food from other countries
instead of selling to them, when we shall have famine instead of plenty
unless we realize the danger and at once set about to make the most of
every acre of our land.

James J. Hill, the great railroad builder of the Northwest, and one of
the best informed men of the country on food production and the increase
of population, is doing a great work in pointing out these dangers to
the people on every possible occasion.

Watching the great food-producing region of the country, he has noted
that each year the yield per acre is growing less, and the population
steadily more. He tells us that when our first census was taken only
four per cent. of the people lived in cities, that fifty years ago
one-third of the people lived in cities, and two-thirds in the country,
that is, two-thirds of the people were furnishing food to the remainder.
Now conditions are almost exactly reversed. Only one-third remain in the
country, and must supply the food, not only for themselves, but for all
the two-thirds who are not food producers, so that the food supply is
lagging far behind the demand. The price of corn has advanced from
twenty-five cents to sixty-five cents a bushel in ten years, and this in
turn raises the price of live stock. And so all along the line. Prices
are growing higher all the time because not enough food is being
produced to supply the demand.

So we can see that it is absolutely necessary that the soil be properly
cared for if we are to continue to increase and prosper, for as
Secretary Wilson has said, "Upon the fertility of the soil depends the
whole business of agriculture."

The soil is exhausted in two ways: (1) By erosion, or the carrying away
of the entire soil itself. (2) By so using the soil that one or more of
its principal elements are worn out. We shall consider this form of soil
exhaustion first, because it more directly concerns the work of every
farmer.

By a fertile soil is meant one that has an abundance of plant food in
the proper proportions. The soil contains all the elements that are
needed to support life, but they are in an inorganic form, that is, they
are lifeless. Plants alone can take these inorganic substances from the
soil, and change them into starch, sugar, fats, and protein. All
animals, including man, must get these substances through plants, or
through other animals that have already absorbed them from plants.

The soil contains ten elements that are absorbed or assimilated by
plants. These are: (1) lime, (2) magnesia, (3) iron, (4) sulphur, all of
which are found in most plants in very small proportions, and are
present in most soils in quantities far beyond the needs of crops for
ages to come; (5) carbon, which is obtained by plants through their
leaves directly from the air and the sunshine; (6) hydrogen and (7)
oxygen, which are taken from the water in the soil and carried to the
leaves, where they also help to take the carbon from the atmosphere.
With none of these elements, then, does the farmer need to concern
himself in regions where the water supply is abundant, as they are, and
will continue to be, plentifully supplied by nature. But the other
three, (8) nitrogen, (9) potassium, and (10) phosphorus, are needed by
plants in large quantities, and are taken from the soil far more rapidly
than nature can replace them.

All these elements are necessary to plant life, but some plants require
a large amount of one element, others a small proportion of that, but a
large amount of some of the others. No two varieties of plants require
exactly the same proportions, so it is easy to see that the plant that
takes out of the soil any one element makes the soil less capable each
year of producing a good crop of the same kind.

In the early days of farming in this country, it was the custom to grow
a single crop, which had been found to give good results, year after
year in the same field. In Virginia and other near-by states nearly all
the best land was given every year to the cultivation of tobacco, which
exhausts the soil rapidly. In the states farther north other crops were
planted in the same way. As a result, some of the most fertile soil in
Virginia, the Carolinas, Massachusetts, and other eastern states has
been so exhausted that it is no longer worth cultivating. Everywhere
throughout the New England states are to be found these worn-out farms,
and, while they were never so fertile as the lands of the Mississippi
Valley, each one was rich enough to support a family in comfort, with
something left to sell; but because they were required to produce the
same crops, and so take the same element from the soil, year after year,
they have become so lacking in one of the essential elements that they
are unfit for cultivation, and have been abandoned.

It is wisdom and good business policy for farmers to study carefully
this question of plant food and to learn what each crop is taking from
the soil, so that it may be replaced. It has been found by long and
careful experiments, that when land has been "single cropped," as this
abuse of the land is called, for a long time, the soil has been almost
entirely deprived of its nitrogen. As you know, nitrogen is one of the
elements of the air, so that there is a never-ending supply, but most
plants are unable to take it from the air, and until the last few years
the task of replacing nitrogen in the soil was considered impossible.
Recent discoveries, however, have shown that there are two ways in which
it may be done. By means of electricity, nitrogen may be directly
combined with the other elements of the soil. The other method is
nature's own plan, and so is easier and cheaper. It has been found that
while most plants exhaust the nitrogen from the soil, one class of
plants, the legumes, of which beans, peas, clover, and alfalfa are the
best known, have the power of drawing large stores of nitrogen from the
air, and, by means of bacteria attached to their roots, restoring it to
the ground.

So farmers have learned that if they plant corn one year, it is wiser
not to plant corn in the same field the next year, but to sow wheat,
which requires less nitrogen, and the following year to sow clover, so
that the nitrogen which the corn and wheat have taken from the soil, may
be put back into it. If the land be naturally fertile, and has been well
cared for, the soil is then ready to produce a good crop of corn again.

If the soil has become worn-out and the farmer is trying to improve its
general condition, he can gain better results by keeping the field in
clover a second year, when a profitable crop of clover seed may be had
from the land. This system of changing each year, and alternating cereal
crops, which take the nitrogen from the soil, with leguminous plants,
which restore it to the soil again, is called "rotation of crops," and
if regularly followed will preserve a proper balance of nitrogen in the
soil.

In some parts of the West there is a lack of decaying vegetable matter
in the soil, because the few plants which naturally grow there have
small roots, and leave little vegetable material behind when they decay.
For this condition one of the best crops to employ in rotation is
sugar-beets, because they strike many small roots deep into the earth.
As these decay, each leaves behind a tiny load of vegetable mold deep in
the earth, and also makes the soil more porous. As the principal
elements of the soil needed by sugar-beets are carbon and oxygen, which
are absorbed from the air and sunshine, and as the beets can be sold at
a good profit, it is an excellent crop to employ in rotation. In the
United States records in various states show that where sugar-beets are
used in rotation, the wheat and corn yield is increased from two to four
times, and in Germany they are largely used to restore the fertility of
the land, even if the sugar-beets themselves are sold at a loss.

It is most important that farmers should understand the principle of
rotation of crops, because nothing is taken from the soil so quickly or
in such large quantities as nitrogen, and nothing is so easily put back;
while, if it is not so replaced, the land becomes worthless.

A comparison of the results of single cropping and the rotation of crops
has been clearly shown at the Experiment Station of the Agricultural
College of the State of Minnesota, where for ten years they have planted
corn on one plot of ground. For the first five years it averaged a
little more than twenty bushels per acre, and for the last five years,
eleven bushels.

On another plot, where corn was planted in rotation, the average yield
was more than forty-eight bushels, the difference in average in the two
plots being thirty-two bushels, or twice the value of the entire average
yield on the exhausted ground. The corn grown at the end of the ten
years was only about three feet high, the ears were small, and the
grains light in weight. But it cost just as much to cultivate the land
that produced it as it did to cultivate the land that produced
forty-eight bushels.

Of the other two elements, potassium is found abundantly in most soils.
It is also found in a readily soluble form in various parts of the
United States and is sold at a very low price. But even if these
deposits were exhausted we could still use the rocks which are very rich
in potassium, and are very abundant, in a pulverized form, or potash
could be manufactured from them.

The only remaining element of the soil is phosphorus. This element was
discovered in 1607, the year of the first English settlement at
Jamestown and was first noticed because of its property of giving off
light from itself. The name which was given it means light-bearer. It
was at first thought to be the source of all power, to heal all
diseases, and to turn the common minerals into gold. Although we have
long ago learned that these ideas are absurd, yet we have also learned
that its real value to man is far greater than was even dreamed of then.

It is the most important element in every living thing, for no cell,
however small, in either animal or vegetable organisms can grow or even
live without phosphorus. It is found in the green of the leaves, and
helps to make the starch. It enters largely into the grain and seeds of
plants, and is necessary for their germination, or sprouting, as well as
their growth. Three-fourths of all the phosphorus in a crop of cereals
is in the grains, giving them size and weight. It will thus be seen how
necessary it is that the soil which feeds our plants, which in turn
become the food of animals and of man, should contain a sufficient
amount of phosphorus.

Phosphorus is taken from the soil in large quantities by every kind of
crop. In parts of Wisconsin which have been farmed a little more than
fifty years without fertilizing, it is found that about one-third of the
phosphorus has been taken out of the soil, which would mean that in one
hundred and fifty years, or a hundred years from now, the soil would be
incapable of producing any living thing, and long before that time the
crops would not pay for the labor of producing them. Almost every acre
of land that has been farmed for ten years without fertilization is
deficient in phosphorus, that is, so much has been used that the soil
can no longer produce at its former rate.

It may be asked, if this be true, why the soil of America, which before
it was cultivated had borne rich forests and fields of waving grass, has
not become exhausted long ago. We must remember that nature always
adjusts itself; that, in the wild state, all plants decay where they
grow, and the same elements are returned again to the soil. But when the
entire product of vast areas is removed year after year, the soil has
nothing except the slow rock-decay with which to renew itself.

In tropical regions it is not necessary to feed domestic animals at any
season of the year, but in those countries where the natural food can be
found only during a part of the year, the need of artificial feeding is
seen at once, and it becomes a part of the regular expense of farming.

It would be considered the height of folly for a man to allow his
valuable animals to starve to death because of the expense of feeding
them, but few people recognize the fact, which is also true, that it is
equally bad business policy to allow the valuable crops of wheat, oats,
and corn to starve for want of plant food.

The phosphates (that is, phosphorus) are the only large items of
expense, and in a large measure this may be lessened by raising live
stock, for which high prices can be obtained either as meat or dairy
products, and returning the manure, which contains a large amount of
phosphate, to the soil. If all the waste animal products could be
returned to the land, Professor Van Hise says, three-fourths of the
phosphorus would be replaced. All animal products are rich in
phosphates. The packing houses manufacture large quantities from the
bones and blood of animals.

The garbage of cities, when reduced to powder, yields large returns in
phosphorus. It is said that if the sewage of cities, which in this
country is often turned into rivers and streams, polluting them and
causing disease, was reduced to commercial fertilizer, it would supply
the equivalent of from six to nine pounds of rock phosphate per year for
every acre of cultivated land in the United States. And this valuable
product is now totally lost, and worse than lost, since it menaces the
life and health of great numbers of our people.

There still remain to be considered the rock phosphates, the form in
which phosphorus is found in separate deposits. The only large deposits
that have been used are in Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and
from them about two and a quarter million tons were mined in 1907.
Unfortunately, however, there is no law that prevents its export from
this country, and almost half of this found its way to Europe, where it
is eagerly sought at high prices.

Within a short time valuable phosphate beds, more extensive than any
before known to exist in this country, have been discovered in Utah,
Wyoming, and Idaho. Professor Van Hise, who is one of the highest
authorities on the subject, says of these deposits that with the
exception of our coal and iron lands, they are our most precious mineral
possession; that every ounce should be saved for the time which is
coming when the population will have outgrown the capacity of the land,
and means of increasing its fertility in order to prevent famine will be
sought from every possible source.

The other great waste of the soil is by erosion, or the wearing away of
the soil by stream-flow. We can all see this in a small way by wandering
along the shore of any swift-running stream and noticing how the banks
are worn away, and what deep gullies and ravines are cut into them by
the water running down from the fields above. Another way in which we
can observe the effect of this waste is by noticing the muddy yellow
color of streams during floods and after heavy rains, and comparing it
with the clear blue of the same stream at ordinary times.

When we realize that this muddy color always means that the water is
filled with soil, all that it will hold in solution, that it is carrying
away the top soil, which is best for agriculture, and, finally, that
every little streamlet and creek, as well as the mightiest river, is
carrying this rich soil-deposit downward toward the sea in its flow, we
begin to see how great a factor erosion is in the wasting of the land.

The Missouri River, which drains a large area of wheat and corn land, is
notable as a muddy, yellow river at almost all seasons. Do you
understand what that means? It means that this great productive region
is growing poorer each year, and that as the population increases, and
the need of great harvests increases, the land is becoming less able to
produce them. The Mississippi River is said to tear down from its banks
more soil each year than is to be dredged from the Panama Canal. At the
mouth of the river is a delta many miles in extent, formed wholly of
land that has been carried down the river. The soil in lower Mississippi
and Louisiana is almost black, and is in many places seventy feet in
depth, and it has all been left there by the river, which took it from
the higher lands.

It is estimated that our rivers carry out to sea one billion tons of our
richest soil each year. The ancient Egyptians worshiped the Nile because
each year the spring floods left behind the rich soil deposits that
fertilized their fields and gave them an abundant harvest. Entire fields
and even whole farms along the upper stretches of the Mississippi and
Missouri have been carried away, not the top soil only, but the land
itself, by the swift current of the springtime floods as they cut a new
channel for the river.

Canaan, the "land of promise" of the Bible, was once an abundant region,
"flowing with milk and honey" in the language of Moses, with its grapes,
its vast forests of cedar, fir, and oak, its treasures of wheat,
olive-oil, and other rich agricultural products. Now all are gone. The
entire country seen by the traveler in the Holy Land to-day is one of
the most desolate regions on the globe, where the few inhabitants are
scarcely able to obtain a scanty living.

We wonder what has brought about this change, and we have not far to
seek in answer to our questioning. The preservation of the forests means
the preservation of the soil, and the destruction of the forests means
the destruction of the soil. This is the universal law. First the
forests were cut down and the hillsides left bare. Then the streams wore
great ravines down the unprotected hillsides. Steadily the work of
destruction by erosion has gone on, until time beyond our possibility to
comprehend must pass before the land can be made productive again. The
hills and valleys of China have been devastated in the same way, and
many of the older regions of the earth that were once the sites of great
cities and extensive commerce are now marked only by the ruins of the
civilization that has passed away. They have almost ceased to support
life.

In the days of Rome's greatness, Sicily was known as "the granary of
Rome" because from this little island came the grains to supply her vast
armies. 12,000,000 bushels of grain was the tribute that Rome claimed of
Sicily each year, and yet Sicily had enough left to make her rich. She
built splendid cities and became great. But the same story of
destruction is to be read in the history of Sicily. Now the entire
island does not raise a million and a half bushels of wheat altogether.
The soil is barren. The cities have nearly all fallen into ruin. The
people are scattered. Thousands have come to America, seeking a poor
living at the lowest wages because at home there was no chance to earn
even the little they require. They allowed the soil to become exhausted
by lack of fertilization and by erosion and it long ago ceased to
support the people. All the rest followed naturally.

In many parts of our own country this same danger is coming on us. It is
only the beginning, but the end is as sure for us as for those far-off
Eastern countries.

Millions of acres have already been destroyed in the East and South. The
Appalachian mountain system lies not far from the coast, and the rivers
on the eastern slopes are short and swift. It is necessary, then, to
exercise the greatest care of the forests in order to prevent the floods
in this region from carrying away the lands in their swift rush to the
sea. North Carolina was one of the richest states in the Union in
natural resources a hundred years ago. Now it is low on the list in
agricultural products. The forests on its mountain tops were valuable
for their lumber, their turpentine, pitch, and other products, and great
lumber companies have almost denuded the hillsides, regardless of the
fate of the lands they cut over. The people of the state are powerless
to prevent this except by buying all of these lands and replanting the
forests. They have been pleading with Congress for power to stop the
destruction of their forests and the wasting of their lands, but so far
have received no assistance and meanwhile the land grows poorer each
year. The same conditions are to be found in many other states that now
rank high agriculturally, but in North Carolina we are beginning to see
results.

In order to understand exactly how the damage is done to the land, let
us suppose a case which has actually occurred in hundreds of places. A
farmer owned a farm on the mountain side. Much of it was good wheat
land, but the top was covered with forests. At last he decided to cut
and sell the timber, and use the land for raising more wheat. He did
so, but now there was no spreading foliage to check the dash of the
heavy rains as they fell to the ground. As they sank below the surface
there were no masses of tangled roots to hold the moisture in the soil
and to carry it up into the air again through the trees.

As the water penetrated deeper, the soil became softened, and was
carried away down the hillside. It was only a muddy little stream, but
it took away some of the richest soil from the fields, and the next
year's crop was not quite so good. Every rain that fell carried more of
the fertile soil down the hillside, and the next year the farmer
wondered that the yield was still less. After a few years he ceased to
sow the field because it had never paid for its cultivation, and was
constantly growing poorer. But it was too late then to repair the damage
that had been done. There were no seeds of forest trees left in the
ground and the farmer did not plant them, so the ground lay idle and
desolate. The rain wore deep gullies down the hillside, which, as they
grew larger, became more of a menace to the lands below them. The
streams soon grew large enough to take the top-soil from the fields
lower down, and in a few years more the whole farm had grown so
unproductive that the farmer, tired of the struggle, left the farm and
went to the city to make a living.

In the meantime the land in the valley below had been growing more
fertile, for each year the spring floods had left a rich soil deposit
behind them. The farmer down there had been innocently stealing the land
above him, but not all of it, for much had been carried out to sea.

