So far as we permit human beings to be created, it is plainly our duty to conserve them and, so far as possible, produce a happy environment for them. This great problem of the conservation of humanity is mentioned merely to put it in relation with the problems of the conservation of our natural resources, rather than to discuss it.
How long shall this nation endure? Or, more exactly, how long shall human beings occupy this land? It is only within the past two centuries that the lands of the country have been subject to agriculture upon an extensive scale, and the main drafts upon the soil of this country have been within the last century. We should think, not of a hundred years, or of a thousand years, but of hundreds of thousands, or of millions of years of development of the human race. There is no reason, from a geological point of view, why human beings may not live upon this earth for millions of years to come, perhaps many millions of years, and, so far as we are concerned, such periods are practically infinite.
These considerations impose upon us as our most fundamental duty the transmission of the heritage of our natural resources to our descendants as nearly intact as possible. This is an individual responsibility, as well as a state and a national responsibility. There's a strongly developed opinion at the present time that the owners of great wealth, and especially those who control great natural resources, should act as trustees for the nation. This is easy to see; but every man who owns a farm is equally a trustee to the nation for his small property. If at the end of his life the farm goes to his son depleted in richness, he is as truly faithless to his trust as are the great interests, some of which think only of present gain, and wastefully exploit the natural resources of the country. Each in proportion to his own responsibility is a traitor to the nation. At the present time, fortunately, this sense of stewardship is gaining possession of those who control some of the great resources of the nation. As yet, there is scarcely a glimmering of responsibility in the case of the smaller holder of natural resources. But the future of the nation is safe only when small and large holder alike, from the man who owns forty acres of land to the groups of men who control the anthracite of the nation, shall administer their trust primarily for the benefit of the people now living and for succeeding generations rather than for themselves.
I do not hesitate to assert that, from the point of view of our descendants, this question of conservation of our natural resources is more important than any political or social question, indeed, more important than all political or social questions upon the solution of which we are now engaged. Not only is it more important, but it is more pressing, for already our unnecessary losses are irremediable, and the situation is growing steadily worse.
It is necessary that a great campaign of education be inaugurated at once with reference to the conservation of the soil, just as there has been a campaign of education with reference to the conservation of the forests. The task is an enormous one, indeed vastly greater than that carried on with reference to our other resources, because of the fact that the land holdings are so subdivided; but the campaign of education must be carried on, and, as a part of it, the laws must be developed, until we reach the situation where no man dares so to handle his land as to decrease its fertility. If present methods are allowed to continue, it is certain that in the not distant future this country will be able to support only a relatively sparse population. Only by the conservation of our soil, undiminished in its fertility, can we hope to be able to provide for the hundreds of millions of people who, in the near future in the United States, will be demanding food and clothing. The conservation of the soil is the conservation of the basal asset of the nation.
Similarly, the campaign of education in reference to the forests must be continued, and that with reference to the coal and mineral resources inaugurated; for only second in importance to the conservation of the soil is the economic mining and use of coal, the conservation of the forests, and the use of metals with the minimum waste.
DEAN BIRGE
Edward Asahel Birge was born in Troy, New York, in 1851. He received his collegiate training at Williams and Harvard and was made instructor in natural history at the University of Wisconsin in 1875, professor in 1879, and Dean of the College of Letters and Science in 1891, which position he has held down to the present time, except for three years when he served as Acting President.
No one among all the professors is better known to the students of the University of Wisconsin than Dean Birge. His active figure, his firm step, his (now) white hair, which, when the writer went to school, was but iron-gray, his keen eye, have all come to be institutional and fundamental at the University of Wisconsin. No undergraduate who has gone tremblingly before Dean Birge to get his excuse for being late to his first class after the Christmas holidays will need a description of Dean Birge's eye. No one ever thinks of trying to deceive the Dean.
But withal, nothing could be more unfair than to give the notion that keenness is the only quality in that eye. Kindness is there, too, and above all, justice. We who were undergraduates at Madison, always think of Dean Birge as a scholar in his chosen line and as a school administrator. It will be a surprise to many to know of his keen interest in literature. The writer ventures to say that one will look some time before he finds, from the pen of the best-trained specialist in English, a fairer estimate of Milton than the one here given by this biologist.