CONSERVATION IN ITS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The interests of conservation, considering both its physical and its human energy phases (p. 362), seem to call for an international understanding in the use of mineral resources which will result in the minimum hindrance to their free movements along natural channels of trade. The essential fact of the concentration of mineral supplies in comparatively few world localities, and the fact that no nation is supplied with enough of all varieties of minerals, mean that artificial barriers to their distribution cannot but impose unnecessary handicaps on certain localities, which may be anti-conservational from a world standpoint. If the few countries possessing adequate supplies of high-grade ferro-alloy minerals, for instance, were to restrict their distribution by tariffs or other measures, the resulting cost to civilization through the handicapping of the steel industry would be a large one. Or if, for the general purpose of making the United States entirely self-supporting in regard to mineral supplies, sufficiently high import tariffs were imposed on these minerals to permit the use of the low-grade deposits in the United States, earlier exhaustion of the limited domestic supplies would follow, and in the meantime the cost to the domestic steel industry would be serious. Cost may be taken to represent the net result of human energy multiplied into raw material. The movement would therefore be anti-conservational. If each state in the United States were to start out to become entirely self-sustaining in regard to minerals, and by various regulations were able to prohibit the use of minerals brought in from without, or the export of its excess of minerals, the waste in effort and materials would be obvious. Nature has clearly marked out fields of specialization for different localities, and the effective use of mineral supplies is just as much a matter of specialization as the effective use of man's talents. If the United States, because of its vast copper deposits, is in a position to specialize in this line and to aid the world thereby, this should involve recognition of the fact that other countries are better able to specialize in other commodities,—thereby forming a basis for mutual exchange, which is desirable and necessary for world development.
This conservational argument against artificial barriers does not necessarily imply complete elimination of tariffs or other restricting or fostering measures. Within limits these may be necessary or desirable in order to maintain differences in the standard of living, or in order to permit the growth of infant industries; but to carry these measures to a point where they interfere with essential mineral movements determined by nature is obviously anti-conservational.
For some mineral commodities, international coöperation may prevent duplication in efforts and the development of excessive supplies in advance of the capacity of the world to use them. Partly because of lack of such coöperation, certain mineral commodities have been developed in such large quantities in various parts of the world that it may be many years before demand catches up with development. In the meantime, large and unnecessary interest charges are piling up. This financial loss measures the loss in effectiveness of collective human effort.
In the above discussion, little reference has been made to shortage of total world supplies as an argument for international coöperation. This is an argument often cited, and with some effectiveness during the war. It is the writer's view that this phase of the problem has been much exaggerated. Except for certain periods during the war, in considering the world as a whole adequate supplies of all mineral commodities have been available at all times. They have been developed as rapidly as needed, in some cases more rapidly; and geological conditions seem to indicate that this condition will continue for some time in the future, through national and individual effort. Combined efforts of governments seem hardly necessary as yet to accomplish this purpose. In fact, there is rather more danger of over-development, without due regard to the working of the interest rate, which might be prevented by international coöperation. The main problem now is not one of total supplies, but of their effective and equitable distribution.