It is not possible to prevent this entirely, but much of the loss might
have been avoided by leaving the hilltops, which are never well fitted
for cultivation, covered with forests. In this way the soil-wash from
above is prevented and the streams run gently and with only a small
amount of muddy deposit, forming proper drainage for the soil.

The preserving of the forests on the great mountain ranges of the
country, where nature has placed them, will mean in the one matter of
soil-wash, fruitful lands and bountiful harvests, instead of barren,
wasted lands, desolated by floods and seamed by great ravines, carrying
desolation to the lands below them.

But in many cases the trees are already cut away. Here replanting
becomes necessary and should be done in every case where soil-wash is
beginning on the mountain tops. It is almost equally desirable to plant
small shrubs and bushes as an undergrowth, so that the roots may form a
thick mat below the ground to hold the water in the soil, and permit it
to filter through slowly.

In Massachusetts, the tracks of the Boston and Albany Railroad are
depressed so that trains may pass below the level of the highways. In
order to protect the banks from erosion, the sloping sides of this
roadway have been planted with trailing rose-bushes and other vines
which have thickly matted roots. These serve a double purpose in
preventing landslides and washouts on the tracks, and in adding greatly
to the attractiveness of the scenery along the railway.

The poorest land of a farm is always found on the hilltops, because even
with the greatest care there is always considerable waste of the
top-soil. This land, then, should never be used for field crops. It
should constitute the woodland, or if this is not possible, the
pasture-land of the farm, for the grass roots protect the soil and
prevent it from washing away, and the profits on the hay are at least as
great as any other crop which could be grown on hill land.

But when erosion has been checked and the top-soil preserved, when the
soil is thoroughly fertilized, and a proper rotation of crops
established, there are still other lessons to be learned in order to
make our country as productive as it might be, as it will _need_ to be
to support the population that we shall have by the end of the century.

As a nation we undertake to farm too much land and do it carelessly.
The invention of labor-saving machinery has made it possible to farm
hundreds and even thousands of acres together with little physical
labor. This has made farmers heedless of small amounts of land wasted.

A man often only expects to make a comfortable living on one hundred and
sixty acres of land, while in Europe he would expect to grow rich on two
or three acres. It is often said that a French family would live off of
an American farmer's neglected fence-corners. In France, in England, in
Holland and Belgium every bit of land is tended and made useful. We have
the best natural soil in the world, the most fertile river valleys,
watered by abundant rains. The fertility of our lands is the envy of the
civilized world, and has drawn thousands to our shores in the hope of
finding comfort and plenty, and yet the total value of our farm products
was only eleven dollars and thirty-eight cents per cultivated acre
according to the last census, while in the little island of Jersey, just
off the English coast, the average annual value of products is over two
hundred and fifty dollars per acre.

Germany has been cultivated nearly eighteen hundred years, the soil is
not naturally so productive nor the climate so favorable as ours, but
the wheat yield there averages more than twice as much as in this
country.

When the most fertile land in the world produces so much less than
poorer lands elsewhere it plainly shows that we are robbing the soil in
order to get the largest cash returns in the shortest possible time and
with the least possible labor.

The American farmer needs to cultivate a much smaller amount of land
thoroughly, to have a soil analysis made of his land in order to know
what crops are best suited to it and what elements are lacking to make
it produce the best. In Illinois more than half a million acres had
become unfit for cultivation. Analysis showed that the soil was too
acid. By mixing limestone dust with the soil the trouble was corrected
and the land reclaimed.

Often it is only necessary to find the cause of some deficiency, or
lack, in the soil, and the remedy will be found to be simple and cheap,
while the result of its use will be to double the crop. Nothing else so
quickly and easily responds to proper treatment, no other resource is so
easily conserved. All the soil needs is proper treatment.

Every bit of waste land should be cultivated for either use or beauty,
or both. If all the lanes and neglected places could be planted with
fruit and nut trees, berry vines, and bushes, herbs or flowers which
need little cultivation after they are planted, our food, in variety and
quantity, would be greatly increased. "The hedge-rows of Old England"
are famous for their beauty and the air of comfort and prosperity they
give. They take the place of the weeds that grow by the country
roadsides in America and which constitute one of the greatest nuisances
of the farmer.

Another thing that should be considered is the marketing of farm
products. Near a city or near a canning factory the soil can be most
profitably used for the raising of vegetables, for which the cost of
cultivation is great, but which yield far larger profits than farm
crops.

Within the last few years a new system of farming has been developed in
the West, which is of great interest to all of us, both because it is
opening up for production a large part of our country that has seemed
valueless, and because the lessons that have been learned there are of
the greatest advantage in every part of the country.

West of the one-hundredth meridian, which crosses North and South
Dakota, the western part of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and
including the states west of them, lies a vast region that used to be
known as the "great American desert." It comprises almost half of the
United States. Here the noble forests of the eastern states and the
prairie grasses of the plains were replaced by sage-brush and cactus.
The soil was light in color and weight, and the rainfall very scanty.

It seemed impossible that it could ever be fitted for agriculture. But
there were a few great rivers, rich mining districts, and excellent
grazing lands. These attracted settlers, and to them some cultivation of
the soil became almost a necessity. The waste waters of the rivers were
used for irrigation and the land when watered was found to produce
remarkably fine fruits and agricultural products. Yet there were
hundreds of thousands of acres that could not be irrigated for lack of
water, and the problem of finding a use for these barren, semi-arid
lands remained unsolved for many years.

But here and there in different states and under varying conditions,
after many experiments and failures, men began without water to grow
successful crops on these semi-arid lands, where the rainfall was
scarcely more than ten inches per year. Others following this method
found success, and it began to seem possible that all this territory
might some day become a great farming region.

By comparing the methods employed in different states, the few general
laws have been worked out which must be applied in order to farm
successfully in this region, though the details differ with local
differences in altitude, climate, soil, and rainfall. Here farming is
being reduced to a science. In other parts of the country a man sows his
seed and nature cares for it, and gives him his harvest; but here he
must wring from nature all that he gets, so it is only the man who farms
according to fixed laws who can hope to succeed.

This system is usually called "dry farming," though "scientific farming"
would perhaps be a better name, for the same principles that are
absolutely necessary here will greatly increase the yield anywhere. The
most important principle is to conserve every particle of moisture in
the soil. It is necessary to go deep into the soil to find the
underlying moisture. The seed-bed is made very deep. Plowing is from
sixteen to nineteen inches deep, while in well-watered regions it is
only about six inches. This deep seed-bed is thoroughly cultivated to
make the soil porous, the soil being reduced to a fine powder. After
sowing the seed, the ground is packed as solidly as possible. This is
done by especially designed machines. The surface of the soil is kept
broken all the time to prevent the escape of the moisture. This rule
applies equally to all soils in dry weather, and will often save a crop
of corn in any part of the country during a drought.

These are simple rules, but the practice of them is opening up the great
semi-arid regions, not of the United States only, but of the whole
earth. Western Canada, a large part of Australia, the Kalahari Desert of
Africa, and many parts of Asia, which are all semi-arid, will in time
become productive instead of barren.

It must be remarked that the grains of the East could not
withstand the severe winters in a large part of the Northwest, so
the Department of Agriculture sent men all over the world to find
drought-and-cold-resisting grains. They found a hard winter wheat, the
most nutritious in existence, which is now growing all the way from the
Dakotas to the Pacific Ocean, producing crops far above the yield of the
eastern states. 50,000,000 bushels of this wheat was raised in 1907.

The soil is the natural disintegrated rock, rich in the mineral
elements, but lacking in decayed vegetable matter. The crops soon
exhaust the nitrogen, and as clover and the common alfalfas can not grow
there, the problem of finding legumes has been the most serious one
facing this new region; but in Siberia the Agricultural Department has
recently found a new clover and three varieties of alfalfa that will
stand the cold, and Secretary Wilson believes that these will solve the
problem.

Every acre brought under cultivation adds to the world's food supply.
Can we even dream of what it will mean when 200,000,000 acres are added
to the farm lands of this continent? It means prosperity for the farmers
themselves, homes for those who are now crowded in cities, work for the
idle, and food for the hungry. It means wealth and happiness for
thousands now living and millions yet to come.


REFERENCES

Lands. Report National Conservation Commission.

Soil Wastage. Chamberlain. Report White House Conference of Governors.

Conservation of Soils. Van Hise. (Same.)

Commercial Fertilizers. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 44.[A]

[Footnote A: Department of Agriculture bulletins are free unless a price
is indicated, and may be obtained by application to The Department of
Agriculture. Washington, D. C. Postage is free in the United States.
These bulletins contain the latest scientific information and result of
research work by the government.]

The Liming of Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 57.

Renovation of Worn-out Soils. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 245.

Soil Fertility. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 257.

Management of Soils to Conserve Moisture. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
266.

Fertilizers for Cotton Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin, 62.

Work of the Bureau of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin.

Exhaustion and Abandonment of Soils. Bureau of Soils Bulletin. Whitney,
5c.

Phosphorus. Illinois Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin.

The Present Status of the Nitrogen Problem. Yearbook Dept. of
Agriculture Reprint, 411.

The Search for Leguminous Forage Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture
Reprint, 478.

Leguminous Crops. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 278.

Progress in Legume Inoculation. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
315.

A Grain for Semi-arid Lands. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin,
139.

The Sugar-Beet. Yearbook Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, 52.

Dry-Land Problems in the Great Plains Area. Yearbook Dept. of
Agriculture Reprint, 461.

Reports of Dry Farming Congress.

The Natural Wealth of the Land. J. J. Hill, Report Governor's
Conference.

National Wealth and the Farm. J. J. Hill.




CHAPTER III

FORESTS


Aside from the soil itself, which supports all life, there is no other
resource so important to man as the forests, with their many uses
covering so wide a range.

The beauty and restfulness of a forest, the grace and dignity of single
trees, the shade for man and animals, the shelter from storms--all these
things appeal to our love for the beautiful, and touch our higher
nature. The person who loves trees is a better person than the one who
does not. As the poet expresses it:

    "Ah, bare must be the shadeless ways, and bleak the path must be,
    Of him, who, having open eyes, has never learned do see,
    And so has never learned to love the beauty of a tree.

    "Who loves a tree, he loves the life that springs in star and clod,
    He loves the love that gilds the clouds, and greens the April sod,
    He loves the wide Beneficence; his soul takes hold on God."

Trees have played an important part in the history of our country: The
"Charter Oak," in the hollow of which the original charter of
Connecticut remained hidden from the agents of the king; "Eliot's Oak,"
under which the gospel was first preached to the Indians; the
wide-spreading elm under which William Penn signed his treaty of peace
with the Indians.

But no tree has held so dear a place in the hearts of the people, or
been so watchfully cared for as the old "Washington Elm" still standing
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Under it Washington took command of the
continental army. It is visited every year by hundreds of persons, who
stand with uncovered heads beneath its spreading branches. Many years
ago it was struck by lightning and the upper part torn off, but all the
broken edges have been sealed with pitch to stop decay. It has been
covered with fine wire netting to prevent the bark being chipped off by
relic hunters. It is carefully guarded from damage by insects, and the
boughs are stayed by strong wires.

And so we might name many instances of trees that are loved and cared
for on account of their beauty, stateliness or some event connected with
them, but it is the usefulness of trees that we shall mention in this
chapter.

In the larger use of forests is included their effect on climate and
rainfall. It is generally believed that clouds, passing over the damp,
cool air that rises from a forest, are more likely to be condensed into
rain, and so we can establish the general rule that the country which is
well wooded will probably have a larger rainfall than the one which has
few trees.

Twenty-five years ago Kansas was a prairie state with few trees, and the
semi-arid plains extended half-way across the state, but thousands of
acres of trees have been planted, and crops have been cultivated, and
the more forests and crops the farmer plants the more rain comes to
water them. The great droughts which used to ruin their crops year after
year no longer disturb them. The hot winds which could undo a whole
season's hard work in a day are seldom heard of now. Kansas is no longer
in the semi-arid region. It is one of the most productive states in the
Union, and this has come, not by dry-farming, but by the cultivation of
the soil and by the planting of trees.

Though rainfall increases, destructive floods become fewer, for the
humus and the leaves on the ground in the forests hold the water as in
a vast sponge, and, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, they keep
the waters in check and distribute the rainfall gently and evenly on the
lands below. They thus prevent erosion of the hillsides and balance the
water supply of rivers.

Trees supply us with food and medicine, and greatest of all their direct
uses, they furnish lumber for all kinds of manufacturing.

We can not think of life without the comforts and conveniences that we
get from wood; but interior China affords a striking example of what it
means for a nation to have a very small supply. There is no wood for
manufacturing and the natives search the hillsides for even the tiniest
shrubs to burn and even for grass scratched from the soil. Once this
part of China was a great forest region, but century by century the
forests have been used, not rapidly, as in this country, for China is
not a great industrial nation, but surely, until there is hardly a twig
left.

China is not the only nation that has suffered in this way. Many of the
ancient peoples have entirely passed away; and the destruction of their
forests, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was the first cause
leading to their extinction.

Denmark was originally almost covered with forests. These were cut down
for fuel, for lumber, and to make way for agriculture. For a long time
there was no attempt to restore them, and now a large area, once
productive, has become a sandy desert. In the same way, large parts of
Austria and Italy have become valueless because the growing forests were
cut down.

In France the forests at the head-waters of the Rhone and the Seine were
cut down and fierce floods began to pour down the valleys each year,
bringing destruction to property and crops all along their way. But
France has long ago learned the lesson of forestry, and as soon as the
danger was seen, the mountain sides were replanted with trees, and since
then conditions have been gradually changing for the better.

France has had another experience in forestry that has taught her what
can be done to save her waste lands. Near the coast were great
sand-dunes. The winds drove them each year farther inland, and the sand
was gradually driving out the vineyards and farm crops. In 1793 the
planting of forests on these dunes was begun. Of 350,000 acres, 275,000
have been planted in valuable pine forests. More than half of these
belong to private owners and there is no record of their value, but the
portion belonging to the government has yielded a large income above all
expenses, and is worth $10,000,000 as land; and this was not only
valueless but was a menace to the surrounding country. In the interior
of France a sandy marsh covering 2,000,000 acres has been changed into a
profitable forest valued at $100,000,000.

A hundred years ago all the eastern part of the United States and the
Rocky Mountains and the Pacific coast region were covered with thick
forests hundreds and hundreds of miles in extent. Evergreens--the pines,
hemlocks, cedars and spruces--grew near the coast in great abundance,
while farther inland were found the most magnificent hardwood forests in
the world.

Unfortunately, the first needs of the early settlers required them to
cut down these mighty forests. The soil, which was very fertile, could
not, of course, be used for farming purposes until the land was cleared,
and so this was the first necessity.

The wood was used to build the cabins, to make the rude furniture, the
wagons and ox-carts, and for fuel, but this disposed of only a small
amount of the wood that came from the clearing of a farm. No man could
give it to his neighbor when all had more than they could use, and there
was no market for its sale. The trees were burned in large quantities to
clear the land for the planting of crops.

Wood was of the greatest value to the first settlers, but it was also
the greatest hindrance to their making homes, so they took no care
whatever of what they could not use. It was burned or left on the
ground to decay. As towns sprang up, there began to be a demand for
lumber for houses, for furniture, for vehicles and for fuel from those
who had no trees of their own. This made a market for the best grades of
lumber at a low price, but almost every farmer would give away trees of
the best hardwood to any person who would cut and haul them away.

Conditions have changed very slowly, but very surely. In every state, in
every county and in every township there has been a steady clearing of
the land as it fills with new home-makers. At the same time the demand
has grown enormously each year from the dwellers in cities.

The opening up of railroads and telegraph lines in the middle and latter
part of the century made a great demand for wood. The building of ships
and steamboats, the opening of mines, the establishing of telephone and
trolley systems, the building of great cities, all these have called
steadily and increasingly for wood.

The time has long passed when wood was a hindrance to progress. For a
long time there has been a ready market at high prices and it is rapidly
reaching the point where we shall face an actual shortage of timber.
This is not true of all parts of the country, of course. Maine,
Washington, and parts of Oregon, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi,
Wisconsin and some other states, still have vast quantities of lumber,
but trains and ships carry it to all parts of the world so there is no
lack of a market.

The change from plenty, even great excess, to need, has come so
gradually that few persons, even those living in the forest regions,
have realized until within a very few years how general is their
destruction. Those who, riding about a small portion of the country
familiar to them, have been struck with the disappearance of the woods
and the cultivation of the lands, have looked upon it wholly as a sign
of progress, and have not realized that the same thing is going on in
every part of the country.

The wholesale destruction of the forests, without replanting, has come
mostly from ignorance. We have had all our resources in such great
abundance that we have not hitherto needed to learn the lessons that the
Old World has learned, sometimes at the cost of whole nations, but the
time has come when we _do_ need to learn them.

The first lesson is to study the various uses of the forests, to find
how they are being affected by present use, their wastes, and the best
means of preserving them. When all the people have learned these
lessons, they will, undoubtedly, gladly set about righting the wrongs
that have been done in the past.

