MILLIONS COME TO OUR SHORES.
Millions of men and women flocked to our shores every ten years from every land beyond the seas, seeking home and opportunity; millions every decade were added to our population at home by natural increase. Students of statistics came to realize that in the face of an increasing demand for food supply at home, regardless of the millions in the Old World dependent upon our granaries, soil exhaustion was a subject of very vital importance, a crime, if you please, not by the statute, but by moral law; and this may be said with respect to the reckless or ignorant dissipation of all our natural resources.
We are in a very real sense trustees of the fields and forests, mines and other sources of wealth, not to use and abuse at our will, but rather to use for our own reasonable necessities and then to transmit them unimpaired, so far as possible, and if possible increased in life-sustaining power, to our children. (Applause.)
By no other method can our civilization be perpetually maintained upon the highest level and the Republic kept in the forefront of the nations of the world. The man who owns and tills the soil, who owns and fells the forest, who owns and mines the coal, has no moral right to abuse his ownership; no one has a moral right to waste patrimony which must support not only the owner but the man who is not the owner, and whose continued comfort and existence must depend upon the wisdom with which the owner of the soil and forest and mine uses them.
The importance of Conservation derives emphasis from the rapidity with which our population grows. Our cities will not only multiply in number, but their inhabitants will increase, population will become congested everywhere, and the demand upon our natural resources will be greatly increased. We have added nearly ninety millions to our population in one hundred years. One hundred years ago we were small in numbers compared with the older countries. We have outstripped all but the older empires and republics of Continental Europe. Take Russia, with her 172,000,000; take India, with 325,000,000, and China, where they are building a republic upon the ruins of an empire, with her 400,000,000, and the United States stands fourth in magnitude of population among the nations of the world, having outstripped all but these, and with the present ratio of increase, in one hundred and fifty or two hundred years we will stand not the last of these great populous countries. And what does this signify? It signifies that the great subject of Conservation that you are taking hold of with such intelligent, patriotic interest, will be the overmastering question then as it is today. (Applause.)
Who can put a practical limitation upon a definition of Conservation? Conservation of our natural resources does not go far enough. The public health falls within the subject of Conservation in the fullest and best sense, and that is susceptible of many subdivisions. Conservation of the minds and morals, Conservation of our political institutions—all of these and many more subjects of but little less importance engage the attention of such men as are assembled here.
I understand, Mr. Chairman, that the human side of Conservation is to receive particular emphasis in this Congress. I am glad it is so. We have been so long concerned with the physical resources that we have failed to give proper credit to really a larger aspect of Conservation. As important as is the conservation of our natural resources, far more important is the question of conserving the health, conserving the intellect, conserving the morality of the one hundred millions of people we have. (Applause.) I have known men who were more solicitous regarding the health of a fine horse or dog than the health of the family. I have sometimes seen (but not in any of the States from which any of you come) ladies that had a more affectionate solicitude for a fine cat or a fine poodle than for the members of her household. (Laughter.) We are getting beyond that. We are coming to appreciate that that greatest assets in the United States today are men and women, and we must know how to conserve them.
There is manifest and gratifying awakening upon this subject throughout the country. We have not begun to appreciate the possibilities in this field. Men of science, the microscope, the laboratory and carefully gathered and well-digested statistics have opened up a new world to our vision. Physicians and surgeons have been exploring the mysteries of the physical man and familiarizing themselves with the perils of his environment and learning how to arrest the work of his destroyer.
They have learned how to locate his worst enemies by the use of the searching eye of the microscope, enemies who destroy more thousands than those enemies who come with fleets and armies and flaunting banners. It was not the Chagres river and Culebra cut which defeated the French Company in the construction of the Panama Canal, but the mosquito.
An American physician opened up the way to the completion of this work of world-wide moment by destroying the insect which had successfully defeated the French. The white plague, which takes such tremendous toll annually, is now under siege from every quarter, and science will in due time win a new victory in removing this scourge. Better sanitation in cities, villages, schoolhouses, workshops, homes, on farms and in cities, guarding our water supply against pollution, insuring pure food and pure drugs and their better preparation, are a few of the imperative requirements of the day. And when I speak of pure food and drugs, Dr. Wiley comes to my mind. (Applause.) He has to do with an aspect of practical Conservation that will entitle him and his associates to perpetual remembrance in the United States. (Applause.)