facturer, who pertinaciously demands the right to profit at the expense of the nation by getting rid of its irreplaceable resources as rapidly as possible, but from that of the man who takes some thought of the future and who realizes that nations, no more than the foolish virgins of the Scriptures, who wastefully consumed their oil, can escape the penalty of such folly.

When the literature on the subject of the extension of our trade with the Orient is examined the discovery is made that the optimists base their opinion of its future greatness on our ability to supply the Orientals with manufactured articles, into whose production the raw materials whose rapid consumption is causing alarm will enter in large quantities. Only the uninformed imagine the possibility of our becoming exporters on a considerable scale to Eastern countries of the products of the soil. The thrift of the Asiatic and our own future necessities make such an assumption seem irrational.

In the event of an Asiatic development on the scale which some predict, and many believe probable, the demand from Western countries will be chiefly for manufactured articles. In the nature of things it cannot continue for a long period, for if the movement toward the adoption of the habits of the West becomes a dominant factor in the development of Eastern Asia, it will result in the creation of formidable competitors, as the Asiatics, in spite of their backwardness, are a very capable people as the recent progres of Japan conclusively demonstrates.

The probabilities favor the belief that the Oriental nations in their awakening, and while they are building themselves up, will make immense demands upon our irreplaceable resources. Some idea of the extent of the demand may be gained from the statement made that the United States Steel Corporation is negotiating with Russia one of the largest steel-rail contracts ever made. If the contract is concluded, the corporation will supply over a million tons of steel rails for retracking the Siberian road. It is not unlikely that China may make even larger demands upon our resources.

No one will dispute that the immediate result of an extension of trade with the Orient on these lines will prove profitable to the nation. It cannot fail to stimulate national prosperity, by giving employment to large numbers of workers, who in turn contribute to the general welfare by expending their earnings. But if there is any foundation for the assumption that we are encroaching upon

our irreplaceable resources; if the recent White House conference was not an unnecessary bit of pessimism, then the prosperity which is thus purchased will be of the same sort a dissipated heir enjoys while getting rid of his inheritance without attempting to do anything to replenish his coffers.

It therefore becomes incumbent on statesmen to inquire how much reason there is for believing that our resources are being impaired, and if the conclusion of the conferees at the White House that "the forests which regulate our rivers, support our industries. and promote the fertility and productiveness of the soil should be preserved and perpetuated, and that the minerals found so abundantly beneath the surface should be so used as to prolong their utility," is sound, then it is their duty to shape the laws so that these purposes may be accomplished, even if the result is to completely upset the theories of the economists who teach that mankind is benefited by wasteful methods.

In an article such as this it would be impossible to present the evidence that demonstrates the soundness of the assumption that the natural resources are rapidly being dissipated, nor is it necessary to do so, as the papers read by the conferees at the White House are easily accessible. It is sufficient to quote Carnegie's undisputed statement, that our processes of mining and our methods. of consuming coal are wasteful, and that our supply of iron ore, at the present rate of consumption, will not last one hundred years.

In 1881 the output of coal in the United States was 85,881,039 short tons; in 1907 it had increased to 488,800,000 tons. The increase in a single year, from 1906 to 1907, was over 90,000,000 tons. A quarter of a century ago the prediction that our output would increase fivefold in twenty-six years would have been deemed preposterous. The assumption that the next twenty-six years will witness a like increase must appear equally incredible, yet failure to keep the pace means an interruption to what we have hitherto considered commercial progress.

The Birkinbine engineering offices of Philadelphia recently issued a chart illustrating the expansion of the pig-iron industry of the United States between 1890 and 1907, which developed the interesting facts that the product had increased from 327 pounds per capita in the first-named year to 675 pounds in 1907, or 106 per cent,. and that the price, despite the enormousness of the output, had

greatly increased, both absolutely and relatively, as measured by the currency in circulation. A leading journal, commenting on this presentation, remarked: "The chart shows the phenomenal growth and the great commercial value of our iron industry," and it doubtless voiced the opinion of men of affairs throughout the land; and the judgment would probably be the same if the quantity produced were 60,000,000 or 100,000,000 tons annually, instead of the 27,000,000 tons reached in 1907.

From the standpoint of the economist who deals wholly with the present, the enormously increased output of coal and pig iron must be regarded as beneficial. When a people are able to annually consume 675 pounds per capita of a useful metal like iron, they are apparently in better case than they were when their consumption was less than one-half that quantity. But the benefit is of the most transitory character and more apparent than real. If the output of iron and coal could be indefinitely increased, the benefit would be indisputable, but as they are both limited in quantity and practically irreplaceable, their injudicious use can only be compared with that of a lot of shipwrecked mariners who prodigally consume their store of provisions while adrift on a raft in midocean.