The original forests of this country covered an area of about
850,000,000 acres, with nearly five and a half trillion board feet of
"merchantable," that is, salable, timber according to present standards.
(A board foot is one foot long, one foot wide and one inch in
thickness.) Considerably more than half the original number of acres are
still forested, but most of the land has been cut or burned over, some
of it several times, and the amount remaining of salable timber, which
includes only the best part of the trunk, is from two to two and a half
trillion, that is from 1,400 to 2,000 billion, feet. The yearly cut for
all purposes, including waste, is now over two hundred billion board
feet;--some authorities place the amount as high as two hundred and
seventy-five billion feet. This, however, probably includes firewood,
one of the largest uses of wood, but taken very largely from worm-eaten
wood that could not be cut into lumber. It also probably includes
boughs, and other unsalable parts of the tree.

The timber cut doubled from 1880 to 1905, is still increasing at almost
the same rate, and, if we had the timber, it would doubtless double
again by 1930. But even at the present rate, the forests now standing,
without allowance for growth, would be exhausted in from ten to sixteen
years. The yearly growth of timber in our present forests is estimated
at from forty-two to sixty billion feet, and the yearly cut at from
three to three and a half times the amount added for growth.

That is, we are using in four months at least as much wood as will
naturally grow in a year. The other eight months we shall be using our
forest reserves, and each year there will be less forest land to produce
new growth, as well as less old wood to cut.

Mr. R. A. Long, an expert lumberman who spoke before the first
Conservation Congress, estimated then that the forests, making allowance
for growth, would not last over thirty-five years. The government
figures indicate that they will last about thirty-three years, at the
present rate, but as the rate has been doubling every twenty-five years,
many persons who have studied the situation believe that the supply will
not continue in commercial quantities for manufacturing more than
twenty-five years.

We must understand, must think, what the destruction of our forests
would mean to us. It would mean fierce droughts and fiercer floods. It
would mean the gradual drying up of our streams, a scarcity of water to
drink, as in China to-day. It would mean that the manufacture of wooden
articles would practically cease. The thousand conveniences that we
enjoy as a matter of course would become rare and costly. It would mean
that only the rich could build houses of wood, and this would force the
masses of people into crowded quarters, not only the poor, but the
well-to-do also. These are only a few of the many disasters that would
follow the loss of our forests, and all these things might come to pass
before we ourselves are old!

If we knew that at a certain time a tidal wave would engulf our homes,
how we should work to save all that we could before the calamity
overtook us! And we should set about the saving of our forests with
equal care, for their destruction means distress for every one of us.

Fortunately, this is only the dark possibility. The methods of
prevention are well known to those who have studied the history of the
nations that have fallen, and the nations that have risen to power. It
is only necessary that all the people should know these things and
realize their importance, in order to keep conditions as they are at
present or even to better them.

The methods of prevention are five. They are:

(1) To use the trees in the most careful and conservative way without
the great wastes now common.

(2) To save the vast areas of forests that are now burned each year.

(3) To prevent loss from insects.

(4) To use substitutes: that is, to use other and cheaper materials to
take the place of wood whenever possible.

(5) To plant trees and to replant where old ones have been cut, until
all land that is not fitted for agriculture is covered with forests.

These are only the rules that good sense and good business would teach
us to follow, but we have not followed any of them in the past, and now
it will be necessary to do all these things if we are to continue to
have enough wood to use to keep pace with our progress in other
directions.

As an example of the rapid rate at which we are consuming our forests,
we use nine times as much lumber for every man, woman and child as the
people of Germany use, and twenty-five times as much as the people of
England use. This is due to several causes, many of which we would not
wish changed.

To begin with, this was a new and undeveloped country, a large part of
which had never been inhabited, and all the land, as fast as it was
occupied, must be built up with entirely new homes; and because wood is
the cheapest building material it is the one generally used.

The growth of all European countries is mostly by the increase of their
own people, while this is only a small percentage of our growth, which
comes largely from immigration from other countries, so the increase of
population is much greater here and the proportion of new homes needed
is far greater. Improvements of all kinds, public buildings, churches
and bridges were built in almost every European community long ago,
while in this country these things are being done each year in thousands
of places.

Wages are higher in this country, and more people are able to afford the
luxuries of life, vehicles, musical instruments, and the large variety
of small conveniences to be found in almost every American home but seen
in few homes of the poorer class in Europe.

These are a few of the reasons why we use such a large amount of lumber
each year. They are all conditions that mean a larger, better nation
than we could otherwise have, with a higher standard of living, and
while in some particulars, as we shall show, there should be changes
that would conserve our forests, the great wastes do not lie in the
_use_, but in the _abuse_ of the forests.

Now let us see what use is made of all the wood that is cut every year.
The greatest use of all is for firewood, but this is largely the
decaying or faulty trees from farmers' wood-lots, or the waste product
of a lumber region, so this does not constitute so heavy a drain on the
forests as the fact that 100,000,000 cords a year are used, would
indicate.

Twenty times as much of the salable timber is sawed into lumber as is
used in any other way. Nearly 40,000,000,000 board feet are thus used,
but lumber is used in a variety of ways, while the other cuts are
confined to a single use.

The first and greatest use of lumber is for building purposes, for
houses, barns, sheds, out-buildings, fences, and for window-sashes,
doors and inside finishings of all buildings, even those made of other
materials.

Next comes furniture of all kinds,--chairs, tables, beds, and all other
house, office, and school furniture; musical instruments, pianos, etc.,
vehicles of all kinds,--farm wagons, delivery wagons, carriages and
other pleasure vehicles, including parts of automobile bodies,
agricultural implements, plows, harrows, harvesters, threshing machines
and other farm implements. Though these are built largely of iron, yet
one-fourth of the implement factories report a use of 215,000,000 feet
of lumber a year, so the entire output of these factories calls for a
large amount of wood from our forests.

Car building is the other really great use for lumber. Freight cars,
passenger cars, and trolley cars use each year an increasingly large
proportion of the product of our saw-mills.

After these come the various smaller articles, which, though themselves
small, are used in every home and are turned out in such vast quantities
as to require a very large amount of lumber each year.

An empty spool seems a trifle, but the making of all the spools requires
the cutting of hundreds of acres of New England's best birch woods.
Butter dishes, fruit crates, baskets, wooden boxes of all kinds, tools
and handles, kitchen utensils, toys and sporting goods, picture molding
and frames, grille and fretwork, excelsior, clothes-pins, matches,
tooth-picks,--all these are mowing down our forests by the thousands of
acres.

The lumber cut includes all kinds of both hard and soft woods. A very
large percentage of this is of yellow or southern hard pine, of which
several billion feet a year are used.

An almost equal amount is used for hewn cross-ties for railroads and
trolley lines. Many sawed cross-ties are included in the item of lumber.
The hewed cross-ties are made from young oak-trees, or from hard-pine,
cedar and chestnut. Without them no more railroad or trolley lines could
be built, and the present systems could not be kept in repair. Many
other materials have been tried, but wood is the only one that has ever
proved satisfactory and safe for this purpose.

The next largest use of lumber is the grinding of it into pulp to be
used in making paper for our books, magazines and newspapers, wrapping
papers, etc. The woods used for this purpose are mostly spruce and
hemlock. The great sources of supply of pulp-wood are Maine and
Wisconsin, and large amounts are imported from Canada, which greatly
lessens the drain on our own forests.

Next in importance comes cooperage stock for the making of barrels. When
we consider the many uses of barrels,--that vinegar, oil, and liquors
are all shipped in tight barrels, which are mostly made of the best
white oak, and that flour, starch, sugar, crackers, fruits and
vegetables, glassware, chemicals, and cement are shipped in what are
called slack barrels, made of various hardwoods, the hoops being always
of soft elm, a wood which is rapidly disappearing, we can see the size
and necessity of this industry.

Round mine timbers, largely made of young hardwood trees, are used to
support the mines underground. Mining engineers say that on an average
three feet of lumber are used in mining every ton of coal taken out.
Assuming that 450,000,000 tons of coal are mined each year, this would
mean that almost a billion and a half feet a year are used in the coal
mines, and this is about the amount shown by the government report.

After this comes wood for lath used in building. This product is usually
taken from lower class wood or logging camp waste. Then comes the wood
for distillation into wood-alcohol for use in manufacture and to furnish
power in engines.

Next in quantity used comes veneer, which has two entirely different
uses. The highest grade woods are cut to about one-twentieth of an inch
and glued to cheaper woods as an outside finish in the making of
furniture. The other use is for veneer used alone, when a very thin wood
is desired. This is employed for butter dishes, berry baskets, crates,
boxes and barrels.

Next on the list come poles--electric railway, electric light,
telegraph, and telephone poles. Every pole that is erected for any of
these purposes, every extension of the service, and all replacing caused
by wind or decay, means the cutting of a tall, straight, perfect tree,
usually cedar or chestnut. If we think of each pole of the network that
covers the entire continent, as a tree, we shall better realize what our
forests have done in binding the nation together.

Leather is stained by soaking the hides in a solution containing the
bark of oak or hemlock. Sometimes an extract is made from chestnut
wood. This has caused one of the most criminal wastes of trees, for a
great deal of timber was cut down solely for the bark, and the wood left
to decay in the forest. But now, as the price of lumber advances, more
of it is used each year and less left to waste.

The bark and extract of the quebracho, a South American tree, are being
imported for use in tanning, and are still further reducing the drain on
our own forests.

Turpentine and rosin do not in themselves destroy the forests any more
than does tapping the maple trees for their sap, but in the making of
turpentine trees that are too small are often "boxed" and the trees are
easily blown down by heavy winds or are attacked by insects and fungi.
Many destructive fires also follow turpentining, so that on the whole
the turpentine industry is responsible for the destruction each year of
large areas of the southern pine forests. The methods of turpentining
introduced by the government result in the saving of thirty per cent.
more turpentine, and also protect the trees so that they may be used
fifteen or twenty years and still be almost as valuable as ever for
timber.

Twenty millions of posts are cut each year in the Lake States alone, and
the entire number used is probably two or three times as great.

These constitute the greater uses of wood, not a full and detailed list;
but it plainly shows that all the uses are not only desirable, but
necessary for our comfort and happiness, and that we would not willingly
sacrifice one of them, and in order that this shall not become
necessary, let us see what abuses we can find in the management of our
forests. And here we find the most startling figures of all.

Great and important as is our list of products made from wood, we are
surprised to learn that of all wood cut fully two-thirds is wasted in
the forests, left to decay or burned. The largest forests are now all
located far from the great manufacturing regions, and that means far
from the lumber market. The cost of transportation must be added to
every car of lumber sold. The freight on a car-load of lumber from the
South to Chicago or other points in the middle West is not less than a
hundred dollars, and from the Pacific coast it is very much higher.

It does not pay to send low-grade lumber when the cost is so great, and
as there is no local market a large part of each tree is burned. All the
upper end of the trunk and all branches are thus destroyed, although
much valuable timber is contained in them.

At one mill in Alabama a pile of waste wood and branches as high as a
two-story house burns night and day throughout the year, and that is
probably true of all the larger mills.

If the timber could be conservatively managed as are live-stock
products, so that all the waste could be utilized, all the small
articles, shingles, lath, posts, tan-bark and extract, pulp-wood, wood
for distillation and small manufactured articles would be made
by-products of the larger cuts.

Much has been said of the greed of large lumber companies in causing
wholesale and reckless destruction of the forests, and much of it is
doubtless true, but the lumber companies cite the fact that no farmer
will gather a crop of corn which will not pay for the labor cost of
gathering, and say that at the present prices of lumber they can not pay
the present freight rates to the factories. It seems therefore that a
certain amount of waste is unavoidable unless wood-working plants are
established near the forest regions.

The first great step in conserving our forests is to stop the
unnecessary wastes in use. The next step is to take measures to prevent
the great destruction of our forests by fire.

Those who have never lived in a great forest region can have little idea
of the extent of the damage caused by these great forest fires. The loss
of life of both man and animals, the sweeping away of houses and crops,
the homelessness and misery of those who have lost everything they had
saved, are not to be taken into account here, but only the loss of the
forests themselves.

It is estimated that the loss by fire is as great as the entire amount
cut for use in the entire United States. The National Conservation
Committee reports that 50,000,000 acres of woodland are burned over
yearly. This probably includes all burned-over lands, in much of which
the standing timber is not destroyed, but the saplings and seedlings are
killed as well as the grass for grazing and for the protection of the
roots. Much land is burned over in this way year after year until hope
of future growth is gone, though the damage to the large trees has not
been great. In one way this loss is even more serious, as it shuts off
the hope of future forests, but the loss of our full-grown standing
forests is grave.

In 1891 this loss amounted to 15,000,000 acres, or nearly forty thousand
acres every day in the year. Since then the work of the Forest Service
in fighting fires and the great clearing of the forests, has reduced
this somewhat, but it still amounts to no less than 30,000 acres of our
best salable timber a day. This is the really great and serious loss of
the forests.

All the wood that is used goes to make our country a better place to
live in, to make its people more comfortable and happy, but all that is
lost by fire is a loss to all the nation in comforts for the future, and
in the present it means high prices for lumber because our forests are
disappearing so rapidly.

And we are letting them burn at the rate of thirty thousand acres every
day! More than enough to supply all our needs. If any one could gather
together in one vast pile our houses and barns, our furniture, our
wagons and carriages, our farm implements, all our home conveniences,
our railroad cross-ties, our trolley and telephone poles, our papers and
magazines, and burn them all, the whole world would be roused by the
fearfulness of the loss. But we sit idly by and see the materials of
which all these things are made and must be made in the future, and with
them our shade, our water-sheds, the soil of the forest-lands itself
destroyed, with never a word of protest.

In a paper prepared for the National Conservation Congress, it was
stated that in some years government survey parties were unable to work
in the Rocky Mountains for whole seasons on account of the dense smoke,
and the fires were allowed to burn till the snows of winter put them
out. The writer further stated that he believed from observation that
the Forest Service, by checking fires in their beginning, has in the
last few years saved more timber than has been used for commercial
purposes.

Private owners of large tracts should be compelled to use the same care
in preventing fires that is exercised by the government. This care, and
the breaking up of the forests into smaller tracts by clearing the land
in alternate sections would soon reduce the fire loss so greatly as
almost to save us from anxiety for the future of our timber lands.

The next great loss to the forests is from insects. When insects have
bored into wood it becomes honey-combed by the canals cut by the little
insects and is utterly valueless. The loss to fruit and forest trees
will be taken up more fully in the chapter on insects. At present it is
only necessary, in order to show how much our forests suffer in this
way, to state that the yearly loss from this cause is placed at no less
than $100,000,000 a year, and the loss to fruits is counted at one-fifth
of the entire crop. Some slight idea of the danger to our forests will
be seen by the simple statement that forty-one different species of
insects infest the locust tree, eighty the elm, one hundred and five the
birch, one hundred and sixty-five the pine, one hundred and seventy the
hickory, one hundred and eighty-six the willow, while oak trees are
attacked by over five hundred!

This is exceedingly difficult to control and can perhaps never be
entirely checked. Some remedies will be suggested later, and by having
smaller forests, more carefully watched, some personal care can be given
to the trees. In Germany the trees are as closely watched as are other
crops, and the saving in value well repays this extra care and expense.

A much smaller loss comes from the winds that sometimes level all the
trees over many square miles. This can not, of course, be prevented,
except possibly in the turpentine forests, but care should be taken to
use all the wood, never allowing it to decay where it fell, and also to
replant the land with trees, unless it is fitted for agriculture.

A great saving of the forests may be effected by what is called
preservative treatment, which consists of treating railroad ties,
piling, mine timbers, poles, and posts with creosote or zinc chlorid to
prevent decay from the moisture of the ground or from injury by
salt-water borers. The use of creosote is almost double the cost of zinc
chlorid, but it is much more effective and durable. A fence post can be
treated with creosote for about ten cents, a railroad tie for twenty
cents, and a telephone pole for from seventy-five cents to a dollar. In
every case the timber treated will last twice as long as it would
without such treatment and in view of the present high prices it is bad
business policy to use timber in such a way that it will need replacing
soon. It is estimated that if all timbers which could be profitably
treated were so cared for, it would mean a money saving to the owners of
$47,000,000, and an annual saving in wood equal to 4,000,000,000 board
feet of lumber.

The next point in the conservation of the forests is to seek substitutes
to take the place of wood. There are many uses of wood which nothing
else will satisfactorily supply. For example, no railroad cross-tie has
ever been designed of other material that does not increase the danger
of railway accidents, though over two hundred kinds have been patented.

There is nothing that will take the place of wood in furniture, and in
many small articles. Some articles might be replaced in metal, but it
makes them too heavy or too expensive. But in certain lines there is an
excellent opportunity to use other materials to great advantage.

Cars are now being built of steel, and of combinations of metal with
asbestos. These are not yet entirely satisfactory, but it is hoped that
they can be perfected soon. Cement and concrete are taking the place of
wood to a great extent in building, and their use will doubtless
increase rapidly.

