sion believes that herein lies one of the greatest and least understood of the state's natural resources. Only ninety-nine water power sites are in use, and one hundred and twenty-three formerly in use have been abandoned. The abandonment is due chiefly to two causes: First, economic conditions in agriculture have so changed that there is no longer need of a manufacturing or consuming point at the place of production. It is more profitable to ship the products of the soil and buy whatever flour, meal and sugar is necessary than to have these small quantities ground at local mills. Hence, grist mills and sugar cane mills have disappeared. The second cause for abandonment of water power sites is the failure of the streams, due, as mentioned above, to the changed soil conditions. However, the advance in electro-mechanical appliances has created new uses and put a new value on water power sites. The point of application of the power may now be many miles. from its point of generation. Sites abandoned years ago have "come back" and have greatly enhanced in value. Properly exploited, the value of resources in this state is incalculable. One of the chiefest aims of the commission in its present work is to sufficiently impress upon the people and upon the General Assembly the great value of this natural resource. While more expensive to produce, undoubtedly the greatest latent power in the state is in the Missouri River. The commission has planned to investigate in detail some site on the river which has the most natural advantages and using this as an illustration to demonstrate what can be done in this state. At the recent session of our Legislature the report of the commission covering these topics, giving in detail the information meagerly outlined above, was presented to the General Assembly and copies of this report were widely distributed throughout the state. The $5,000 appropriation for four years has increased to $17,000 for two years. The resignation of members and political differences arising outside of the commission have temporarily impaired and hindered the work of the commission. However, since the presenting of its last report the commission has put in the time of its executives in bringing up to date and supplementing the statistics gathered the preceding year. Practically nothing is now lacking in the figures concerning community water supply, water works and sewage disposal. Pending the beginning of actual engineering investigation of a water power site, the commission has studied the water power laws of all the states of the Union to the end that accurate information may be presented to the General Assembly when legislation in this state on these subjects is asked for. The delays and petty hindrances touched upon are undoubtedly temporary, and with the very recent completion of the personnel of the commission we have great hopes and expectations for the work which may be done in the cause of conservation during the coming year. During the reading of a list of telegrams, Mr. W. A. Beard of Sacramento, California, assumed the Chair as temporary chairman. Temporary Chairman BEARD-The secretary will continue the call of the roll of states. Recording Secretary GIPE-Montana; Nevada; New Hampshire; New Mexico; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio. President WALLACE-I now introduce to you Mr. C. P. Dyar of Marietta, Ohio, who will speak for Ohio. Mr. DYAR-I have no speech to make. Ohio simply sends greetings to this Congress, and wishes it Godspeed and a large measure of success in the work before it. Ohio has always been a great conservation state throughout its entire history; it has had presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial timber, and other minor political timber, sufficient for the entire consumption of the United States. Ohio felicitates her sister states on the scope and energy of this movement and she voices the hope that has been expressed in this meeting, that the lesson of the parable of the talents shall not be forgotten, that conservation shall not be interpreted to mean simply to save, but development through wise use, which creates wealth, not only for the present, but future generations. Recording Secretary GIPE-Oklahoma. President WALLACE-I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Milton Brown, who will speak for Oklahoma. [Mr. Brown's paper will be found in Supplementary Proceedings.] Chairman BEARD-We are getting down to business this morning, and I think we are getting the meat out of the cocoanut. These addresses have been directly to the point. I now have the pleasure of introducing a representative of the State of Pennsylvania, Mr. A. B. Farquhar. Mr. FARQUHAR-Pennsylvania is a state of such gigantic resources it would take all the rest of our session to begin to describe them, a good portion of it, and tell what we are trying to do to conserve them. It is only within the last month or two we created a state branch of the National Conservation Association, and they wanted me to be its president, I suppose because I have been interested in conservation for about twenty years past, and was a director in the National Association. [Mr. Farquhar's paper is in the Supplementary Proceedings.] Chairman BEARD-We will now listen to Dr. Henry S. Drinker, president of Lehigh University. Dr. DRINKER-It would seem that this third National Conservation Congress in ordering its deliberations cannot do so more wisely than in giving heed to the closing words of President Taft's luminous address at St. Paul last year, when he said: "I am bound to say that the time has come for a halt in general rhapsodies over conservation, making the word mean every known good in the world; for after the public attention has been aroused, such appeals are of doubtful utility and do not direct the public to the specific course that the people should take, or have their legislators take, in order to promote the cause of conservation. The rousing of emotions on a subject like this, which has only dim outlines in the minds of the people affected, after a while ceases to be useful, and the whole movement will, if promoted on these lines, die for want of practical direction and of demonstration to the people that practical reforms are intended. * * * I beg of you, therefore, in your deliberations and in your informal discussions, when men come forward to suggest evils that the promotion of conservation is to remedy that you invite them to point out the specific evils and the specific remedies; that you invite them to come down to details in order that their discussions may flow into channels that shall be useful rather than into periods that shall be eloquent and entertaining without shedding real light on the subject. The people should be shown exactly what is needed in order that they make their representatives in Congress and the State Legislatures do their intelligent bidding." It would seem well for us here to take account of stock of what has been done, of the agencies that have been utilized and of those that have been neglected, as well as to exchange views as to what we think that others, or the interests we individually represent, should do. I have the honor of representing Pennsylvania as a state, and the Lehigh University as an educational organization deeply interested in the promotion of the cause of forestry and of conservation in general. We have an efficient and active forestry association. Pennsylvania, as we all know, has been, and is, famed for her deposits of iron and coal, and for her pre-eminence in the