He died in McCook, Nebraska on September 2, 1944. It is the misuse of wealth that deserves our condemnation, and when these vast fortunes are combined and recombined in the forms of trusts and monopolies, and when they undertake to control for their own private gain all the natural resources of the country, then it is time for a free people, if they would retain their freedom, to rise up in defense of their God-given rights. When monopoly gets control of a necessity of life, especially when the necessity is derived from a natural resource which God has given to us all, then we are on the verge of an economic slavery which will crush to earth those who work and those who toil. Economic slavery is the ultimate result of complete combination of money, and economic slavery is as cruel, as merciless, and as effective as slavery based upon the color of the human skin. Somehow, in some manner, there should be the intelligence, the human capacity, to avoid the tragedy of a great abundance accompanied by a great hunger.
Poverty there is, and futility.
That is not a civilized state. Poverty and hunger breed desperation, and desperation breeds contempt for law, and contempt for law breeds anarchy in the affair of the world. Every drop of water that falls from the heavens to the earth beneath should perform its proper share of preserving the blessings God intends to bestow upon His people. We should commit an economic sin, a folly, if we built large dams to control floods or improve navigation or irrigate the fertile soil of the western plains without utilizing the power to produce electric power. It is only by scientific, thoughtful, unselfish, and inspired action that full conservation of natural resources will be achieved.