Los Angeles herald., 1907-09-04

PinchotS Address
An address on the Conservation of
Resources was delivered by Clifford Pin
chot, United States forester, and was
as follows: 3
1--WE. the American people, have come
into the possession of nearly 100000
square miles of the richest portion of the
earth. 1t is ours to use and conserve for
ourselves and our descendants, or to
destroy The fundamental question
which confronts US is, what shall we do
with it?
"As people, we have been in the
habit of declaring certain of our re-
sources to be inexhaustible. To no other
resources more frequently than coal has
this stupidity false adjective been ap-
piled. Yet our coal supplies are so far
from being inexhaustible that If the in
creasing rate of consumption shown by
the figures of the last seventyrfive years
continues to prevail, and there is every
reason to believe that it will grow rather
than lessen, our supplies of anthracite coal
win last about fifty years and of sHtumin-
Gus coal a little over one hundred years.
From the point of view of national life
| this means the exhaustion of one of the
most important factors In our present
civilization within the immediate future.
| The waste in use is not less appalling.
| But per cent of the potential power
| residing in the coal actually mined is
saved and used. For example, only 5
tons annually burned on the railroads of
the United States is actually used in trac-
ton; 95 per cent is lost. In the best in
candescent electric lighting plants but
one-fifth of 1 per cent of the potential
value of the coal is converted into light.
Resources Fall
Many oil and gas fields, as in Pennsyl-
vania West Virginia and the Mississippi
valley have already failed, yet vast
amounts Of gas continue to pour into
the air and great quantities of oil into
the streams. Cases are known in which
vast amounts of oil are systematically
burned in order to be rid of 1t. The
prodigal squandertng of our min
eral fuels proceeds unchecked In face
of the fact that such resources as these
placed. The waste of oil is among the
most dangerous of all wastes now in
progress in the United States.
In 1896 Professor Shaler, than whom
no one has spoken with greater author
ity on this subject, estimated that In the
upland regions of the states south of
Pennsylvania 5000 square miles of soil
had been destroyed as the result of for
est derudation, and that the destruction
was then proceeding at the rate of 100
square miles of fertile soil per year.
No seeing man can travel through the
United States without being struck by
the enormous and unnecessary loss of
fertility by easily preventabie soil wash.
The, soil so lost, as in the case of many
other wastes, becomes itself a source of
damage and expense, and must be re-
moved from the channels Of our navigable
streams at ar enormous annual cost,
1.-THE destruction of forest plants by
over-grazing has resulted, in the opinion
of men most capable of judging, in re-
ducing the grazing of the public lands
by one-half The destruction of forest
plants is accompanied by loss of sur
face soil through erosion; by forest de-
struction; by corresponding deterioration
in the water supply, and by a serious
decrease In the quality and waste of ami
mails grown on over-graZed lands.
1.-THE lowest estimate reached by the
forest service of the timber now standing
in the Urited States is 400 billion feet.
board measure; the highest is 1000 billions.
The present annual consumption is ap-
proximatey 100 billion feet while the
annual growth is but a third of the con-
sumption, or from thirty to forty billion
feet. If we accept the larger estimate
of the standing timber, 1000 billion feet,
and the larger estimate of the annual
growth, forty billion feet, and apply the
present rate of consumption the result
shows probable duration of our supplies
of timber of not more than thirty-three
years. 1t is evident that all the waste
must, If possible. be prevented.
A Great Task
''The conservation of the inland water
ways of the United States constitutes
perhaps the greatest single task which
now confronts the nation. The mainte-
nance and increase of agriculture, the
supply of clear water for domestic and
manufacturing use, the development of
electrical power. transportation and light
ing and the creation of system of in
land transportation by water, whereby
to regulate freight rates by rail and to
move the bulkier commodities cheaply
from place to place. is task upon whose
successful accomplishment the future of
the nation depends in a peculiar degree
This is the problem to which the inland
waterways commission. recently appoint
ed by President Roosevelt, has begun to
address itself
I'VE are accustomed, and rightly ac-