Conservation Through Engineering / Extract from the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior

by Franklin K. Lane

(3) Sell no oil to a vessel carrying a charter from any foreign government either at an American port or at any American bunker when that government does not sell oil at a nondiscriminatory price to our vessels at its bunkers or ports.

The oil industry is more distinctively American than any other of the great basic industries. It has been the creation of no one class or group but of many men of many kinds—the hardy, keen-eyed prospector with a "nose for oil" who spent his months upon the deserts and in the mountains searching for seepages and tracing them to their source; the rough and two-fisted driller, a man generally of unusual physical strength, who handled the great tools of his trade; the venturesome "wildcatter," part prospector, part promoter, part operator, the "marine" of the industry, "soldier and sailor too"; the geologist who through his study of the anatomy of the earth crust could map the pools and sands almost as if he saw them; the inventor; the chemist with still and furnace; the genius who found that oil would run in a pipe—these and many more, in most of the sciences and in nearly all of the crafts, have created this American industry. If they are permitted they will reveal the world supply of oil. And upon that supply the industries of our country will come to be increasingly dependent year by year.

BY WAY OF SUMMARY.

It would seem to be our plain duty to discover how little oil we need to use. To do this we must dignify coal by grading it in terms not merely of convenience as to size, but in terms of service as to its power. We should save it, if for no better reason than that we may sell it to a coal-hungry world. We should develop water power as an inexhaustible substitute for coal and if necessary compel the coordination of all power plants which serve a common territory. New petroleum supplies have become a national necessity, so quickly have we adapted ourselves to this new fuel and so extravagantly have we given ourselves over to its adaptability. To save that we may use abundantly, to develop that we may never be weak, to bring together into greater effectiveness all power possibilities—these would seem to be national duties, dictated by a large self-interest.

I have gone only sufficiently far into this whole question to realize that it is as fundamental and of as deep public concern as the railroad question and that it is even more complex. No one, so far as I can learn, has mastered all of its various phases; in fact, there are few who know even one sector of the great battle front of power. A Foch is needed, one in whom would center a knowledge of all the activities and the inactivities of these three great industries, which in reality are but a single industry. We should know more than we do, far more about the ways and means by which our unequaled wealth in all three divisions can be used and made interdependent, and the moral and the legal strength of the Nation should be behind a studied, fact-based, long-viewed plan to make America the home of the cheapest and the most abundant and the most immediately and intimately serviceable power supply in the world. If we do this, we can release labor and lighten nearly every task. We will not need to send the call to other countries for men, and we can distribute our industries in parts of the country where labor is less abundant and where homes will take the place of tenements. One could expand upon the benefits that would come to this land if a rounded program such as has been but skeletonized here could be carried out. I am convinced that within a generation it will be effected, because it will be necessary.

The simple steps now obviously needed are to pass those primary bills which are already before Congress or are here suggested. But beyond this there is imperative need that some one man (an assistant secretary in this department would serve)—some one man with a competent staff and commanding all the resources of this and other departments of the Government shall be given the task of taking a world view as well as a national view of this whole involved and growing problem, that he may recommend policies and induce activities and promote cooperative relationships which will effect the most economical production of light, heat, and power, which is more than the first among the immediate practical problems of science, as Sir William Crookes said, for it is foremost among the immediate practical problems of national and international statesmanship.

LAND DEVELOPMENT.

I wish now to ask consideration for another matter of home concern to which I gave attention in my last report and as to which the intervening year has strengthened and perhaps broadened my ideas—the development of our unused lands.

It was never more vital to the welfare of our people that a creative and out-reaching plan of developing and utilizing our natural resources should go bravely forward than it is to-day. Ours is a growing country, and as its social and industrial superstructure expands its agricultural foundation must be broadened in proportion. The normal growth of the United States now requires an addition of 6,300,000 acres to its cultivable area each year, which means an average increase of 17,000 acres a day.

Fortunately, the opportunity for this essential expansion exists not only in the West, where much of the public domain is yet unoccupied, but in every part of the Republic. We have a great fund of natural resources in the very oldest States, from Maine to Louisiana, which invite and would richly reward the constructive genius of the Nation. It is claimed by those who have specialized for years on the subject of reclamation that the control and utilization of flood waters now wasted would produce within the next 10 years more wealth than the entire cost to the United States of the war with Germany.