Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-09-22

gathering of all it can be made to
yield by the most rapidly exhaustive
methods"
He finds his omens of disaster in
the rapid increase of our population
and in certain statistics which indi-
cate that before the middle of the Gen.
fury "our mineral resources will have
been so nearly exhausted that the in
dustries related to them must fall in
to a minor place." The most wonder
full achievement of this age, he re-
marks pessimistically is 'the incred-
ible activity with which we are ex-
haustng our inheritance of coal and
iron" To quote more fully from Mr..
Hills remarkable paper, which, in
spite of it's depressing tone, is hailed
as mot wall, but warning:
within forty-four years we shall
have to meet the wants of more than
two hundred million people. In less
| than twenty years from this moment
the United States will have 100000.
900 people. Where are these people,
not of some dim, distant age, but of
this very generation now growing to
manhood, to be employed and how
supported? When the searchlight is
/
not a mere speculation, but the grim
face of that specter which confronts
the unemployed, tramping hateful
streets in hope of food and shelter. .
in the year 1850, so far as our own
resources are concerned, we will APP
proach an iroTless age. For popu-
lation of 200,0OO,000 people our home
supply of iron will have retreated al
most to the company of the precious
metals. There is no substitute whose
production and preparation for practi
cal use is not far more expensive. Not
merely our manufacturing industries,
but our whole complex industrial life,
so intimately built upon cheap iron
and coal, will feel the strain and
must suffer Refinement. The peril
is not one of remote geological time
but of this generation. And where is
there sign of preparation for it?
"Only one-half of the land in private
ownership Is now titled. That tillage.
does not produce one-half of what the
land might be made to yield, without
losing an atom of its fertility. Yet
the waste of our treasure has Cro-
ceeded so far that the actual value of
the soil for productive purposes has
already deteriorated more than il
should have done in five centuries of
use. There is, except in isolated and
individual cases, little approaching in
tensive agriculture in the United
States. There are only the annual
skimming of the rich cream, the ex-
haustion of virgin fertility, the ex-
traction from the earth of the most
rapid process of it's productive pow
ers, the deterioration of life's sole
maintenance. And all this with that
army of another hundred million peo-
pie marching in plain sight toward
us, and expecting and demanding that
they shall be fed.
Every farm properly cared for
should be worth more money for each
year of its life. The increase of pop
ulation and demand, the growth of the
cities and markets, and the develop.
ment OF diversified farming with den
sity of settlement should assure
large increment. Even where large
quantities of new and fertile land are
opened, these influences, together with
the lowest cost of transportation in
the world, should make the growth
OF values steady.
Within the twenty years between
1880 and 1900 the aggregate value of