FOR CLASSROOM DISCUSSION
18. Why has the wages argument increased in importance within the last half century?
19. How could our protective tariff be abolished without endangering present investments in protected industries?
20. The question of a national tariff policy.
21. To what extent should the formulation of our tariff acts take into consideration the wishes of foreign producers who desire to sell their goods in this country?
CHAPTER XXX
CONSERVATION
367. ATTITUDE OF THE EARLY SETTLER TOWARD NATURAL RESOURCES.—The chief concern of the early American settler was to turn a virgin continent into homes as quickly and as easily as possible. During the seventeenth, eighteenth, and most of the nineteenth century, our natural resources were very abundant, while labor and capital were relatively scarce. As the settlers spread across the Appalachians and into the great West, it was to be expected, therefore, that the home- maker should use labor and capital as carefully as possible and that he should use generously such resources as forests, water power, and soil fertility. Little blame attaches to the early settler for this attitude, indeed he acted in accordance with sound economic law. This economic law declares that under any particular set of circumstances factors of production should be carefully used in proportion as they are scarce, and generously used in proportion as they are abundant.
368. RESULT: GROWING SCARCITY OF NATURAL RESOURCES.—The rapid settlement of the West was essential to our national unity and development. Nevertheless, the extensive and even lavish use of natural wealth since colonial times has lately called attention to the scarcity of resources formerly considered overabundant.
More than three fourths of our original forest area has been culled, cut over, or burned, since colonial times. Wholesale logging methods have swept vast areas bare of valuable timber. Careless cutting has wasted a quarter of our timber supply. In the lumber mill about 40 per cent of the entire volume of the logs is lost by wasteful methods of work. Since 1870 forest fires have annually destroyed more than $50,000,000 worth of timber. Altogether our timber supply is diminishing three or four times as fast as we are replenishing it.