When veneer is used for barrels and boxes it affords a saving of nearly
two-thirds in the amount of wood required. This is a line of use where
cheaper substitutes should always be used if possible, because a package
is usually used only once, never more than twice, and then discarded, so
that the wood is put to little real service compared with other wooden
articles.

When possible, small articles of wood should be made only in a forest
region or near saw-mills to use the scraps and save an unnecessary drain
on the more valuable grades of lumber.

One of the most important lines in which substitutes are practicable is
in the making of paper and box-board or pasteboard. The latter is
sometimes called strawboard, because it is made from wheat straw, and
where it is manufactured, uses a large amount of straw that would
otherwise be wasted, but the great wheat fields of the West still have
immense quantities of unused straw, which, if made into strawboard,
would not only bring more prosperity to that region but would lessen the
drain on the forests.

A box bound with wire and made of corrugated paper now takes the place
for many light articles of the wooden packing-case. The strawboard also
takes the place of wood-pulp for smaller paper boxes. Rice-straw, hemp,
flax-straw, cotton fiber and peat have all been tested in a small way
and found to make excellent paper, and it is thought corn-stalks can
also be used, but none of these is now manufactured in the United States
on a large scale. This is largely because the price of pulp-wood is low,
and the cost of experimenting with new materials is great with the
results uncertain.

This brings us to the last one of our preventive measures for the
decline of our forests, the one which needs the most careful attention
of all--the replanting of the lands that are not fitted for agriculture,
and planting trees about houses and unoccupied spaces.

Many farmers have planted orchards on a part of their farm-lands and
many trees have been planted in town and country, but until a few years
ago there was no organized effort to plant trees.

Now many states have set apart a day which is called Arbor Day, for this
purpose, but in no state does it hold so important a place as it should.
It is observed by the schools but not by the general public.

In Germany there are regular tree-planting days in which all the people
take part. Every one who is not too poor--and he must be poor
indeed--plants a tree in his own garden, or in front of his home, in the
forest or in the highway; for himself or for the general good.

Each child plants a tree on his or her birthday every year, and watches
and cares for it as it grows. The roadsides are lined with fruit or nut
or flowering trees which have been planted in neat, orderly rows. These
things are in striking contrast to the observance of Arbor Day in this
country, where one tree suffices for an entire school, or at best each
class has a tree of its own. It is all a matter of enthusiasm and
education.

In considering the best trees for planting we come to the last great use
of trees of which we have not spoken. Fruit and nut trees supply us with
large quantities of the most wholesome and delicious food. The apple,
pear, peach, plum, and cherry grow in the central part of the United
States, and oranges, lemons, figs, olives and apricots in the warmer
parts.

By planting these trees in suitable places one may have a rich harvest
for many years to come. If a small fraction of the seeds of fruit trees
which are wasted each year were planted, the general food supply would
be greatly increased, and many benefits would be derived from the trees
themselves.

Have you ever heard the story of "Apple-seed John," the man who,
according to tradition, went through what is now western Pennsylvania,
Ohio and Indiana while the country was still a wilderness and planted
orchards for the settlers who, he was sure, would come later?

So many stories have been told of him that it is hard to discover how
much of the tale is really true. At least one poem has been written
about him, and the Reverend Newell Dwight Hillis has woven the facts and
fancies of his career into a charming book, _The Quest of John Chapman_.

The story is that he spent his winters in the settlements near the
Atlantic coast teaching the children or working at small tasks about the
farms, and taking his pay always in the seeds of apples, peaches, pears,
plums, and grapes. The farmers and their families saved all their seeds
for him and when spring came he filled his boat with seeds and started
down the Ohio River. When he reached a suitable landing-place he took
his bags of seeds on his back and trudged through the forest.

Whenever he came to an open space he planted an orchard, built a fence
of boughs about it, and started on again. And so he traveled on and on,
through all the spring and summer months, year after year, planting his
seeds for those who would come after him, until he grew too old to work.

The first settlers in those states found the orchards and vineyards
awaiting them, and a few trees are still standing that are said to have
been planted by Apple-Seed John. The story of this man who in his humble
way devoted his life to others is one that may well be told and
imitated, for while none of us can do the work he did, it may inspire
us with a wish to make some spot on earth better by planting our few
seeds or plants.

In carrying on this work in the schools as well as by the general
public, a regular plan should be followed. Much can be accomplished with
no expense at all, even in cities. In all cases the expense will be very
small compared to the good accomplished.

Seeds may be planted and later transplanted. This will require no
expense and little labor. Every child, large and small, in city and
country, can learn to do this work and can thus perform a real service.
Small saplings which are growing close together, where they can never
develop, may each be planted in a place where it will have a chance to
grow into a thrifty tree. Most farmers would be entirely willing to
allow the pupils to take such saplings from their wood-lots if the work
were properly done. This is an excellent work for country schools to
undertake, both for the good it will accomplish and for the training of
the pupils themselves in practical work.

Fruit trees of suitable size for planting may be had for about twenty
cents each. Most American children could easily save that amount from
money spent on candy, sweetmeats or toys so as to have a tree ready for
planting on Arbor Day which would yield them fruit as they grow older,
and be a source of pride and pleasure. Such trees will of course usually
be planted at the children's own homes, but it would be an excellent
idea to follow the German plan of planting public orchards just outside
the town. When the trees are old enough to bear, the children are
allowed on certain days to go and gather and eat the fruit and carry it
home in baskets.

The older boys in every school, whether city or country, should be
taught to plant and transplant trees in the best way. The following
directions for the work are sent out by the Department of Agriculture at
Washington:

"The proper season for planting is not everywhere the same. When the
planting is done in the spring, the right time is when the frost is out
of the ground and before budding begins.

"The day to plant is almost as important as the season. Sunny, windy
weather is to be avoided. Cool, damp days are the best. Trees can not be
thrust carelessly into a rough soil and then be expected to flourish.
They should be planted in properly worked soil, well enriched. If they
can not be planted immediately after they are taken up the first step is
to prevent their roots drying out in the air. This may be done by piling
fresh dirt deep about the roots or setting the roots in mud.

"In planting they should be placed from two to three inches deeper than
they stood originally. Fine soil should always be pressed firmly--not
made hard--about the roots, and two inches of dry soil at the top should
be left very loose to retain the moisture."

The reading of such poems as Lucy Larcom's "He who plants a tree plants
a hope," or William Cullen Bryant's, "Come, let us plant the apple
tree," and suitable talks or papers on trees, dealing with their kinds
and uses, on the benefits of forests, and on practical forestry, should
be a part of the Arbor Day exercises.

In many communities a tract of land which is not well suited for general
agriculture may be obtained for the benefit of the school, and some
simple work in forestry may be undertaken by the pupils. Sometimes a
farmer may be induced to give a small bit of waste land where the
experiment may be tried. Sometimes such land can be bought by the school
in one of the following ways:

A series of entertainments may be given by the pupils, the proceeds to
be applied to the buying of the land, and the pupils may also obtain
money in other outside ways to bring to the general fund. If only one
acre can be bought and cleared by the pupils, and properly planted, a
little at a time, a tree for each child's birthday, or by obtaining
small seedlings and saplings from the forest, it will be a source of
keen interest, and will give an added pleasure to the school work.
Watching the growth of the trees and caring for them will keep this
interest alive year after year, and in time it will become a valuable
property belonging to the school. Sometimes the school officials will
set aside a sum from the public money to purchase the land. In one High
School, one acre is thus bought each year, and every pupil in the senior
year gives and plants a tree. Sometimes the farmers or the merchants of
a community may unite in buying the land, which will, of course, become
public property, and set it aside for improvement after the manner of a
city park.

Sometimes women's clubs become interested in such a movement and will
raise the funds necessary for beginning it. It then becomes the duty of
the school, year after year, to plant and care for the land. After a
time the school will have a valuable property to sell, or can have a
yearly income from the sale of timber.

Such plans may be carried out in many schools. Every school can and
should do something to forward this great work. All school yards should
be well planted and care taken that the boy with a new knife does not
try it on the bark or that the bark is not rubbed from the trees in
careless play. Many trees planted in school yards have been destroyed
in this way.

But we shall not be safe if only the schools plant trees. Farmers and
lot owners should take up the work in earnest, adding as many trees as
possible each year. In this way they could insure an abundant supply of
fruit, nuts and timber for the future, could increase the value of their
property, and provide a steady income besides.

Farmers' institutes would find this a most important work to undertake,
arranging for a common plan to be carried out in an entire neighborhood,
and setting aside days in which all the members may work together to set
out trees by the roadsides. This brings us to the question of what kinds
of trees are best to plant.

For town or city lots, fruit trees should always be chosen, because they
bear in a short time and will add to the family food supply, and so
lessen the cost of living and increase the variety of food. Every farm
should have a good assortment of fruit. Any nurseryman's catalogue will
furnish lists of kinds so that a wise choice may be made. In selecting
fruit trees, great care should be taken to choose the best varieties.

For streets and roadsides, nut or wild fruit trees are best, for the
trees are generally graceful in appearance and will yield some return,
as the more popular maples and poplars will not. The chestnut is one of
the best trees for such planting, though it is of a rather slow growth.
English or American walnuts, pecans, mulberry and persimmon trees can be
grown in most parts of the United States.

One town in Kansas is planting fruit trees on all its streets, so that
in a few years there will be an abundance of fruit free to every
passer-by. This is a most excellent plan, but individuals would be
likely to find the fruit molested if only a few trees are planted in a
community.

Barn-lots and lanes should be planted with wild cherry, haws, elder,
dogwood, mountain-ash, and other wild fruits to serve as food for birds,
poultry, and hogs.

Where the banks of streams need to be protected from erosion, probably
the best tree for planting is the basket willow, which thrives well near
the water, has a heavy network of roots, and is valuable for weaving
into baskets and furniture.

For all hillsides and rocky places, as well as wood-lots, the hardwoods
which sell best for timber should be planted in the North and West, and
the evergreens near the sea-coasts and in the South. Forests of oak,
hickory, walnut, maple (especially the sugar maple, which yields a
steady return during the lifetime of the tree), elm, chestnut, and
locust will sell for a good price, and are always salable. It requires
many years to grow large timber, but by proper management several years
can be gained in its growth, and it is always a valuable investment for
a farmer to make for his children.

Not individuals only, but states and the national government as well,
should provide forests for the future, and this is the greatest duty of
all, for much of the most important work can only be done by a power
that can control the entire watershed at the head-waters of a
river-system.

For example, the Appalachian Mountains are the source of hundreds of
streams which flow east, west and south, and pass through many states.
These mountains were originally covered with a heavy forest growth, but
they belong largely to private companies who are cutting the forests at
a rapid rate.

The effect of this is seen in bare hillsides, washed by mountain
torrents which are causing disastrous floods on the lowlands, filling up
the streams, and carrying away much of the most fertile soil of some of
the southeastern states, and in the drying up of the small tributaries.

This can not be remedied by single companies nor by the states that
suffer most. The only remedy is for the government to buy the land at
the head-waters of the rivers and reforest it. The same conditions on a
smaller scale are to be found in every mountainous region where the
forests are cut away.

The United States owns a large amount of forest but not nearly enough to
insure a supply of wood for the future. The public forest lands are
nearly all in the West. They consist of national forests, national
parks, Indian and military reservations and land open to entry as timber
claims. In all they contain nearly 100,000,000 acres, or about half as
much as is contained in farmers' wood-lots and about one-fourth as much
as the amount owned by large lumber companies.

The United States, on its public domain, is setting about a careful
system of cutting and replanting. This system is known as forestry. It
has been worked out by some of the more advanced nations of Europe who
saw that destruction was coming on them through the cutting away of
their forests. Now forestry is practised by every nation except Turkey
and China. The principles have been well proved and the results of
scientific care of the forests are known to be even more sure than in
farming or live-stock raising.

The Department of Agriculture will send complete directions for planting
trees in rows at proper distances, will tell what kinds are best suited
to each region and condition, how to make them grow rapidly, and when to
cut. All these things should be thoroughly understood by every land
owner, large or small, but at present forestry is practised on only one
per cent. of all land in this country, owned by private persons or
companies, though it is practised on seventy per cent. of all public
lands.

The countries that show the best results in forestry are some of the
German states, particularly Prussia and Saxony, and France. In Prussia
the rate of production is three times as great as it was seventy-five
years ago. There is three times as much saw timber in a tree as there
was at that time, and the money returns from an average acre of forest
are now nearly ten times what they were sixty years ago. In Saxony the
state forests are receiving two dollars and thirty cents per acre a year
above all expenses from forests on land not fitted for agriculture, and
the profit is increasing every year.

France and Germany together spend $11,000,000 a year on their public
forests and receive from them an income of $30,000,000, or nearly three
times as much, while the United States spends for its public forests
more than ten times as much as it receives.

Many of our states are taking an active interest in forestry and are
buying tracts of land of low value for state forests. New York is taking
the lead in the work of planting forests, but even here the amount done
is much less than it should be. The state forester says that one million
trees are planted each year while twenty millions should be planted.

The National Conservation Commission reported that the entire United
States should plant an area larger than the states of Pennsylvania,
Ohio, and West Virginia, in order to supply our future needs, but that
we have actually planted an area less than the state of Rhode Island.

This, then, is the lesson we should learn in regard to our forests: To
guard against waste in cutting and use, fire, and insects, and to plant
trees until our future supply of timber is assured, till the head-waters
of our streams are protected and our waste lands made into valuable
forest tracts; till every farm has its wood-lot, and every community its
fruit and shade. It is a work in which every one of us may take some
part and from which good results are certain to come.


ORCHARDS

Another phase of tree-culture that does not, strictly speaking, come
under the head of forestry, but which should be considered here, is the
cultivation of orchards, either for home use or for commercial purposes.

In a few sections, fruit is the most valuable of all crops. Oranges in
Florida and California, peaches in some of the southern states, and
apples in the northwest, are more profitable than any field crops, and
their cultivation is made the subject of careful scientific study. But
there are many other states where the raising of fruit in commercial
quantities is almost altogether neglected, and to which almost all fruit
is shipped from other sections. This is particularly true in the rich
corn and wheat producing states of the Mississippi Valley.

The early settlers each planted an orchard for home use, and these
produced the finest quality of fruit in abundance; but usually, after
being planted, the trees were left to take care of themselves, while the
farmer's time and attention were given to his fields of grain.

As time passed, plant diseases and insect pests increased, winds broke
down many of the unpruned trees, frosts often blighted the entire crop
of fruit, and the uncultivated, sod-choked trees produced fruit that was
less in quantity and poorer in quality each year.

In recent years the highest grade of apples have all been shipped from
the West. These are grown on irrigated land; a high price being paid
both for the land itself and for the water-privilege, and the orchards
are seldom more than ten acres in extent. Wind and frost may cause as
much damage here as in the eastern states and plant diseases and insect
enemies are equally liable to injure the crop.

But here orcharding is carried on in a scientific manner. The small size
of the orchard makes it possible for the owner properly to care for
every tree, and each one must be made a source of profit. Every
condition that tends to affect the crop is carefully studied, and the
remedy found and applied.

There is no reason why the same care and labor should not produce
equally good results with far less expense in the well-watered regions
of the eastern and central part of the United States. The neglected
orchard will prove a failure anywhere, as surely as will a neglected
garden, and success will come only by giving to fruit the same
intelligent care that would be bestowed upon any other crop.

The cultivation of apples should receive particular attention in the
north central states, because they have great food value, are not
perishable, can be shipped long distances, and the demand, both at home
and abroad, is always greater than the supply. The home orchard,
however, should contain many kinds of fruit, and the same general rules
in regard to the care of the orchard apply to all of them.

First, the orchard should not be located on land that is fitted to
produce the best farm crops, but it must not be too steep and hilly to
be cultivated. A sunny sloping hillside is best suited to orchard crops.

In most cases little fertilization is needed except the planting of
clover or some other leguminous crop. If corn be planted in young
orchards, as is often the case, potash should be used as a fertilizer
after the crop is gathered, since both corn and fruit trees draw very
heavily on the potash in the soil.

Old orchards sometimes need a single application of a general fertilizer
containing all the principal soil elements. All fertilizers should be
applied not merely around the base of the trunk, but as far from it as
the tree spreads its branches in all directions.

The trees should be carefully pruned and special attention paid to
trimming the tops low to prevent damage from winds, and also to make
spraying easy.

The soil should be deeply cultivated the first few years in order to
make the roots strike deep into the ground, and afterward the soil
should receive some surface cultivation every year.

When there is danger of frost after the trees have bloomed, brushwood
fires are lighted and a dense smoke is raised over the orchard by
burning pots of crude oil. This smoke is helpful in preventing the
formation of frost, and will often be the means of saving the crop.

The other great causes of failure to grow large quantities of perfect
fruit, if the varieties are well chosen, are plant diseases and damage
by insects. The methods of their control are given in the chapter on
Insects, and include principally the disposal of all decayed fruit, the
raking up and burning of all leaves in infected orchards, arsenical and
lime sprays, and, above all, such attention to pruning and cultivation
as will keep the trees in good condition.

