LECTURE II
THE CONSERVATION AND RELEASE OF MORAL RESOURCES
One of our most familiar national ideas
during recent years has been the conservation
of our natural resources, our
mines, our forests, our water power, the agricultural
capacities of our soil. It would have
been a good thing if this idea had occurred to
us fifty years earlier. But it is an idea which
always comes late to a young nation. So long
as the population is sparse and the supply of
good land unlimited and it is an easy thing to
pick up a living from the surface of the ground,
perhaps it is too much to expect that any people
would be careful and frugal. But when the
population has increased and begins to press
against the means of subsistence, when the good
public lands are exhausted and a mere living becomes
harder for the masses of the people to
secure, then any nation awakens to wisdom and
turns from recklessness and prodigality.
And, doubtless, the idea would have occurred to us a full generation earlier if it had not been for the terrible education of our Civil War. There is a great deal to be set down on the
