Proceedings of the second National Conservation Congress at Saint Paul, September 5-8, 1910

by United States. National Conservation Congress

While it is wise for the Federal and State governments to take what steps they may to prevent the wasteful destruction of certain natural resources like our minerals and forests, yet if all this be done and with the thoroughness that the most ardent of us could demand, still the great problem of Conservation taken as a whole would scarcely be touched. The utmost that the Government can do directly, though of considerable magnitude in itself, is relatively of small importance. Even meetings like the present one have a significance and value only as they inaugurate and vitalize Conservation movements more important and extensive than any Government can ever hope to bring about by direct means.

This principle applies to the greatest degree in instances in which control of the natural resources has already passed to the individual owners. It applies with even added force when such ownership lies in agricultural lands. The reason for this lies in the fact that of all natural resources the soil is by far the most important, and, further, that conservative principles and practices apply with greater directness and profit there than in any other field. The conservation of this season's plant food and soil moisture means next season's crop. Through plant and animal breeding the more prolific and profitable strains are conserved, and through battle with plant and soil diseases and with pests of all kinds we conserve the purity of our soil and the crops that we grow. Such active and constant exercise of Conservation as this may be, in a field that directly affects our entire population in the most vital and direct manner possible, is a matter for our most earnest consideration.

What is being done to train the great body of mankind to whom this important task of Conservation is entrusted; and are the present measures adequate?

Aside from legislation pertaining to weeds, plant diseases, and insect pests, there is little that can be done directly to enforce Conservation measures. The friction encountered in enforcing even this body of laws indicates the difficulties that arise when public restrictions come into conflict with private enterprises. True, it is a crime to waste the fertility of the soil on which the very existence of the race depends; but until all our traditions change, the only punishment that will be visited upon the offender is not from the legally constituted State but from nature herself. He whose will is to rob and skin the land may not be reached by legal process, but he must be taught that the penalties which an outraged nature exacts are as inexorable as the Blind Goddess ever pronounced.

While there always will be fools that can learn only in the school of experience, yet the great majority are glad to find an easier and cheaper way.

Back of the Conservation of the farm must lie the education of the farmer; and greater than all the other problems of Conservation is this one. We are barely entering upon this field, for the reason that the fund of knowledge upon which this education is to be based has been but recently acquired. Our knowledge of the soil in its relation to plant growth, the control of plant diseases, and the laws of plant improvement, have all come to us in recent years. Still, much as there is yet to determine, there is already a vast fund of knowledge of untold worth; but means are not yet provided for making it useful and effective.

Speaking for North Dakota, such natural resources as she possesses, aside from her soils, are being well protected and conserved through public measures already in force. Her vast fields of lignite coal underlain with valuable clays have been withdrawn from homestead entry, and hereafter only surface rights in these lands will be granted.

Such forests as the State originally had have long since passed into private hands, and the land has mostly been cleared for farming. In North Dakota, forestry, like agriculture, will be operated by the individual land owners for their direct if not immediate benefit. It may be found advisable to plant public forests in parts of the Bad Lands and other rough areas, but by far the greater part of tree planting will be done upon small areas on the individual farms. The State already encourages such planting by a bounty paid in the remission of taxes. This is not enough. The land owner in most cases does not know what trees will prove the most profitable, nor how they may best be grown. Here again the one necessity is education. Object lessons in tree planting should be established in each community, and all pupils in the public schools should be shown how to grow a grove of trees. Such a system would produce immeasurably greater results in the way of timber production than would come from the public forests, important as these doubtless are.

But agricultural education will conserve something more than the fertility of the soil and the vitality and purity of our crops. It means also the conservation of a prosperous, virile, self-dependent, and intelligent people. It means a prosperous people, for no cost of education of the right kind was ever known to impoverish a people, and no expenditure rightly made could ever equal the gain. Conservation can never be expected of the ignorant. Conservation is but the larger and more altruistic expression of the term known as thrift; and ignorance and poverty know it not. The means for extending and improving agricultural education will develop and expand in the same measure that we apply ourselves to the problem.