The analogy is complete. So far as the use of iron and coal is concerned, we are proceeding even more insanely than mariners who would improvidently consume their store of provisions when menaced by the possibility of rescue being long deferred, for we have adopted a commercial policy which economists extol, of getting rid of our irreplaceable commodities by selling them to foreigners who, under proper stimulus, could provide themselves from their own stock. To extend the simile of the shipwrecked mariners, our action resembles the inconceivable folly which an insane sailor on the raft would display if he threw part of his bread to the fishes and thus deliberately increased the chance of starvation.

If there is any doubt on this point it will be speedily resolved by studying the import of a demand made upon the Interstate Commerce Commission at one of its recent sittings, where it was shown by the representative of the Harriman lines that unless the transcontinental railroads were permitted to charge a lesser rate for freight dispatched over their lines to the Orient than that exacted from shippers of domestic goods they would not be able to compete with the Suez route, as nearly all the goods shipped to Eastern

Asia via the transcontinental railroads and steamships sailing from Pacific ports of the United States came from the territory east of Chicago and close to the Eastern seaboard.

A large part of our Oriental business is made up of manufactures of iron. The probability of securing a million-ton contract to supply the Siberian railroad with rails of American manufacture has already been noted, and the tables of exports show that we are now shipping large quantities of rails, wire nails, machinery and other iron products to Asiatic countries. We are also exporting considerable quantities of raw cotton by direct and circuitous routes to Eastern Asia.

It is not necessary to state with exactness the extent of the trade already developed. It is, however, of considerable consequence and is a serious factor in the inroads made upon our natural resources, especially those of iron and coal, and incidentally of timber. But if it were insignificant at present, we have to consider the fact that the avowed purpose of the advocates of a revision of the tariff as it relates to Oriental countries is to stimulate to the utmost our export trade to them by the dubious device of admitting their products to this country at lower rates of duty than are exacted at present.

It would be a work of supererogation to point out that a policy of "forcing out" such as that outlined in the proposals of the tariff revisionists to stimulate exports of iron and coal to Asiatic countries is in the highest degree inconsistent with the demand for the conservation of the natural resources of the country. Such a course may temporarily promote prosperity, but the inevitable result will be to hamper future commercial progress by making iron, coal and timber dearer and less accessible to the domestic consumer. The remarks of the author of "Made in Germany," in commenting on the draft made upon the coal measures of the United Kingdom, are applicable to us: "Every ton of coal extracted from our coal fields," he said, "implies a permanent loss of wealth to that amount. The coal doesn't grow again.. When you send it away to

the foreigner to feed his factories, which destroy or injure your factories and take in return from him foodstuffs, letting your land deteriorate.”

you are

It is impossible to dispute this; the conclusions of the conservation conference are in perfect accord with the deduction, yet the

disposition exists (and it will probably prevail) to disregard the consequences by continuing the fatuous policy of getting rid of our resources as rapidly as fancied immediate commercial needs demand. In the future, as in the past, the only concern of statesmen will be the present. Any proposition which suggests an impairment of the facilities for converting the natural resources of the country into immediate profit will receive scant courtesy from those who legislate for us and will be derided by the classes whose ideas of national prosperity are bounded by consideration for the immediate present.

I say this in full consciousness of the earnestness of the advocates of conservation, and the apparent progress made by the movement for the protection of the forests and the preservation of the mineral lands still in the possession of the government. The success of the latter is wholly dependent upon the fact that individual interests are not directly involved. The policy of conservation would have achieved success had it been inaugurated three-quarters of a century ago; but now that the major part of the country's forests have disappeared, and nearly all the valuable mineral lands are in the hands of private persons, the almost insuperable difficulty attending regulation when individualism has thoroughly established itself, as it has in the United States, will prove a constant obstacle to consistent efforts to conserve.

Before the world can achieve real economies through conservation, it will be absolutely necessary to destroy the impression that all trade is beneficial to mankind. We shall have to learn to distinguish between that which is economical and that which tends to waste. Protection should have developed this knowledge, but it has failed to do so because its advocates have not clearly perceived that its paramount function was the elimination of waste by bringing consumer and producer as closely together as possible.

There has always been a confusion in the protectionist mind on this latter point, and it is responsible for the vagaries of the advocates of reciprocal trade, whose estimates of the national prosperity are based on the figures of exports and imports, and who have become blinded to the fact that the increasing volume of the latter may indicate growing wastefulness and therefore not productive of a prosperity whose genuineness is evidenced by the permanence of its results.

No rational economist, when the matter is squarely presented