Lastly, the keeping of bees in the orchard will pay well, not only for
the honey they produce, but because they assist greatly in carrying the
pollen from flower to flower, and so increasing the crop of fruit.


REFERENCES

Forests. Report National Conservation Commission.

Forest Conservation, Papers and Discussions, Report Governor's
Conference.

Arbor Day, Forest Service Department of Agriculture Circular, 96.

Tree Planting on Rural School Grounds. Forest Service Department of
Agriculture Circular, 134.

Practical Assistance to Tree Planters. Forest Service Department of
Agriculture Circular, 22.

How to Transplant Forest Trees. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 61.

Forest Planting on Coal Lands. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 41.

Forestry in the Public Schools. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 130.

Primer of Forestry. (Pinchot). Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 173.

The Use of the National Forests. (Pinchot.)

What Forestry Has Done. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 140.

Forest Preservation and National Prosperity. Forest Service Department
of Agriculture Circular, 35.

Forest Planting and Farm Management. Forest Service Department of
Agriculture Circular, 228.

Facts and Figures Regarding our Forest Resources. Forest Service
Department of Agriculture Circular, 11.

Drain Upon the Forests. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 129.

The Waning Hardwood Supply. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 129.

Timber Supply of the United States. Forest Service Department of
Agriculture Circular, 116.

Forestry and the Lumber Supply. Forest Service Department of Agriculture
Circular, 97.

How to Cultivate and Care for Forests in Semi-arid Regions.

Forest Service Department of Agriculture Circular, 54.

Paper-making Materials and their Conservation. Bureau of Chemistry, 41.




CHAPTER IV

WATER


Water is an absolute necessity to man, as much as the air he breathes or
the food he eats. Water comes to us in the form of rain or snow. We
usually think of it as unlimited, but we must come to think of it as a
resource that can be abused and wasted or made useful and profitable as
is the soil itself.

The amount of water is fixed and passes in an endless round from cloud
to river or land and back to the clouds again. The average yearly
rainfall of the United States is estimated at thirty inches, about forty
inches in the eastern half, an average of eighteen inches in the western
part, and in many places not more than ten or twelve inches. One inch of
rain would amount to nearly one hundred and one tons per acre, or on a
roof twenty feet long by twenty feet wide, one inch of rain would be two
hundred and fifty gallons. With a rainfall of forty inches, this would
amount to 10,000 gallons in a year, or an average, over every bit of
land twenty feet square, of twenty-seven gallons for every day in the
year. This is about the quantity that falls in the eastern part of the
United States.

It varies slightly from year to year, but there is no more--there is no
possible way of adding to it, though we may lessen it by allowing it to
rush out to sea, giving no service to the land. As the land waters
diminish the rainfall also grows less.

This two hundred trillions cubic feet of water which falls on our land
every year constitutes our entire water resource, is the source of all
our rivers and streams, of the moisture in the air, of our rains and
snows, and our water for plant and animal growth.

To understand how much this is, we may say that it is about equal to ten
times the amount of water that flows through the Mississippi River
system. The water of the Mississippi and its branches is nearly half of
all the water in the United States that flows through waterways to the
sea. This water that flows through our streams is sometimes called the
run-off. The run-off is increasing every year as we cut our forests and
cultivate our land. It is used for navigation, irrigation and power, but
the increase is not an advantage for these purposes as might be
supposed, because it comes in disastrous floods, tearing away dams,
ruining power sites, and not only preventing navigation during the flood
season, but by filling up the rivers and changing the channels, making
navigation difficult and dangerous throughout the year. The run-off is
controlled to some extent and may be brought under almost as complete
control as may be desired.

As much as the water of five or six Mississippis, or a little more than
half of our supply, is evaporated to moisten and temper the air, to fall
as rain or snow, or to form dews. This is sometimes called the fly-off,
and except for some changes caused by management of the land, is
entirely beyond control.

A part of the remainder sinks into the soil below the surface. A large
portion of this helps to cause the slow rock-decay that forms the soil,
and which is known as ground water. It is estimated that within the
first hundred feet below the surface of the earth there is a quantity of
water that has seeped down; and that would form, if it were collected, a
vast reservoir sixteen or seventeen feet in depth spreading over all the
3,000,000 square miles of the area of our country. This is equal to
about seven years' rainfall and is a very important part of our water
resources. In many places it forms into underground streams or lakes. It
feeds all the springs and many of the lakes. Our wells are dug or
drilled into this underground water system. It carries away the excess
of salts and mineral matter from the soil, the trees strike their roots
deep into the earth and draw from it, and last and most important of
all, that which sinks immediately below the surface supplies all our
plant growth. So that it is this last portion, that which sinks below
the ground, and which is sometimes termed the cut-off, amounting to
about one-tenth of all our water resource, or about the quantity that
flows through the Mississippi River system, that forms the really
important part.

On this depends all that makes a land habitable, the water for drinking
purposes and for plant and animal growth. On it depends the rate of
production of every acre of farm and forest land and the life of every
animal. Every full-grown man of one hundred and fifty pounds takes into
his system not less than a ton of water each year, and every bushel of
corn requires for its making fifteen or twenty tons of water.

Of the importance of this Professor Chamberlain says: "The key to the
problem of soil conservation lies in due control of the water that falls
on every acre. This water is an asset of great value. It should be
counted by every land owner as a possible value, saved if turned where
it will do good, lost if permitted to run away, doubly lost if it also
carries away the soil and does destructive work below."

The uses of rainfall are given thus:

A due portion should go through the soil to its bottom to promote rock
decay. Some of it should go into the underdrainage to carry away harmful
matter, another portion goes up to the surface carrying solutions needed
by the plants. A portion goes into the plants to nourish them, and still
another part runs off the surface, carrying away the worn-out parts of
the soil.

Crops can use to advantage all the rain that falls during the growing
season; and in most cases crops are all the better for all the water
that can be carried over from the winter. There are many local
exceptions, but in general crops are best when the soil can be made to
absorb as much of the rainfall and snowfall as possible. This also
causes the least possible amount of wash from the land.

Doctor N. J. McGee says: "Scarcely anywhere in the United States is the
rainfall excessive, that is, greater than is needed by growing plants,
living animals and men. Nearly everywhere it falls below this standard.
In the western part the average rainfall is only about eighteen inches;
in the extreme eastern part the fall averages forty-eight inches. In the
western part much of the land is unable to produce crops at all except
when artificially watered. The eastern part might produce more abundant
crops, develop greater industries and support a larger population with a
rainfall of sixty inches than it is able to do with a rainfall of
forty-eight inches." As may readily be seen, the fly-off can be
controlled only in a very small degree, by conserving the moisture that
is in the soil, and so preventing it from evaporating too rapidly.

The cut-off can be controlled to a considerable extent through forestry
and scientific farming and it is very important that the supply should
be as carefully conserved as possible.

But it is in the run-off that the great waste of water occurs, and also
that great saving is possible. It has been found by careful estimate
that from eighty-five per cent. to ninety-five per cent. of the water
that flows to the sea is wasted in freshets or destructive floods.

We are not accustomed to think of the water as wasted, since it seems
beyond our control, but as we are taking a careful account of stock, and
seeing how our forests, our fuels and our minerals are disappearing, and
our soil being carried out to sea by the rushing waters, it is well to
consider, also, whether this great resource may not be so used as to
benefit mankind in many ways and at the same time lessen the drain on
other resources.

The water of streams may be divided as to use into four great classes.
The most important is that used by cities for general supply, for
household and drinking purposes; next, that which is used for navigation
and the running of boats to carry commerce; third, that which is used
for artificial watering or irrigation, and lastly, that which is used
for power in manufacturing.

In the past, when water has been used it has seldom been employed for
more than one of these purposes, but as we come to understand more the
nature, value and possibilities of this great resource, we shall learn
to make the money spent for one of these lines of activity supply
several other needs.

As we study each of these separately we shall see this interrelation
among them.

The cities of the United States have expended $250,000,000 in waterworks
and nearly as much more in land for reservoirs, and for canals for
conveying the water from these reservoirs to the cities. The better
managed systems protect the drained lands from erosion by planting
forests or grass and the water is completely controlled, so that all the
water, even the storm overflow, is saved. There is very little waste in
these city water systems until it comes to the consumer, where, except
when it is sold through meters, the waste is often great.

The failure to provide the greatest good lies in the fact that the
water systems have been used for water supply only and have not been
made profitable in other ways. The drainage basins should be heavily
planted with trees, which will in time yield a large return, or with
hay, which can be marketed each year. Whenever possible, the canals
carrying the water supply should also be used to furnish power.

The city of Los Angeles, when it had a population of only 150,000,
undertook to provide pure water from a point two hundred and fifty miles
distant. To do so it must take on itself a debt of $23,000,000, a large
sum for a city ten times its size. Yet the people were ready to assume
this great burden to insure an unending supply of pure water, for they
realized that without it their city could not continue to grow. It was
not until the plans for piping water to the city were almost completed
that the value of the water-power along the route was realized. It has
been disposed of at a rate that pays ten per cent. interest on the debt
each year, and has made what seemed a dangerous risk, a profitable
business arrangement. All these other uses of water which are
profitable, help to lower the price of water to the users.

The matter of supreme importance in the water supply, however, is not
whether the water is cheap, but whether it is pure. If refuse from
factories is allowed to drain into a stream, the water becomes loaded
with poisonous chemicals, acids, or minerals. If city sewage or
barn-yards are allowed to drain into it, the germs of typhoid and other
fevers enter the water supply. To insure the purity of water supply from
a stream, no factory waste, city sewage or country refuse should be
allowed to enter any part of the stream. In addition to this it should
be carefully filtered.

The disposal of waste is a serious problem, and the easiest way is to
divert it into the nearest water course and trust to the old maxim,
"Running water purifies itself."

This, while true as a general fact, has so many exceptions that it is
not safe to trust to it. The Sanitary District Canal of Chicago has
proved positively that even the most heavily germ-laden water becomes
pure by running many miles at a regulated speed through the open
country, but the conditions are altogether different from those of an
ordinary river. First, in a river, sewage may enter at any point
down-stream to add to the germs already present in the water, while
nothing is allowed to enter the Drainage Canal after it leaves the city.
Second, some germs live for several days and may be carried many miles.
Only a microscopic test can prove whether water contains such germs.
Usually such tests are not made and water is used without people knowing
whether it is pure or not, but the water of the Sanitary Canal is tested
at many points to determine its purity. Each hour and each mile of its
journey it grows purer. This proves that although running water does
purify itself, a stream that is drained into all along its course is not
a fit source of water supply.

Factory refuse, instead of being allowed to pollute the waters, should
be turned to good use by extracting the chemicals, which form valuable
by-products. All farm waste should be taken to a remote part of the
farm, placed in an open shed or vat with cement floor and screened from
flies to form a compost heap for fertilizers for the farm. This will
amply repay the extra trouble and expense by increasing the farm crops.
The sooner such refuse, especially manure, is returned to the land, the
more valuable it is as a fertilizer.

In cities the sewage should be disposed of in such a way as to yield a
profit to the city, and also promote the health of the people. The
sewage of a city of 100,000 people is supposed to be worth, in Germany,
about $900,000 a year for fertilizer on account of the phosphorus it
contains. The city of Berlin operates large sewage farms, using as
laborers men condemned to the workhouse. The expense for land and sewer
system was $13,000,000, but it pays for the money invested, with $60,000
yearly profit over all expenses.

On the other hand the cost of impure water to the city of Pittsburg was
reckoned at $3,850,000, and in the city of Albany, New York, the annual
loss was estimated at $475,000.

In the early settlement of our country all towns were built on streams,
and the ones which grew and flourished were all on rivers large enough
to carry commerce by boat. After the invention of steamboats, daily
packet lines were run on all the principal rivers.

Albert Gallatin planned a complete system of improved waterways,
including many canals, that was intended to establish a great commercial
route. Many canals were built and put into actual operation and dozens
of others had been planned, when the building of railways began. This
new system of transportation at once became popular. Not only were no
more canals dug and no more steamboat lines built, but many of those
actually in operation were abandoned.

In order to encourage railroad building and develop new regions, the
government has given land and money to the extent of hundreds of
millions of dollars, until now the railroads form one-seventh of all our
national wealth, having 228,000 miles of tracks and earning
$2,500,000,000 each year, while the waterways owned by the government
have fallen into disuse.

Within the last four or five years another change has come about in the
general attitude toward the waterways. At the time that the crops are
moved in the fall, and when coal is needed for the winter supply, there
are not nearly enough cars in the country to handle the volume of
business, neither are there enough locomotives to move the necessary
cars, nor tracks, nor stations. In short, the railways are entirely
unable to handle the vast products of the country during the busiest
seasons. Many persons in the West have suffered for fuel, and commerce
has been greatly checked by the shortage; and the situation is growing
worse each year as production increases.

James J. Hill estimates that the cost of equipping the railroads to
carry the commerce of the country would be from five to eight billion
dollars. This means a heavy tax on iron and coal and timber as well as
on the labor resources of the country, and it would then be only a
question of time until still further extensions were needed.

With these facts in view, interest in the waterways of the country has
been revived.

It is estimated that it will require five hundred million dollars, or
fifty million dollars a year for ten years completely to improve the
waterways of the country. This is not more than one-tenth of what would
be needed to equip the railroads. The cost of carrying freight by rail
is from four to five times that of carrying it by water.

Much of the heavy freight of the country,--coal, iron, grain and
lumber,--should be carried in this way, in order to reduce freight rates
and so, indirectly, the cost to the people, and further to relieve the
burden on the railways.

The railways, it might be added, would still have a large and increasing
package-freight business, besides the handling of heavy freight in parts
of the country where there are no navigable rivers.

For these reasons it would seem clearly the only wise policy to adopt a
general plan for waterway improvement and carry it into effect at once.
But there are many things to be considered.

Millions of dollars (in all about five hundred and fifty-two millions)
have been spent for the improvement of waterways. Some of it has
resulted in great gain, but a large part of it has been wasted through
lack of an organized plan. Work has been begun and not enough money
appropriated to finish it. In the course of a few years much of the
value of the work is destroyed by the action of the current or by
shifting sands, or if a stretch of river is finished in the most
approved manner, often it is not used much, in some cases actually less
after than before the work was begun, and these things have created a
prejudice against waterway improvements.

The other reason is that in spite of the overcrowding of the railroads,
the traffic on many of our large rivers is steadily growing less. The
Inland Waterways Commission finds as a reason for the decrease, the
relations existing between the railways and the waterways. A railway,
they consider, has two classes of advantages. First, those that come
from natural conditions. A railroad line can be built in any direction
to any part of the country except the extremely mountainous parts, while
a river runs only in a single direction.

If a new region distant from a large water course is opened up, as is
being done rapidly in the West through irrigation and dry farming, the
people are entirely dependent on the railways to develop it, to bring
them all the conveniences of the outside world, and to carry the
products of their land to the market.

Branch lines and switches can be built to factories and warehouses,
while boats can reach only those situated along the water-front.

Another advantage of the railroads is that they bill freight all the way
through, and that freight is much more easily transferred from one road
to another. It is much more difficult and expensive to load and reload
freight from boats and barges on account of the high and low water
stages of the river. This difference amounts to as much as sixty feet in
the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Railways make faster time, and the
distance between two points is usually shorter, though sometimes during
the busy season of the railways the river freight reaches its
destination much sooner.

The other class of reasons relates to the railways themselves, which
have always been in open competition with the waterways, and to gain
traffic for themselves, usually charge lower rates to those points to
which boats also carry freight. In many cases they have bought the
steamboat lines so that rates might be kept up, and then, unable to
operate the two lines as cheaply as one, have abandoned the steamboat
lines.

Another method by which the railroads have driven out the water traffic,
is by charging extremely heavy rates for freight hauled a short distance
to or from boats, making it quite as cheap as well as more convenient to
send freight all the way by rail.

Lastly, railroad warehouses, terminals and machinery for handling
freight are all much better than those of inland steamboat lines, except
at some points on the Great Lakes where the traffic is very heavy.

Some of these disadvantages might be overcome by law. In France, where
the waterways are managed better than in any other country, the law
requires that railroad rates be twenty per cent. higher on all heavy
freight than the rates on the same freight if carried by water, and in
several countries railroad companies are not permitted to own or manage
a steamboat line.

These measures are suggestive of what may be done by law to correct
abuses, but laws alone can not accomplish everything. The rivers belong
to all the people, and every one who wishes may operate steamboat or
barge lines, but before these can become profitable, and before first
class warehouses and machinery are installed, there must appear on the
part of the people a desire to patronize them. The best results are
found in those cases where there is harmony between the railways and the
steamboat lines; those in which the steamboat lines relieve the railways
of much of the heavy freight which they are not able to handle without
greatly increasing their present equipment.

There should be coöperation on the part of the people. The towns and
cities along the banks of many European rivers provide suitable
terminals, warehouses and wharves with free use of the service. In other
cases this is done by private capital with a charge for use to shippers.
Sometimes it is done by the steamboat companies themselves, but unless
one or the other method is assured all along the river it is not wise
for the government to undertake the improvement of a stream.

