exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer to continue. . . .

In the development, the use, and therefore the exhaustion of certain of the natural resources, the progress has been more rapid in the last century and a quarter than during all preceding time of which we have record.

When the founders of this nation met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia the conditions of commerce had not fundamentally changed from what they were when the Phoenician keels first furrowed the lonely waters of the Mediterranean. . . . Mining was carried on fundamentally as it had been carried on by the Pharaohs in the countries adjacent to the Red Sea. . . . In 1776 the wares of the merchants of Boston, of Charleston, like the wares of the merchants of Nineveh and Sidon, if they went by water, were carried by boats propelled by sails or oars; if they went by land, were carried in wagons drawn by beasts of draft or in packs on the backs of beasts of burden. . . . In Washington's time anthracite coal was known only as a useless black stone; and the great fields of bituminous coal were undiscovered. . . . But a few small iron deposits had been found in this country, and the use of iron by our countrymen was very small. . . . The forests were regarded chiefly as obstructions to settlement and cultivation. The man who cut down a tree was held to have conferred a service on his fellows. . . . It is almost impossible for us in this day to realize how little our Revolutionary ancestors knew of the great store of natural resources whose discovery and use have been such vital factors in the growth and greatness of this Nation, and how little they needed to take from this store in order to satisfy their needs.

Since then our knowledge and use of the present territory of the United States have increased a hundred-fold.... Our growth has been due to the rapid development, and alas that it should be said! to the rapid destruction, of our natural resources. Nature has supplied to us in the United States, and still supplies to us, more kinds of resources in a more lavish degree than has ever been the case at any other time or with any other people. Our position in the world has been attained by the extent and thoroughness of the control we have achieved over

nature; but we are more, and not less, dependent upon what she furnishes than at any previous time of history since the days of primitive man. We want to take action that will prevent the advent of a woodless age, and defer as long as possible the advent of an ironless age. . . .

This Nation began with the belief that its landed possessions were illimitable and capable of supporting all the people who might care to make our country their home; but already the limit of unsettled land is in sight, and indeed but little land fitted for agriculture now remains unoccupied save what can be reclaimed by irrigation and drainage — a subject with which this Conference is partly to deal. We began with an unapproached heritage of forests: more than half of the timber is gone. We began with coal fields more extensive than those of any other nation and with iron ores regarded as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that the end of both iron and coal is in sight.

...

The mere increase in our consumption of coal during 1907 over 1906 exceeded the total consumption in 1876, the Centennial year . . . and we thought we were pretty busy people even then. The enormous stores of mineral oil and gas are largely gone. . . . Our natural waterways are not gone, but they have been so injured by neglect. . . that there is less navigation on them now than there was fifty years ago. Finally, we began with soils of unexampled fertility, and we have so impoverished them by injudicious use and by failing to check erosion, that their crop-producing power is diminishing instead of increasing. In a word, we have thoughtlessly, and to a large degree unnecessarily, diminished the resources upon which not only our prosperity but the prosperity of our children and our children's children must always depend. . . .

The natural resources I have enumerated can be divided into two sharply distinguished classes accordingly as they are or are not capable of renewal. Mines if used must necessarily be exhausted. The minerals do not and cannot renew themselves. Therefore in dealing with the coal, the oil, the gas, the iron, the metals generally, all that we can do is to try to see that they are wisely used. The exhaustion is certain to come in time.

We can trust that it will be deferred long enough to enable the extraordinarily inventive genius of our people to devise means and methods for more or less adequately replacing what is lost; but the exhaustion is sure to come.

The second class of resources consists of those which can not only be used in such manner as to leave them undiminished for our children, but can actually be improved by wise use. The soil, the forests, the waterways come in this category. Every one knows that a really good farmer leaves his farm more valuable at the end of his life than it was when he first took hold of it. So with the waterways. So with the forests. . . .