iron and steel industries. The resources in these directions are so great that it would be wearying to attempt even to inflict on you a summary of them in these short talks, but what the state has learned in conservation of mineral resources is of direct and pregnant interest. Forty years ago the movement for stopping the waste in coal was begun at the organization at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1871, of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, an institution whose membership now runs into the thousands and whose influence for good is world-wide. As a young engineer I had the privilege of attending that meeting. Among the things done a committee was appointed to study the question of waste in the mining, preparation and transportation of coal. This committee was followed by, and, in fact, incited the appointment by the Pennsylvania Legislature of a coal waste commission, which made a valuable and exhaustive report, and we thus see that in one phase of conservation, and a very important one, that of mining, our engineers have been doing their duty, and that forty years ago work in conservation was being done to which the public is only just awakening. Our government officials are doing most intelligent and good work in pointing out the way. Perhaps one of the best summaries of this great conservation question now before our people, and in which the engineering profession is so interested, and in regard to which our mining profession has so great a duty to perform, was given by Dr. C. W. Hayes, Chief Geologist of the United States Geological Survey, in an address some time ago at the University of Chicago, when he defined conservation as "Utilization with a maximum efficiency and a minimum waste," and said: The reform that is needed throughout the country as a whole must gain its motive power not from sporadic instances where true business methods prevail, or from the well-intentioned enthusiasm of the few, but from the well-informed intelligence of the many. The campaign for conservation must be one of education. There appears to be an unfortunate confusion in the minds of certain advocates of conservation. They have apparently confused conservation of natural resources with destruction of the trusts, and the mixture has resulted in pure demagoguery. Anyone who has studied conditions attending the development of mineral deposits must have been impressed by the fact that those deposits held by large companies are being developed and utilized with a view to prevention of waste, in accordance with the principles of conservation, to a much greater extent than are the deposits held by small companies or by individuals. I was much struck, as I think we all were yesterday, by the statement of our President followed by that of the chairman of the executive committee, that at this Congress we were to discuss conservation without any infusion of politics, and I take it that we use the word "politics" in its broadest sense, and are to see how we can best use capital and labor, and intelligently directed industry, all to the common end of the promotion of conservation; and that we can and will recognize what I have quoted above from the Chief Geologist of the United States Geological Survey in regard to the proper recognition and utilization of capital in conservation as highly important. In the report of the National Conservation Commission, made through President Roosevelt to Congress in January, 1909, Mr. J. A. Holmes (now director of the United States Bureau of Mines), in reporting on our mineral resources, said: In considering the conservation of resources, it should be held in mind that: (1) The present generation has the power and the right to use efficiently so much of these resources as it needs. (2) The Nation's needs will not be curtailed; these needs will increase with the extent and diversity of its industries, and more rapidly than its population. (3) The men of this generation will not mine, extract, or use, these resources in such manner as to entail continuous financial loss to themselves in order that something be left for the future. There will be no mineral industry without profits. In his message to Congress, 1910, President Taft, speaking of the anti-trust law, said: It was not to interfere with a great volume of capital which, concentrated under one organization, reduced the cost of production, and made its profit thereby, and took no advantage of its size by methods akin to duress to stifle competition with it. I wish to make this distinction as emphatic as possible, because I conceive that nothing could happen more destructive to the prosperity of this country than the loss of that great economy in production which has been and will be effected in all manufacturing lines by the employment of large capital under one management. I do not mean to say that there is not a limit beyond which the economy of management by the enlargement of plant ceases; and where this happens and combination continues beyond this point the very fact shows intent to monopolize and not to economize. Let us consider these questions as business men, weighing the good as well as the evil that the different powers can afford that bear on conservation, and utilizing and encouraging all that will promote the great ends which the conservation movement was started to serve. President WALLACE-It was expected that the National Grange would be represented on this platform. Neither the president nor the gentleman whom he recommended could come. I have therefore taken the privilege of appointing Mr. B. G. Holden of Iowa, who will give us an address this morning, not on the Grange itself, but on the Grange and other movements that tend to the uplift that we stand for. We will now hear Mr. Holden, who is the evangel of the corn gospel in all these inner states. We will hear him for half an hour. Mr. HOLDEN-Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Members of this Congress: You came here to listen to the great people of this country, and you are anxious to hear them, so I will take just as little time as possible, for I have already been warned by the president that I must be brief. I have laid my paper upon the table, and I am going to forget all I can and say the rest to you. I am going to be something like the Irishman who was painting a fence. He was working as hard as he could putting on the paint. A neighbor Irishman came along down the street and said, "Pat, what are you hurrying so for?" Pat kept right on putting on the paint. And he said, "Begorra, I am trying to get my job done before my paint runs out." I am trying to get through before my paint runs out this morning. SOCIAL LIFE ON THE FARM. To conserve humanity-to make humanity worth more to itself; to direct human forces so that each person wastes the least possible energy, and accomplishes the greatest good for himself and for others—this is the most vital problem before our country today. No nation can long remain great whose rural people are oppressed, or for any reason have degenerated. It was Goldsmith who said: Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, It is not that country life on the farm is bad in the United States, for it is not, but it can be greatly improved, and in my opinion it is the greatest question before the Nation today. I am sure that when history is finally written it will place foremost among the many good things that President Roosevelt did, the inaugurating of the Country Life Movement. Three things are necessary: First, and most essential, is an |