Intelligent improvement of the waterways of the United States demands
first that a careful survey of the needs of the whole country be made,
then that a systematic plan be carried out providing for the improvement
of important streams first.

The state and nation should work together, and any work that is begun
should be completed as promptly as possible so that its full benefit may
be realized.

Certain work, such as the improvement of the channel, should be done by
the national government, since the waters belong to the nation; but the
expense of constructing levees or dykes should be borne by the land
owners along the banks, because the land thus protected is greatly
increased in value; or by the state, which gets the return in increased
taxes.

In many instances, the improvement of a stream would be a great benefit
to one state or part of a state, but it would be impossible in many
years to improve all the desirable streams, so that the larger ones of
most general importance must be considered first.

In such cases the improvement is often undertaken by the state. Some
navigable rivers have been thus improved and many canals are the
property of states or of private companies.

Only a few rivers have a steady flow throughout the year at a depth
sufficient to carry large boats. On most streams destructive floods at
certain seasons and low waters at others interfere with navigation
during a considerable part of the year. Most rivers have sand-bars,
sunken rocks or logs in the channel, making the passage of boats
difficult and dangerous. Others are well suited for navigation, except
at points where rapids and falls make it impossible for boats to pass.
The Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri and the upper Mississippi abound
in such dangerous places and these should be canalized. It is the
improving of rivers in these ways, dredging harbors to make them safer,
and digging canals to provide a short passage between two bodies of
water, that constitute what is known as the Improvement of Inland
Waters.

If you look at a map showing the navigable streams of the United States
you will see that nearly all of them lie in the eastern part.

The Mississippi is like a great artery with branches extending in all
directions, east and west. The Great Lakes, with their outlet, the St.
Lawrence River, and the many important rivers emptying into the Atlantic
Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Merrimac, Hudson, Delaware,
Susquehanna, Potomac and Rio Grande, form great highways for all the
commerce of the eastern part of the country, while the Columbia,
Sacramento and Colorado Rivers, with their branches, are the only
navigable streams of any importance west of the Mississippi River
system.

In some places a small portion of land divides two important water
areas, and canals dug through this neck of land change the commercial
routes of the whole world. Such are the Isthmus of Suez, eighty-seven
miles wide, through which a canal was cut that saves a sailing distance
of 3,700 miles from England to India. Only the Isthmus of Panama,
forty-nine miles in width, divides the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean.
When the canal across this narrow strip is completed, the sailing
distance from New York to San Francisco will be shortened 8,000 miles,
the entire distance around South America.

The Sault Ste. Marie Canal, connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, is only
a little more than a mile and a half long, but it opens up the entire
iron, copper, lumber and wheat resources of the Northwest to cheap water
passage through the other lakes to the manufacturing region of the East.

The Erie Canal, by connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River from
Buffalo to Albany, New York, makes the only water passage from the Great
Lakes to the ocean that lies within the borders of the United States.

If you will turn to the map again, you will see still other places where
a short canal may open up an entirely new and important water route.
From Chicago to Lockport, Illinois, is only thirty-seven miles, but
Chicago is on Lake Michigan, while Lockport is on the Illinois River, a
branch of the Mississippi. This canal, a large part of which is now in
operation, is a part of the Lakes to Gulf waterway. One plan is to
broaden and deepen the channel so that large vessels may pass, without
unloading, from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

Another proposed canal which would be undertaken largely by individual
states and a part of which is already completed, would afford a safe
inside passage connecting the many bays, channels and navigable rivers
of the Atlantic coast.

Still another proposed measure is the cutting of a canal from the
southern end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake Erie at Toledo,
Ohio, to avoid the long haul up Lake Michigan and down Lake Huron again.

The United States now has 25,000 miles of navigable rivers and a nearly
equal mileage of rivers not now navigable but which might be made
commercially important; five great lakes that have a combined length of
1,410 miles, 2,120 miles of operated canals, and 2,500 miles of sounds,
bays and bayous, that might be joined by tidewater canals easily
constructed, less than 1,000 miles long altogether, and making a
continuous passage from New England to the Gulf of Mexico.

In all, our waterways at the present time are 55,000 to 60,000 miles
long, the greatest system in the world, but almost unused.

The most important waterway improvement so far completed, is the Sault
Ste. Marie, or the "Soo" canal which cost $96,000,000. A depth of eight
feet was increased to twenty-one feet. The traffic has risen in sixteen
years from a million and a quarter tons to forty-one and a quarter
million tons.

A large proportion of the United States is not naturally fitted to be
the home of man; at least, it is not fitted to produce his food, and
except on the lofty mountains the reason for this will almost always be
found to be either a lack or an excess of water.

In some parts of the country, there is, as we have seen, little
rainfall. These arid or semi-arid lands must be provided with water for
drinking purposes and for agriculture. The diverting of water courses
into canals and ditches so that water can be carried to these waste
lands is called irrigation.

In other parts of the country where rains are abundant, serious floods
occur every year, often many times in a year. Thousands of acres of
land thus subject to overflow are lost to use. The holding back of these
flood waters in the upper part of the rivers, and so preventing these
overflows, is termed storage of waters.

In still other regions the rainfall is abundant, and the land low-lying.
Large areas are always covered with water. Such lands are called swamps
or bogs, and when drained, they become the richest of agricultural
lands. Irrigation, storage and drainage are the three methods employed
to make waste lands valuable and useful. The land is saved or reclaimed,
so all these methods of balancing and distributing the water supply are
called reclamation.

In general it may be said that irrigation is more generally needed in
the West, storage of flood waters in the central and eastern states, and
drainage in the South.

By thus distributing the rainfall, hundreds of millions of acres have
been or may be reclaimed, and large regions, formerly unfit to inhabit,
have been turned into profitable farms. Three-fourths of one per cent.
of our total rainfall, or two per cent. of all that falls in the West,
is used for irrigating 13,000,000 acres.

There are several methods of irrigation which are adapted to different
regions and different crops. The rice fields of South Carolina,
Georgia, Louisiana and Texas are irrigated by allowing the land to
remain continually flooded to a depth of several inches. When the
irrigation season is over the levees are opened, and the water runs off
rapidly, and the crop is soon ready to be harvested. Tidal rivers are
used to supply water in most cases, but in Texas many flowing wells are
employed for irrigation.

In Florida, where irrigation is used largely for intensive farming,
various means are employed, some of which are also used in the western
and southwestern states. Mechanical pumps, operated by turbine wheels,
pump the water from the rivers if a lift be required. Sometimes the
water is pumped direct to the fields in iron pipes and applied by means
of hydrants and hose, as in a city water system.

Overhead pipe lines are now recognized as the most perfect and
satisfactory form of artificial watering. Two-inch pipes are run over
frames several feet in height. These are arranged in parallel lines all
over the fields about forty feet apart. At intervals of forty feet, a
small iron pipe, ending with a fine spraying attachment, extends upward.
The water is turned on in the evening and comes out of the sprayer in a
fine mist and falls upon the plants like a gentle rain.

By another form of irrigation, the fields are divided at regular
intervals by wide wooden troughs from which water is directed between
the rows of plants. Main canals leading from the streams and intersected
by short canals extend in all directions through the fields and
orchards, and are distributed in various ways. This system is in general
use throughout the arid portions of the West. The methods are said to be
the most scientific and varied in southern California.

When water for irrigation is supplied from wells some underground system
is generally used. One common method is to lay continuous pipes from the
wells all over the fields and distribute from hydrants, plugs and
standpipes.

By still another system, the water is carried below the surface through
pipes which are broken every few inches and laid in beds of charcoal.

In the eastern states irrigation is only employed in dry weather to
increase the yield of vegetable crops. In the arid western region it
transforms what would otherwise be a dreary desert into fertile valleys.

William J. Bryan, speaking at the first Conservation Congress, said,
"Last September, I visited the southern part of Idaho and saw there a
tract that has been recently reclaimed. I had been there before. I had
looked upon these lands as so barren that it seemed as if it were
impossible that they could ever be made useful.

"When I went back this time and found that in three years 1,700,000
acres of land had been reclaimed, that where three years ago nothing but
sage-brush grew, they are now raising seven tons of alfalfa to the acre,
and more than a hundred bushels of oats; when I found that ten thousand
people are living on that tract, that in one town that has grown up in
that time there are more than 1,900 inhabitants, and in three banks they
had deposits of over half a million dollars, I had some realization of
the magic power of water when applied to these desert lands."

The same thing might be said of other regions throughout the West. In
the Salton district of California a marvelous change has been brought
about by irrigation. A few years ago that was one of the most desolate
and forbidding regions on our continent. Now it is covered with several
thousands of acres of alfalfa and other crops, and it bids fair to be a
great fruit region. Of southern California it is said, "The irrigation
systems of this part of the state are known all over the world, and have
created a prosperous commonwealth in a region which would be a scene of
utter desolation without them."

This locality presents a better opportunity for the scientific study of
farming by irrigation than exists anywhere else in the world. Here all
land values depend directly on ability to obtain a water supply. So
precious is the water and so abundant are the rewards that follow its
application to the soil that the most careful consideration is given to
the various sources of supply and distribution.

As land becomes scarcer and the cost of living greater on account of the
increase in population, men are turning more and more to irrigation to
solve the problem of food supply.

As showing what may be accomplished by irrigation, the report of the
last census says: "The construction of large irrigation works on the
Platte, Yellowstone and Arkansas Rivers would render fertile an area
equal to that of some eastern states. Engineers are grappling with the
great problems of conserving the flood waters of these streams, which
now are wasted and help to increase the destructive floods of the
Mississippi. The solving of these problems will change a vast area of
country, now practically worthless, into valuable farms."

The "Great Bend" country, drained by the Columbia River, contains
several million acres of land which only requires water to make it of
great agricultural value.

The Gila River basin contains more than 10,000,000 acres of fertile
land, capable of producing immense crops if irrigated, but without
irrigation it is a desert land where only sage-brush and cactus
flourish.

From arid lands capable of producing excellent crops but lacking in the
magical element of water, we pass to the consideration of lands where
the richest of soils are shut off from productiveness because they are
covered with water. On the lower Mississippi the soil is richer than in
any other part of the United States, but much of it is overflowed so
frequently that it is unfit for cultivation. Dykes and levees have
reclaimed thousands of acres of such overflow land. Many states control
large marshy sections that have been or may be reclaimed.

In southern Florida lie the Everglades, a vast country which has been
worse than valueless; a malarial region abounding in alligators,
rattlesnakes, scorpions and other dangerous animals and insects. The
state of Florida has undertaken the work of draining this great swamp,
and when the task is completed, Florida will have added to its resources
3,000,000 acres of the richest soil for the raising of winter vegetables
and fruits.

Florida is engaged in another great project--the digging of an inside
passage connecting its inland tidal waters by a canal system which will
open to navigation a continuous inland waterway six hundred miles in
length. In digging these canals through the marshes bordering the
coast, thousands of acres of exceedingly fertile land have been
reclaimed and are now producing valuable crops.

The Kankakee marshes in Indiana have been drained, adding many thousands
of acres of rich soil to the agricultural area of the state.

In all, about 80,000,000 acres are so wet that they must be drained in
order to make them produce good farm crops, but which, while now covered
only with marsh grass or undergrowth, is capable of being made the most
fertile of all land.

This swamp land is ten times the area of Holland, which supports a
population of 5,000,000 people. It is therefore easy to see how greatly
we may add to our productive territory and our national wealth by
reclamation through drainage.

We now come to the use of water as power; and although in the last fifty
years this subject has received little attention, as manufacturing
increases and as fuel decreases and becomes higher, the value of water
becomes more evident, and water-power sites are being eagerly sought.

Our age may come to be known in the future as the age of power, because
through the application of mechanical power man has gained such
marvelous control over the world about him. Wind and water led in the
production of power until about 1870, since which time they have
scarcely increased at all, the greater advantages of steam and
electricity having driven them out.

As long as all factories had to be built by the side of streams having
suitable water-power, the number and size of factories were always
extremely limited. With the introduction of steam it became possible to
build factories at mines, in forests, in fruit or grain regions,
wherever the supply of raw material was plentiful, and to multiply
factories of all kinds in cities near the markets for their product, or
where labor was cheap and abundant. But power could only be used where
it was developed, and the size of the power plant depended on the amount
of business done by each individual user.

Now a new era of power has again enlarged the possibilities of
manufacturing. By means of electricity the work, not only of factories,
but also of the home and the farm may be done in any place where
electricity can be installed. We must bear in mind that electricity is
never a source of power, but is only the agent that carries power to the
user. The source of all electric power is either steam or water,
produced by water-wheels, turbines, steam-engines or gas-engines. The
economical way to furnish electric power is to establish central power
plants, and electricity may be conveyed from them for many miles. An
electric railway, telegraph, or telephone system many miles in length
is operated from a single power plant. Electric light and power are
transmitted all over the largest cities. It is no longer necessary that
a factory be of any specified size nor that it have any waste power. If
it be within reach of the electrical current it may use as much or as
little as is needed.

The cheapness of electric power must always depend on nearness to the
source of supply or to the market. Until a short time ago it was
customary to locate electric power-houses near the market, that is, in
cities. But the benefits to be derived from having the electric plant
near the source of power, so that the cost of production is greatly
lessened, are becoming better recognized. This will make water-power
increasingly valuable.

It is even now practicable to develop water-power, wherever located, for
the production of electricity. Although the lowest grade coals are used
for electric power at the mines yet they can now be used for still other
purposes. Coal or other fuel once used can not be replaced, but when
electricity is derived from water-power only energy otherwise wasted is
used. This energy, if derived from water-power, is all added to our
assets instead of being lost.

For many years the amount of power used for manufacturing and other
purposes has doubled about once in ten years, and the steady pace kept
by different lines of development shows how closely they are related.
Our power, our forest cut, the use of our iron and other minerals, our
coal and petroleum, the railroad earnings, freight and passenger
traffic, and our agricultural products all double themselves every ten
years. This means that in ten years we shall require twice as much power
as now, but will have far less coal to use. This raises the
question,--have we available water-power to conserve our coal supply?
Let us see. It is estimated that we are now using 26,000,000 horse-power
of energy derived from steam, 3,000,000 horse-power derived from water,
and 800,000 from gas or oil, a total of 29,800,000 horse-power. It is
also estimated that there is now running idly over dams, falls, and
rapids 30,000,000 horse-power of energy. In other words, we are wasting
every day enough water to run every factory and mill, and to turn every
wheel, to move every electric car and to supply every electric light or
power-station in the country.

The amount of water-power is gauged solely by the low-water stage of the
stream. A river is considered to produce only as much power as it can
furnish at its season of lowest water. At other times factories may be
operated more actively, but usually most of the extra power is wasted
during a large part of the year.

If these storm or flood waters can be stored in reservoirs, the
stream-flow throughout the year can be made fairly uniform and the power
possibilities greatly increased. The Geological Survey believes that by
storing the flood waters and regulating the flow of the streams, the
large rivers of the United States may be made to furnish 150,000,000
horse-power, enough, if it could be utilized, to supply every power need
of our country for many years to come without using a ton of our coal,
and without in any way decreasing the water.

Of course this can never be practicable. Much power will always be
needed where no stream for power is available. But the lesson is plain
that where water can be used it should be, both in order to save the
coal and because it can be produced more cheaply. The 30,000,000
horse-power now available, if produced in our most modern electric
plants, would require the burning of nearly 225,000,000 tons of coal,
and if in the average plant run by steam-engines, more than 650,000,000
tons of coal, which is fifty per cent. more than all the coal that is
now produced in this country. At three dollars per ton it would cost
$2,000,000,000 a year to supply the coal to furnish the power that we
might have, one might almost say, as a by-product from the improving of
the rivers for navigation. The development of the water-power
possibilities of the country is now going forward at a rapid rate,
however.

Dams on the Susquehanna River will soon make 30,000 horse-power
available, which could be increased to 200,000 by building storage
reservoirs.

A dam just begun at the rapids of the Mississippi River at Keokuk, Iowa,
will, when completed, furnish 200,000 horse-power. Niagara is producing
56,000 horse-power on the United States side. The Muscle Shoals Falls
rapids in the Tennessee River is furnishing 188,000 horse-power.
Illinois will greatly increase its possibilities for offering cheap
power to factories, when the Lakes to Gulf Canal with 173,000,000
horse-power worth $12,750,000 yearly, and the Chicago Drainage or
Sanitary Canal, which has nearly 60,000 horse-power, are complete. Both
of these projects were undertaken by the state.

In California 250,000 horse-power is now in operation, and 5,000,000
horse-power might easily be developed in that state alone, which at the
price of coal would be worth a billion dollars a year.

New England has the oldest system of water-power control, because before
the era of steam it was the chief manufacturing region of the country.
The Merrimac, flowing through New Hampshire and Massachusetts, is the
most carefully conserved river in the world, and Governor Dingley of
Maine said that the water-power of Maine is equal to the working energy
of 13,000,000 men.

