But it is not enough that a country shall have natural resources. It must have a people with initiative and industry to develop them. The American people have spent three centuries at the task of making the land yield its increase and they have much to show for it. Originally, for the most part, of Anglo-Saxon stock, the population has been enriched by the addition of immigrants from every country of the old world. This mingling of many races into one people has given the nation vigor and versatility. It has helped to develop among the American people that alert and progressive spirit which is one of their most valued characteristics; it has also given strength to democratic ideals.
3. The national deals.
The enduring greatness of a nation does not depend, however, upon its material achievements alone. It cannot be measured by figures of population and wealth. What a nation contributes to the progress and permanence of civilization depends not only upon its economic prosperity but in an even greater degree upon its spiritual and intellectual strength. This vast land, so richly endowed by nature and with its riches so fully utilized by man, has won and can retain its foremost place among the nations of the world by promoting justice and contentment among its people, upholding the reign of law, diffusing education among all, and holding true to the ideals of democratic government.
Importance of the soil.
The Land.—Soil is the fundamental resource of any country. Its fertility determines, in large measure, the size of the population that can be supported. It is probable that more than thirty per cent of the American people are today engaged in earning their living from the soil; at any rate the whole population is in one way or another dependent upon it. From the soil comes almost our entire food supply.
The land of the country is privately owned.
Outside the original thirteen states practically the entire area of the country has been at some period in the hands of the national government as part of the public domain.[[154]] By far the greater part of it, however, has been sold or granted into private ownership. In the course of this disposal many corporations and individuals managed to obtain large tracts of land for very little outlay, because careful attention was not always given to the administration of the land laws; nevertheless the policy of selling land cheaply and giving it free to settlers helped to build up the great Western territories. Out of a public domain which at one time or another included nearly two-thirds of the entire United States only six hundred million acres now remain in the federal government’s hands. Most of this is desert, mountain land, or land that is otherwise unfit for cultivation.
The Need of Conservation.—So long as land remained plentiful and natural resources seemed to be abundant, very little thought was given to the possibility that some day both of these things would become scarce. The land in some parts of the country was exhausted by wasteful methods of cultivation and then abandoned. |Some examples of wasted wealth.| There are thousands of abandoned farms in the New England states. Coal, iron, and copper were mined in ways that permitted enormous wastage. Through negligence much of our forest wealth was destroyed by fire. By the beginning of the twentieth century it began to dawn upon the people that the natural resources of the country were rapidly melting away, that practically all the good land was gone, while the natural resources in the way of coal and timber were being so wastefully used that they would both be exhausted within relatively few decades unless something were done to conserve them. Accordingly a movement for the conservation of natural resources was started and since 1900 it has made considerable progress both in securing the passage of laws and in the education of the public to the urgency of the situation.