Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1912-04-04
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
Conservation: Saving VS.. Using Our
Resources.

Conservation: Saving VS.. Using Our
Resources.
Every year sees new applications and
new markets for our developed re-
sources. and for materials formerly
considered worthless or deleterious.
The practical world is, has been, and
always will be concerned not so much
with sewing our resources as with using
them.
And herein Dame Nature again dis
plays her wisdom. Necessity is the
greatest spar TO invention. When cur
express trains and automobiles, which
have largely displaced the horse, be-
come in their turn insufficient for mod
ernized conditions of transportation;
only then aud not much sooner do we
have our air ships. When our coal be-
comes too scarce or expensive, just so
soon will we have more hydro-electric
power, wave power, sun power and
other sources of energy harnessed COM
mercially.
Why should modern industry forego
the advantages of the cheapest coal
available, merely to conserve" the
coal for generations hundreds of years
distant? Would not our greatest boon
to posterity be the industry and the
wealth which are given birth by the
ton of coal we mine and use today?
Who knows but what if we leave our
coal in the ground, the profitable use
to which it might be put today may not
present itself in the future, and we
would be preserving our coal supplies
for gene rations which might never use
them, Who knows but what our great
western phosphate deposits, which are
now Dequeathed to the cause OF "con-
servation, may never be worked by
posterity? Even today there are many
agricultural chemists who claim that
artificial mineral fertilizers act as a
tonic rather than plant food, and that
cheaper tonic might be readily used
cheap salt, for instance. And so we
would find that in foregoing the profit
able development of western phosphate
mining in modern generations, and the
use OF phosphate fertilizers in order to
conserve them for the future, we would
but mock some squirrels who starve
themselves in a season of plenty while
boarding their store of nuts for mild
winter.
Many early conservationists loved to
harp on the word modern Modern in
dustry, they urged, requires 80 much
more coal than in earlier ages; modern
invention consumes so much more cop
per than formerly; in modern times the
world needs, also. more oil, tin ano
other materials; and modern conditions
CGriand that the sources of supply OF
these natural materials be maintained
for the future. But these men seem tC
forget that the world always was
modern" and always will be "mod
ern. They forget that modernity
means only that we are doing thing!
differently, and usually better, thai
formerly. That was always the history
of the world and always will be. W.
are modern today because we use more
coal. more lion ard steel, more copper
more cement, etc., than rs years ago
Our "moderlity" actually dates from
the general supplanting of wood as
source Of fuel and of building materia
in favor of coal and iron, and is reall
less than hundred years Old VIII
knows but what had the civilized worl
conserved its timber supply. we woul
still be burning wood or charcoal, tn
factory system and the modern
steam and gasoline engine would neve
have been developed, and that OF
trains, had they existed at all. woul
be runirg on wooden rails? Is it M
fortunate, indeed, that the CROWN
scarcity of timber brought about tt
modern coal age? Where would "
be today IL our ancestors had solicitou
conserved the timber supply for us
We are ':modern" because the. wor
has used cid conditions of former Gel
turtles and has outgrown them. II
world of the future will be modern
because it will have used present ds
conditions and outgrown them. "
are modern because coal has supplants
wood. We would not have been so
the wood supply had been conserved;