The money value is counted at twenty dollars a year per horse power, but
it frequently brings as high as one hundred or even one hundred and
fifty dollars a year in a good manufacturing region, so that the value
of our water-power facilities can hardly be computed.

An ideal picture of the harmonious development of our water resources
for all purposes is one that is not too difficult to realize. It is the
ideal that should be always before us in the improvement of our
waterways, and we should bear in mind that although the expense will be
heavy, it will not cost more than one-tenth as much to improve all the
important waterways as to equip the railways to carry the traffic they
will be called on to carry in the next ten years; and also that in the
past, for every dollar that has been spent on waterways, almost
twenty-five dollars has been spent on railways. The railways are a great
and important part of our national development, but the waterways should
not be neglected. Rather, the two should be so harmonized and adjusted
as to make one great commercial system that will furnish cheap and
abundant transportation for all our commerce.

The most complete plan for conserving our waters is as follows: First,
build storage reservoirs along the upper stretches of the river to hold
the overflow waters of the flood season which are to be turned into the
main channel when the water becomes too low for ordinary navigation.

These storage reservoirs should be on the lowest grade of land, that
which would be least productive. The reservoirs should be well stocked
with the best varieties of fish to make them profitable. The banks
should be planted with forest trees and made as attractive as they can
be made to form public parks and pleasure grounds for the people, where
boating, fishing and bathing may be enjoyed.

The next point is to remove all obstructions from the river, to canalize
it at shallow places or rapids, so that the whole river will be
navigable, and, if necessary, to deepen the channel so that it will
carry large vessels between two important points.

Dams should be built to take advantage of every opportunity for
water-power. One of the worst mistakes in the past has been the failure
to use the power that might have been developed in improving the streams
for navigation.

Rivers should be made profitable still further by stocking with fish and
should be kept clear of factory refuse and sewage. Soil-wash should be
lessened by planting trees and shrubs along the banks; and where
overflow or erosion lowers the value of the land or repeatedly ruins the
crops, dykes and levees should be built.

The rivers most important commercially should be improved first. Canals
should be cut between waterways where large benefits will result;
overflow and swamp land should be drained, and in arid regions every
particle of water conserved for irrigation purposes.

The irrigation canals may also be used to supply water-power, and the
canals may be used as are other canals for towing barges. If electric
power is produced, electric towing is cheap and very desirable as a
means of transportation.

In short, our water supply should be as carefully used and with as
little waste as the land of forests. The most important improvements
needed are, a Lakes to Gulf Waterway that shall be safe and practicable
at least for vessels of moderate size; the improvement of the Ohio,
Missouri, Tennessee and Upper Mississippi Rivers; an inner coast passage
from New England to Florida, and in navigable rivers dredging and
deepening if necessary, to make many outlets to the sea which will
afford cheap transportation.

In the West, the Columbia, San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers with their
branches should be made navigable. Many western rivers have been almost
ruined by filling with rocks in hydraulic mining, but this is now
prohibited by law and if the channels were cleared they would again
become navigable.

Appropriations for much of this work have already been made by Congress,
but the work is not systematically planned. The cost of all of it would
be about sixty-two and a half cents a year for each man, woman and child
in the country and every one would receive some benefit.

The National Conservation Commission on Waterways found that the average
family pays for transportation or freight on all its food and clothing
and the necessities of life, nearly or quite one-third their actual
cost. "It is estimated that the direct benefits would be a yearly saving
in freight handling of $250,000,000, a yearly saving in flood damage of
$150,000,000, a saving in forest fires of at least $25,000,000, a
benefit through cheapened power of fully $75,000,000 and a yearly saving
in farm production of $500,000,000; a total of $1,000,000,000, or twelve
dollars and fifty cents for each person--twenty times the cost! And this
does not take into account the benefits from irrigation, drainage, and
the lessening of disease by a pure water supply."


REFERENCES

Waters. Report of the National Conservation Commission.

Report of Inland Waterways Commission, 1908.

American Inland Waterways. H. Quick.

Waterways and Water Transportation. J. S. Jeans.

Waterway Transportation in Europe. L. G. McPherson.

Highways of Progress. J. J. Hill.

Navigation Resources of the United States. (Johnson.) Report, Governor's
Conference.

Conservation of Power Resources. (H. St. Clair Putnam.) Report,
Governor's Conference.

Florida's Waterways. (Miles.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Our Water Resources. (Lyman Cooley.) Report, Governor's Conference.

The Lakes-to-Gulf Waterway. (Randolph.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Water Resources. (Kummel.) Report, Governor's Conference.

Necessity for Waterway Improvement. (Austin.) Report, Governor's
Conference.

Report Congressional Committee on European Waterways. Senate Document,
1910.

River and Harbor Bill. Senate Document. Burton, 1910.

Forests, Water Storage, Power and Navigation. (Taylor.) Proceedings of
the Am. Hydrochemical Society.

Our Inland Waterways. (McGee.)

Outlines of Hydrology. (McGee.)

Natural Movement of Water in Semi-arid Regions. (McGee.)

Irrigation in the United States. Dept. Commerce and Labor Census Bureau.

Irrigation Projects of the U. S. Reclamation Service.

Reports of Irrigation in various states. Apply to Governor.




CHAPTER V.

COAL


When we begin to study the mineral resources of the country we pass to
conditions altogether different from those which we have been
considering. Heretofore we have been dealing with resources that can be
renewed, the soil by proper management, the forests by replanting, the
waters by nature's own processes; but the fuels, the iron and many other
mineral resources once used are gone for ever.

As to their importance Andrew Carnegie says: "Of all the world's metals
iron is in our day the most useful. The opening of the iron age marked
the beginning of real industrial development. To-day the position of
nations may almost be measured by its production and use. Iron and coal
form the foundation of our prosperity. The value of each depends upon
the amount and nearness of the other. In modern times the manufacturing
and transportation industries rest upon them, and with sufficient land
and a fertile soil, these determine the progress of any people."

We are sometimes told that we need have no anxiety about the future,
that new discoveries and inventions will take the place of the present
fuels, and even substitutes for minerals will be devised long before the
supply is exhausted. This may be true, and in a way the future must take
care of itself, but until new inventions have actually been made it is
criminal to waste present resources and blindly trust that time will
make our folly appear good judgment and foresight.

We have vast mineral resources unused; the present generation, even its
children and its children's children need have no fear of a shortage.
But in the use of those resources that are steadily and for ever
diminishing we must look a long way into the future. We are under the
most solemn obligation to take only our part of the store, and leave the
rest untouched and unspoiled for those who are to come after us. When we
consider what these mineral resources have done for our country in the
last fifty years, when we realize that it is only by having cheap and
abundant coal, iron, and copper that our railroads, our various electric
systems, and our great manufactories have been developed, we can realize
our duty to give the coming generations an equal opportunity to develop
their ideas.

The yearly products of the mines of the United States are now valued at
more than $2,000,000,000. Sixty-five car-loads of freight out of every
hundred carried by our railroads are made up of mineral products. More
than a million men are employed at the mines, and more than twice that
number in handling and transporting mine products.

Of every one hundred tons of coal mined in the whole world, the United
States produces forty-three tons. We supply forty-five tons out of every
hundred of iron ore, twenty-two tons of gold, thirty tons of silver,
thirty-three tons of lead, nearly twenty-eight tons of the zinc, about
fifty-five tons of the copper, and sixty-three tons of the petroleum
consumed by all civilized countries.

This would be a cause for great national pride if we did not need also
to consider the shameful fact that our wastes or losses in the mining,
handling, and use of our mineral products are estimated at more than
$1,500,000 per day, or, for the year, the gigantic sum of $547,500,000.
That is, more than one-fourth of the entire output is wasted!

Of all our minerals, the fuels which supply heat, light, and power for
domestic and manufacturing purposes, are the most necessary and
important. Other materials can not be manufactured without their aid.
Almost every particular of modern life would be changed if we no longer
had plenty of fuel. Its use means its immediate and complete
destruction, which is true of no other resource, and the use of fuels is
increasing and will increase so rapidly that their conservation is
becoming a serious problem.

The principal fuels are coal, gas, oil, peat, alcohol, and wood, and of
these, coal is at present by far the most important. The first record of
coal mined in this country was in 1814, when twenty-two tons of
anthracite, or hard coal, were mined in Pennsylvania. An increasing
amount was mined each year, but until 1821 the production was less than
five hundred tons per year. In 1822 the production advanced to nearly
60,000 tons, and since that time has increased by leaps and bounds.

During the seventy-five years from 1820 to 1895, nearly 4,000,000,000
tons were mined by methods so wasteful that 6,000,000,000 tons were
destroyed or allowed to remain in the ground so that it could never be
recovered. Within the next ten years as much was produced as in the
entire seventy-five preceding years, and in this period 3,000,000,000
tons were destroyed or left in the ground beyond the reach of future
use. Up to this time the actual amount of coal used has been over
7,500,000,000 tons; the waste 9,000,000,000 tons.

Experts estimate that in the beginning there were somewhere about
2,000,000,000,000 tons of available coal, so that we have now, with all
our wastefulness, used less than two per cent. of our original
inheritance. But we must remember that in the ten years closing with
1905, we used as much as during the entire history of our country up to
that time, and the rate of consumption is still increasing. In 1907 the
amount mined was about 450,000,000 tons. Counting on a continuance of
the same rate of increase, in 1917 it will be 900,000,000 tons a year,
and if the same conditions should continue for twenty years we should be
using and wasting in one year as much as we have used in all our history
up to the present time. By that time more than one-eighth of our
original supply will be gone, and in less than two hundred years nearly
all of it will have for ever disappeared.

That is a long time to look forward, but a short time in looking
backward. It carries us back only to the childhood of Benjamin Franklin
and others prominent in our early history; and if this nation could look
forward to only an equal period of prosperous development in the future
the time would seem short indeed.

But the danger of our coal supply becoming exhausted lies not so much in
its present use as in the rapid increase in its consumption. Fifty years
ago (about the time of the Civil War) we were using an amount equal to a
little more than a quarter of a ton for every man, woman and child then
in the country. Now the rate is five tons, or twenty times that amount,
for each person of all our greatly increased population.

The Pittsburg Coal Company owns about one-seventh of the great
Pennsylvania anthracite fields. From the amount it is now mining each
year and judging from the amount of coal it is able, with present
methods, to reclaim from an acre of coal land, the estimate is made that
this Pittsburg field will be exhausted in ninety-three years. A like
comparison of all the eastern fields indicates that by the beginning of
the next century there will be practically no cheap fuel left in the
entire Appalachian basin.

The Geological Survey reports that, taking into account the available
coal which can be reached and mined by present methods, and supposing
the present conditions of use, waste, and increase to continue, the coal
supply will be exhausted by the year 2015 A. D., but taking into account
the probable improvements in its use, the year 2027 A. D. is estimated
as the time when the present coal fields will be exhausted, and the
middle of that century as the time when all coal fields in the United
States will be gone.

This true story well illustrates the need of conservation and the folly
of careless waste. High in the hills of the Pittsburg region a thick
bed of excellent coal was found by the early settlers. It was impossible
for them to build roads up the steep cliffs, so some method of getting
the coal down to the valleys had to be devised. Buffaloes roamed the
western plains in countless millions, and were so abundant about
Pittsburg that the supply seemed inexhaustible. So the pioneers killed
the buffaloes, filled each skin with a few bushels of coal, sewed it up,
and tumbled it down the mountain side.

This was the way they marketed their coal--by destroying their
buffaloes. For many years no one dreamed that there was any end to the
supply of buffaloes. And so both east and west they were killed for
their skins, which sold for a few cents, for their horns, for a supply
of steak, or for mere sport; and then one day people woke up to find
that the buffalo had disappeared, not in one settlement only, as they
had supposed, but everywhere. There are a few remaining, carefully cared
for by the government. They are among our most valued possessions, and
yet only a few years ago they were destroyed, wasted, by millions.

This passing of the buffalo, the skins of which, as common then as
burlap bags are now, were used to market our first coal, carries with it
a deep lesson as to what will happen to the coal itself, even within
the present century, unless our people awake to the consequence of what
they are doing and make a determined effort to stop all unnecessary
waste.

Let us see where and how these wastes occur. The first serious loss of
our coal occurs at the mines. There are three great wastes in mining.

(1) A coal bed is not made up entirely of pure coal, especially if it be
very thick. Sometimes there are layers of shale or clay, which makes a
large amount of ash. This can never be sold as regular marketable coal;
but it is rich in carbon, and much of it might be used if it could be
marketed near the mines and sold as low-grade coal. In the past there
has been almost no market for it, and if it were either in the roof or
bottom of the coal bed, it has been left unmined. If mixed with pure
coal, the low-grade coal was thrown into great heaps at the mouth of the
mine. This refuse coal is called culm. The amount varies from one-tenth
to one-half of the coal in nearly every coal bed, and would probably
average one-fourth in all the mines of the country.

This material is rich in carbon, and when used in gas-engines will
furnish more power than the best Pocahontas coal when steam-engines are
used. Thus one-fourth of all our coal is wasted at the mines simply
because steam-engines instead of gas-producer engines have been
employed. If in the future installation of power this fact is taken into
consideration, it will make the cost less to the user, and at the same
time utilize a large proportion of our impure coal and save the higher
grades for other purposes.

(2) In the mining of coal it was formerly the unfailing custom to leave
supporting pillars of coal for the over-lying rocks to rest upon, to
make suitable working-rooms, etc. These pillars, twelve to eighteen
inches square, and higher than a man's head, are scattered throughout
the entire mines and are usually of the highest grade coal. In many
mines, also, a roof of coal a foot or more in thickness must be left
because the material above the coal is not solid enough to prevent
cave-ins. When the mine is abandoned and closed these pillars and
roofings remain untouched, because removing them constitutes one of the
greatest dangers to life, and is one of the frequent causes of mine
accidents. It is improbable that the coal thus left in abandoned mines
will ever be reclaimed, because not enough is left to make it profitable
at present prices to re-open the mines; and frequently the rocks cave in
about these pillars and make the task almost impossible.

(3) By careless blasting an unnecessarily large amount of coal is blown
into powder,--the slack which has not been marketed at all until within
the last few years. Much of this slack, which is the best grade of coal
in a pulverized form, is left inside the mines. These wastes in
abandoned roofing, pillars, and small-sized coal, together make a total
which for all the mines in the country will average fully one-fourth
more of the coal that is in the ground.

It is to be noted, however, that conditions are changing for the better.
The most modern mines use fewer supporting pillars of coal, and these
are of larger size, so that there is less danger of accidents. Wherever
possible they use timbers of wood instead of these smaller pillars of
coal. They also mine as near the top of the seam of coal as can be done
safely, and so regulate the blasting that much less slack is made than
by the heavy discharges. These changes in mining methods save a far
larger proportion of coal, and also prevent many accidents, which are
the most unfortunate feature of coal mining, and the one which should
receive most careful consideration. (See chapter on Health.)

One large mining company in Kentucky raises its own timbers by planting
trees in straight, close rows on its coal land, thus making the land
produce its own mine timbers to conserve the coal below. This company
claims to have lost but one life in ten years, and to save seventy-five
per cent. of its coal. This is a striking illustration of what better
mining methods will do for both the miner and the mine owner and of how
forestry may be an aid to the conservation of coal and also of human
life in the mines.

We have already shown how half of the coal is wasted, but there still
remains another source of waste at the mines. This is a large but
unknown quantity. Coal usually exists in beds or layers with shale or
rock between, much as a "layer-cake" is made, the layers of cake being
represented by the coal and the icing between by these "rock-partings,"
as they are called. In rich fields, there are from three to ten of these
rich layers or beds of coal, one above another. It often happens that
the thickest and best layer is the lowest, and when this is the case, it
is usually mined first, regardless of the fact that some, and possibly
all, of the higher beds are dislocated and broken or filled with deadly
gases. Nearly all this loss could be avoided by simply mining the upper
stratum first.

So much for waste at the mines. This is serious enough if it were all,
but it is not all, it is only the beginning. Let us see now what becomes
of the coal that is marketed. The railroads are the largest single users
of coal, and here we are confronted with the surprising statement that
our locomotives consume three tons of coal in doing the same work that
is performed by English locomotives with one ton. This difference is
said to be due to different construction of the engines themselves, and
to more careful stoking, or firing. Our locomotives use 100,000,000 tons
per year, and by even the best methods known a large proportion of the
heat units is wasted. Great effort should be made to improve the
locomotives so that they will consume less coal; but as long as the
railroad companies own the coal mines, as they do in many instances,
they can obtain coal so cheaply that the cost of the improved form of
engine is greater than the amount saved.

Another great use lies in the manufacture of coke, which is used in the
making of steel, and here, too, we see where great wastes have existed.
The old form of coke-oven was called the bee-hive on account of its
shape. These old style ovens consume all the coal with the exception of
the fixed carbon which is left behind as coke. At the prices which
prevailed in 1907, the value of the by-products wasted in bee-hive
coke-ovens was a little over $55,000,000--surely a loss worth
considering. A different form of coke-ovens is much used abroad and is
coming into use in this country. This is the retort or by-product oven,
sometimes called the recovery oven.