Neither the primitive man nor the pioneer was aware of any duty to posterity in dealing with the renewable resources. When the American settler felled the forests, he felt that there was plenty of forest left for the sons who came after him. When he exhausted the soil of his farm, he felt that his son could go West and take up another.... When the soil-wash from the farmer's field choked the neighboring river, the only thought was to use the railway rather than the boats to move produce and supplies. That was so up to the generation that preceded ours.

Now all this is changed. On the average the son of the farmer of today must make his living on his father's farm. There is no difficulty in doing this if the father will exercise wisdom. No wise use of a farm exhausts its fertility. So with the forests. We are on the verge of a timber famine in this country, and it is unpardonable for the Nation or the States to permit any further cutting of our timber save in accordance with a system which will provide that the next generation shall see the timber increased instead of diminished. . . .

We can, moreover, add enormous tracts of the most valuable possible agricultural land to the national domain by irrigation in the arid and semi-arid regions, and by drainage of great tracts of swamp land in the humid regions. We can enormously increase our transportation facilities by the canalization of our rivers so as to complete a great system of waterways on the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts and in the Mississippi Valley, from the Great Plains to the Alleghenies and from the northern lakes to the mouth of the mighty Father of Waters. But all these

various uses of our natural resources are so closely connected that they should be coördinated and should be treated as part of one coherent plan and not in haphazard and piece-meal fashion....

We are coming to recognize as never before the right of the Nation to guard its own future in the essential matter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism. . . . The time has come for a change. As a people we have the right and the duty . . . to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources, whether that waste is caused by the actual destruction of such resources or by making them impossible of development hereafter. . . .

Finally, let us remember that the conservation of our natural resources, though the gravest problem of today, is yet but part of another and greater problem to which this Nation is not yet awake, but to which it will awake in time, and with which it must hereafter grapple if it is to live the problem of national efficiency, the patriotic duty of assuring the safety and continuance of the Nation. When the People of the United States consciously undertake to raise themselves as citizens, and the Nation and the States in their several spheres, to the highest pitch of excellence in private, State, and national life, and to do this because it is the first of all the duties of true patriotism, then and not till then the future of this Nation, in quality and in time, will be assured.

119. The trusts: causes and remedies

[610]

PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS

An Industrial Commission of eighteen members was appointed by act of Congress, June 18, 1898, "to investigate questions pertaining to immigration, to labor, to agriculture, to manufacturing, to business, and to report to Congress and suggest such legislation as it may deem best upon these subjects." On December 4, 1901, the commission submitted to Congress a report of a thousand pages

on industrial corporations, chiefly composed of the testimony of officers of the trusts before the commission. From a summary of the evidence prefixed to the report the following paragraphs are taken :

It is clearly the opinion of most of those associated with industrial combinations that the chief cause of their formation has been excessive competition. Naturally all business men desire to make profits, and they find their profits falling off first through the pressure of lowering prices of their competitors. The desire to lessen too vigorous competition naturally brings them together.

One or two of the witnesses considered the protective tariff as the chief cause of the trusts. They urged that high tariff duties, by shutting out foreign competition, make it easier for our manufacturers to combine to control prices, and they think that the experience of the last few years justifies the assertion. Likewise, they say, through the high profits that come from the exclusion of foreign competition by the tariff, capital has been attracted into industries here to so great an extent and with the expectation of so high profits, that home competition has been unduly stimulated, thereby leading to the formation of combinations.

Some other witnesses believe that the tariff, while not the most important cause, has, nevertheless, some influence toward encouraging combinations; while one witness, Mr. LaTaste, believes that the monopoly of natural opportunities, under our present system of taxation, is to be considered the fundamental

cause.

Nearly all of the witnesses who have considered excessive competition as the chief cause do not agree that the tariff is to be looked on as a cause, nor as a rule do they concede that those engaged in the organization of combinations have any intention of securing a complete monopoly. It is, of course, true that the restriction of competition is a step towards monopoly, but competition has not been suppressed entirely, and they do not believe that monopoly has been or can be secured. In most cases they would deny that a monopoly was in any respect desirable....