The bee-hive ovens are usually located near the mines where the cost of
coal is low, with small expense for transporting it. On the other hand,
the by-product ovens are established near the larger cities in order to
dispose of their gas and other by-products. Here the cost of
transportation must be added to that of the coal, but the products are
marketed near by instead of at a distance, as in the case of the
bee-hive ovens. The most improved by-product ovens produce not only coke
and gas, but coal-tar, pitch, ammonia, and creosoting oils, all
extremely valuable and adding greatly to the value of the output of the
ovens.

Electricity is another form of light and power which involves a large
waste of the energy of coal; only one-fifth of one per cent., that is,
one-five hundredth of the value of the coal is used in electricity, and
there is at present no known remedy for this.

There are methods, however, of lessening even this waste, and these are
constantly receiving more attention. One is for the electric plants
located in cities to sell their exhaust steam or water heated by the
coal as it is converted into electric power, as a by-product. The
electric power-house thus becomes a central heating plant to supply
stores, offices, and residences. Another system being tried abroad,
though scarcely past the experimental stage in this country, establishes
great electric power-houses at the coal mines to use the culm,
low-grade slack, and lignites, the lowest form of coal, in short, all
the waste of the mines. Still another plan is the manufacturing of
electricity by water-power, as we have seen in a previous chapter.

The manufacturing industries of the country waste a large amount of fuel
annually, but here the waste is mostly due to expensive methods of
producing power, and to careless stoking, and is largely preventable. As
we have shown, gas-engines are a far more economical form of producing
power than are steam-engines. Steam uses from five to ten per cent. of
the heat-units of coal, gas-producer engines use fifty per cent. and
burn a lower grade of coal.

One of the great problems of cities is the heavy volume of bituminous or
soft coal smoke that hangs over the entire surrounding region, levying a
heavy tax in cleaning and laundry work, making the air difficult to
breathe, and shutting out the daylight itself. Every residence adds its
mite, but the factories and public buildings are the worst offenders.
There are several good smoke-consuming devices on the market that have
been thoroughly tested by the government, which will furnish their names
on application.

If factory owners who use steam power could realize that the gases, the
highest heat-producing part of the coal, escape with the smoke, and
that by using smoke consumers they not only prevent all the evils of
the smoke nuisance but save fully half of the value of their coal, they
would gladly put in this equipment. What manufacturer would not eagerly
welcome any device that would cut his fuel bills in half?

The other cause of waste of coal in the manufacturing industries is
recklessness in the use of fuel, filling the furnaces with the drafts so
disposed that much of the heat is wasted. Every factory owner should
learn (from the government reports if he has no other means of learning)
the best methods of firing furnaces, and should employ them in his
factory.

The last great waste of coal is in households. In stoves and furnaces,
and to a certain extent in kitchen ranges, this waste is through
carelessness in firing, as it is in factories. There still remains a
large amount of wasted energy in cooking that is unavoidable. The amount
of coal consumed before certain articles can be cooked, the heat
remaining after the meal is prepared, are wastes that it seems
impossible to prevent, though wise management will prevent undue waste
even here. Fireless cookers, an invention of recent years, go far toward
solving the problem of waste by long hours of cooking single articles,
and each year we see more prepared food bought in order to save the
cost of heat. Housekeepers find that it does not pay to bake their bread
themselves, since a dozen loaves can be baked in a large oven with the
fuel used in baking one at home.

Briquettes are a new form of fuel made from coal, principally for
household use. They are made from the low-grade coals, culm, slack and
lignites, blended with coal-tar pitch. They are commonly used not only
in households, but for locomotives and ships, in several European
countries, especially Germany; but in this country the cost of making
them--about a dollar per ton--makes the retail price higher than the
cheaper grades of coal, and their general introduction at the price of
the higher grades is rather slow.

Let it always be kept in mind that we must not check the careful use,
only the waste, and the best way to avoid an unnecessary drain on the
coal and at the same time increase our manufactures is to substitute
other power. Coal is only a form of energy that came originally from the
sun. The same causes that produced coal still exist. Scientists tell us
that coal is still being made, but it will take thousands of years to
perfect it. If we could only learn to take the sun's heat directly and
use it for our heat, light, and power, it would be one of the greatest
discoveries in the history of the world, greater even than the discovery
of electricity.

Many attempts have been made to produce power directly from the sun
through solar engines, or by concentrating it in furnaces. At the St.
Louis Exposition a few years ago, a Portuguese priest exhibited a solar
engine called a heliophore, in which, by means of the sun's rays, the
temperature was raised to 6000 degrees F., and a cube of iron placed in
it melted like a snowball. The sun helps to raise the tides and some day
they may be used to produce power. Many experiments are being made with
both solar and tidal energy, some of them successful in a small way, but
nothing that is ready to stand the test of every-day use has been
devised.

Doctor Pritchell says that on a clear day when the sun is high, it
delivers upon each acre of the earth's surface exposed to its rays, the
equal of 7,500 horse-power working continually. If the extra energy not
needed for the growth of plants and animals could be used, all the work
of the world could be done and the problem of fuel supply would be
solved for ever.

But the greatest conservation of coal possible at present lies in the
use of the water-power which now goes to waste, and which, if employed,
would, as we have seen, give us 30,000,000 horse-power, or more than all
that is now produced from fuel by all our engines combined.

Alabama offers a striking illustration of this failure to take advantage
of our opportunities, for Alabama has both coal and water-power.
Engineers estimate that the three principal rivers have power equal to
436,000 horse-power. At Muscle Shoals, on the Tennessee River, there is
now developed 188,000 horse-power, second only to Niagara--and if the
waters were conserved, the figures would reach 1,084,000 horse-power on
the three rivers. This means that, according to the amount of coal
required to produce each horse-power of energy, it would require
11,201,000 tons of coal each year to produce by steam as much power as
these streams might easily be made to produce.

Alabama, as we have said, is also a great coal state. It is now mining
about 14,000,000 tons per year and only four states produce a larger
amount. It will be seen that four tons out of five mined in this state
will be needed to produce by steam the power that is going to waste in
its rivers. The Honorable W. P. Lay, of the Alabama Conservation
Commission, in calling attention to this fact, says:

"Suppose for a moment that the coal fields of Alabama were sliding down
an incline and pouring off over a precipice at the rate of 11,201,000
tons per year, how long would it take the people of the United States
to do something to try to stop such a waste? Yet what else are we doing
when we sit idly by and let the water of these streams go to waste over
a precipice while we ourselves burn up the coal?"

And what is true in Alabama is true to a lesser extent in most of the
states. Wherever water-power is going to waste, coal is being used to
take its place, and that coal is needed in some place where there is no
water-power.

On a certain stream in one of the central states was a fine waterfall.
The early settlers built a mill there. The water turned the mill-wheel
and then passed on to water the valley and turn other mill-wheels. But
one night the old mill was destroyed by fire. It was not rebuilt, but
some distance from the stream a new steam mill was built, the motive
power of which was natural gas. When, after a few years, the natural gas
was all gone, the miller began to use coal, and he still uses
coal--hundreds of tons of it--while the water which once turned the
wheels, runs idly over the falls. This is an example of wholly useless
waste of coal, and just such waste is to be found in hundreds of places
in our country.

If wise mining methods be put into operation, if proper care be taken in
its use, particularly in manufacturing, if the low-grade coals be
utilized, and if other power be substituted wherever practicable, there
need be no question of shortage. There is enough coal in the ground, if
used rightly, to last for ages to come. But because we have wasted vast
quantities of it in the past, and are still wasting it, so that if the
same conditions continue we can distinctly see the end in sight, it is
important that every one understands what these conditions of use and
waste are, and how the abuse may be corrected, so that mine owners and
consumers may all work together to preserve this most necessary
resource.


REFERENCES

Coal is King. Hewette.

Economical Burning of Coal Without Smoke. Bement.

Coal and Coal Mines. H. Green.

International Library of Technology. Vols. 37 and 38.

Reports of Geological Survey.

Report National Conservation Commission.

Conservation of Mineral Resources. (U. S. Report.)

Production of Coals in the U. S. in 1908. Advance chapters available.




CHAPTER VI

OTHER FUELS

WOOD


Wood, which was formerly the only fuel used in this country, has now
largely given place to other fuels. In rural districts and in lumber
regions it is still used extensively; but in the cities, larger towns,
and manufacturing regions, it is not used in commercial quantities. Its
use for power production is limited to the wood-working factories which
have a large amount of waste lumber and which employ this by-product to
furnish heat for steam boilers.

The wood used for fuel or for power usually represents what would
otherwise be lost, the dead trees and the unmarketable timber of the
farmer's wood-lot, the refuse of lumber regions or the waste of
wood-working factories. So that the use of wood as fuel now generally
means the conservation of our coal supply, and a use for the low-grade
parts of the forest.

In some cases, however, farmers cut for fuel fine young trees that
would grow into excellent timber. Liberal planting of trees so that wood
shall become plentiful in all parts of the country will tend to bring
about again a larger use of wood as fuel, which will thus once more
become a factor in the saving of our coal. Every farmer should learn to
save all valuable trees for lumber, and to use only undesirable ones for
fuel.


PEAT

Peat is said by geologists to be only "coal in the making," carbon that
is in the state of changing from vegetable matter to coal. It is
probable that in the course of centuries this would become coal, and in
its present state it has many of the properties of coal, though it has
not nearly so high a heating value.

In this country we have had such a wealth of fuel resources--coal, wood,
oil, and gas--that up to the present time we have done little to develop
our peat beds, although in European countries ten million tons are used
annually for fuel, as well as large quantities for other purposes. From
the earliest times peat has been the principal fuel of the common people
of Ireland and some of the countries of northern Europe.

Now, however, people are trying to make the best of many resources not
heretofore developed, coal prices are steadily advancing and the two
causes combine to turn people's attention to the peat beds of America.
One point that is worthy of notice is that peat is found mostly in
regions where there is no coal, oil, or natural gas. The development of
peat beds in those regions, it will be seen, would give them a great
advantage in the matter of cheap fuel.

Large peat beds are found in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York,
New England, New Jersey, Florida, the Dakotas, northern Iowa, Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, eastern Virginia, the Carolinas and
Georgia; and near the coast in the gulf states, and a narrow strip along
the Pacific coast, from southern California to the Canadian border. They
cover an area of about 11,000 square miles and are supposed to contain
not less than 14,000,000,000 tons of air-dried peat. At the rate of
three dollars per ton, which is a reasonable price in the states having
no coal, this peat would have a value of more than $40,000,000,000.

Peat is prepared for use as common fuel in two ways: (1) By cutting it
into blocks or bricks, which are air-dried by exposure to sun and wind
for a few weeks. This is called "cut peat," is bulky and easily
breakable, and can be used only for local consumption. (2) By digging
either by hand or machine, and grinding it in a mill. It is put in wet,
ground, cut with rapidly turning knives, and passed out of the machine
as a thick pulp that is cut into bricks as it comes out. It is then
stored several weeks until thoroughly dried. This is called "machine
peat," "pressed peat," or "condensed peat."

Peat is being used in many ways. (1) Air-dried peat is used for fuel
only. (2) Dry peat without a binder, or mixed with coal dust and tar or
pitch is used for the same purpose. (3) Machine peat is used for many
purposes, among them making into briquettes, peat charcoal, and peat
coke.

It has been found practical to make illuminating gas of peat, but a far
more general use is for running gas-engines and producer-gas furnaces.
This is a practical use for it, since it will conserve the coal now used
for that purpose, furnish satisfactory power without smoke or dirt,
provide cheap power in regions that have no coal mines, and lastly may
be made to yield valuable by-products: ammonia, acetic acid, paraffin,
tar, creosote, and wood-alcohol. If all the peat in the United States
could be used in producer-gas engines the ammonia yielded would alone
have a value of $36,000,000,000.

Peat is also used for packing material, as a fertilizer, for
manufacturing paper, for coarse cloth and mattress filling. By mixing
wet machine peat with cement it may be made into blocks for paving and
other construction work. The most promising uses are for fuel, as
bedding for stock, as a disinfectant, in briquettes for burning lime,
brick, and pottery, in which it is finding a large use, and for which it
is said to be particularly well fitted; and most satisfactory of all,
its use in gas-producer engines. In Florida an immense plant is being
built to manufacture electric power, using air-dried peat as fuel, the
power to be transmitted to Jacksonville.

Machine peat is supposed to have sixty-five per cent. the value of the
same weight of Pocahontas coal, but on account of the lack of waste in
peat its real value is higher than would appear from the comparison.
From two to two and a half pounds will produce one horse-power per hour
in gas-producer engines. By this estimate, we can see that the peat beds
of this country, if properly used, may be largely employed, either now
or in the future, as a substitute for the vanishing coal.


NATURAL GAS

Of all the fuels, natural gas may be said to be the ideal one. Coming
from the ground, it is piped a greater or less distance and distributed
to the home or factory for light, heat, or power; for all of which it is
equally desirable. It is ready for our use at the turn of a key, is
absolutely clean, having neither dust, ash, nor unconsumed portions. It
requires no kindling other than a lighted match.

Natural gas is found over an area which, if combined, would cover almost
10,000 square miles. It exists in twenty-two states--Alabama,
California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana,
New York, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Virginia,
Wyoming. In some of them the area has been large and the production very
heavy, in others the field is small and unproductive. Until the last two
or three years there have been no statistics as to the quantity of gas
piped, but an account of its value has been kept for many years. For the
twenty years beginning with 1888 the value is given at nearly
$500,000,000.

It must be remembered that much of this represents extremely low prices,
only the amount actually paid for its use. When gas is newly discovered
in a region it is not considered an opportunity for the residents of the
community to have cheap light, power and fuel for themselves, but
instead as an opportunity to develop the country, to increase the
population and attract new factories. In order to advertise and boom
their communities free gas is usually offered to factories. So in
dozens of instances large factories have been operated for years without
a cent having been paid for fuel. For this reason no proper estimate can
be made of the quantity of gas consumed, nor of its value even at a
nominal price. In 1907, (the last year for which complete returns have
been published in government reports) the amount of gas consumed was
given at 404,000,000 cubic feet, which at present prices is valued at
$63,000,000.

It is impossible to determine in any way the future production of
natural gas, or to guess at the quantity remaining in the earth. It may
be much less or much more than present conditions would indicate; but
the present known fields are limited, and the pressure is growing
steadily less in all of them.

The Conservation Commission reports, "It is safe to predict that the
known fields will be exhausted in twenty-five years." The decrease of
natural gas is strikingly illustrated in Indiana. This state, perhaps
more than any other, profited directly by the discovery of its natural
gas about twenty years ago. Here, the mineral maps show, is by far the
greatest natural gas region in the United States. With the discovery of
natural gas, established towns grew to ten times their former size and
new ones sprang up everywhere. Indiana, which had been chiefly an
agricultural state, bade fair to become one of the foremost
manufacturing states on account of its cheap and abundant fuel. In 1902
Indiana produced nearly $8,000,000 worth of natural gas, but for 1908
the State Geologist's report contained no figures for this product. It
had ceased to be a prominent factor in the wealth of the state! There is
no resource that has been so shamefully, so hopelessly wasted as our
natural gas.

With even more recklessness than characterizes the waste of our forests
and our coal, we have allowed this perfect fuel to escape. To the
dwellers in each region where natural gas is found, it seems that the
supply is inexhaustible. The roar of the wells, which makes the very
earth tremble; the flames springing high into the air; the undiminished
pressure after months of use, appearing to indicate a boundless
reservoir below; the opportunity for whole communities to grow rich by
its use; all these things tend to promote recklessness on the part of
all who handle it. In the beginning the wells are usually not tightly
cased, and there is a considerable quantity of gas escaping about every
well. New wells are frequently lighted to show the volume of gas. In
some cases the well has become uncapped on account of heavy pressure and
to prevent the escape of unconsumed gas into the air it is kept burning
night and day. The strongest wells are often kept burning for months in
order to advertise a new gas field. In this way immense quantities of
the most perfect fuel in the world have been wantonly wasted. From a
single well in eastern Kentucky there flowed a steady stream of gas for
twenty years which at present prices would be worth $3,000,000, and the
same story of waste from burning wells comes from every natural gas
field.

In a new region where gas is abundant there is also a great waste from
leaking pipe lines laid on the surface of the ground, from open
flambeaux, and from careless home and factory consumption. In many
communities the open flambeaux have been employed to light the streets,
and allowed to burn day and night to avoid the expense of a man to care
for them. Where natural gas is abundant, meters are not usually
installed; instead, gas is sold by the month. The consumer is under no
obligation to save the gas, in fact, he usually acts on the common
American principle of wanting to get all he can for the money and so
burns his open tip lights, and open burner stoves day and night. The
factories waste in the same way, using open furnaces which are never
banked during the season because it is easier and costs no more.

This, it seems, should be the whole history of natural gas waste, but
the greatest source of loss still remains to be spoken of. In every gas
region of any importance oil is found sooner or later, usually after the
heaviest gas pressure has been exhausted; and the oil

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