sition itself departs from the realm of fact, for no such keen intelligence and perfect altruism have ever existed; and in asking what would happen if they did exist, we part company with realities. We find at once that what ideally should be done goes too far beyond what is ever thought of as practicable, to be advocated without bringing suspicion on the mental state of those who favor it. And yet it is well worth while to see how far into the future a national policy would look if it were governed by perfect intelligence and high sense of obligation. A mere glance will show how little danger there is of overdoing the care for future interests or of becoming fanatics on the subject of protecting them.

In view of the unending ages that will be affected by its action, an ideal government would begin by making a very searching inquiry into the extent of existing resources, and would secure, if not complete knowledge, at least a basis for a confident estimate of the length of time they would hold out under given rates of consumption. It would also do another thing which it strains the imagination to picture as a reality, in that it would estimate the welfare of the people of the future as quite on a plane of importance with the people of the present, and would use one and the same degree of care in guarding the welfare of all. As an end of effort it would count the happiness of a thousand generations not yet born as a thousand times as important as the welfare of one generation now living. It would, indeed, recognize the fact that the future population will receive many of its blessings by transmission from the present one, and that there must be no breaks in the transmission. To impoverish the present generation would be bad for later ones. Men of to-day must be well enough off to endow their children with the means of

maintaining and gradually raising their standard of living, and this fact would prove highly important as bearing on a practical policy. Merely as helping to make up the summum bonum of economics, human welfare is scientifically one and the same thing wherever, in point of time, it is located.

Still recognizing the fact that we are idealizing humanity, and assuming an insight and an altruism which is far from existing, we may ask what are a very few of the things that with a really just regard for a thousand generations a small fraction of the number that have already lived and passed away a government would do. It would call a halt on the unlimited burning of coal for motive power. Long before a hundred generations will have passed, this will be sorely needed for heating dwellings and workshops and for smelting ores. A steam-engine utilizes a small fraction of the potential energy of the coal, while a smelting furnace utilizes more, and an apparatus for heating dwellings, even where it is wasteful, puts the fuel to a very necessary use and gets a great absolute benefit from it. A policy that would protect the interests of the later dwellers on the planet would stop burning up the combustible part of it in an unnecessary way, and would get motive power from waterfalls, tidal movements, and waves. In the end it might conceivably utilize the electricity that is wasted in thunder-storms, and stop the storm; or, as Edward Atkinson once suggested, it might create electrical currents by induction, through the motion of the earth. The revolving planet would thus be converted into a dynamo, and if the other planets and the sun served the purpose of magnets, and the combination were made to drive our ships and our railroad trains, then of a truth we should have 'hitched our wagons to a star.' It is probably

doing that, in the more familiar and figurative sense, to suggest this possibility at all; and decidedly it is doing this in a fatuous and unhappy way, to make the chance of working such mechanical miracles in the future a reason for destroying our stock of fuel and letting coming generations shift for themselves. What if, after the fuel is gone, the earth declines to be the dynamo we need? What is not fanciful is the opinion that, in simpler and more obvious ways, it is possible to get from other sources much of the power that we now get from coal.

Crude brutality cares nothing for all this. It demands, 'What do I care for posterity? It has done nothing for me.' Even with a certain care for posterity, however, a man may be unwilling to do much for it if his imagination is dazzled by its expected wonder-working power. He may become a destroyer because of this play of fancy, and it is then the conservator who keeps closer to facts. In another way he does this; for while he may think and care for the remote future of humanity, yet in the practical steps he would take, he would also guard the nearer future from impending calamity. He acts in part for that microscopic fraction of the life of humanity which is embraced within a single century.

On the basis of a policy that has only such a period in view, very decided measures of conservation are called for. There is coal enough to last, even in wasteful uses, for far more than a century, and we shall continue to burn it for motive power. Probably, however, we shall soon use water-power more freely, and so save some of the coal, and probably we shall ere long substitute gas-engines for steam-engines, and so save more. The remote future may suffer for what we destroy in spite of this, but we are now letting it take its chance, and shall continue to

do so till our insight is keener and our moral purpose higher.

Preserving forests and husbanding natural gas and mineral oil are demanded in the interest of a very near period. For within the single century is likely to come the evil which destruction of these gifts of nature will cause. Moreover, it is perfectly certain that, quite apart from causing destruction of coal, the making over to private citizens of a vast value in known deposits of it now in public ownership will misuse the people's property in a way of which they should and will take account. Without in any wise limiting the use of the fuel or ceasing to treat it as an asset of the people now living, we shall call a halt on recklessly alienating it.

Forests present a problem by themselves, and it is much in the foreground. The interests dependent on them are vital, and the general policy that is needed is clear. At stake are the preservation of the water-supply and, in mountainous regions, of the soil, and the furnishing of lumber, fuel, paperpulp, and many other products. Much of the exploitation that is now going on both destroys existing trees and prevents others from growing, and it exposes untouched areas of forest to destruction by fire. Lumbermen are barely beginning to destroy the treetops and branches which the cutting of a forest leaves strewn on the ground. When they are burned, one pine forest is naturally succeeded by another, whereas, when they are left, it is usually followed by cottonwoods. To save a very slight present expense the supply of lumber for the near future is put in jeopardy, and the case for rigorous public regulation is a clear one.

In another respect forestry is peculiar. Conservation not only permits, but requires, the use of the thing that is the object of care. When the crew of a

ship are on a short allowance of food, the purpose is so to conserve the food as to make it do its utmost for the consumers. If the voyage is long enough, the supply will come to an end despite all efforts; but it is not so with forests. There is no need of their ever disappearing or dwindling. Cutting may be followed by renewed growing, and the supply may last forever. Humanity is on an unending voyage, and may secure, in the case of lumber, an unfailing supply — but not till the slaughtering of forests that has thus far gone on is brought to an end.

We have nearly if not quite reached the point where the measures that the state needs to prescribe would be profitable for private owners. Such regulation would, at least, impose on private owners a far lighter burden than would many another measure of rational conservation. The scientific treatment of forests not only does not preclude a use of them, but positively requires it, and complete disuse is itself wasteful. Judicious cutting may go on forever without lessening the supply of timber which a forest contains, while refraining from all cutting is like letting fruit or growing crops go to decay. The trees that are ripe for use may give place to others which will keep up the succession and preserve forever the integrity of the forest; and few indeed are the public measures which would do as much for the general welfare as insisting on this amount of conservation.

There is one point in forest economy which demands especial emphasizing, namely, that in a certain sense the common allegation is true that a small area of growing trees is capable of meeting the entire demand of the country for lumber. It will do so at a price. With the forests depleted the price rises, the use of lumber falls off, and for many purposes for which we once used it, we go

without it. For imperative needs there is enough of it still, but is it right that we should have to limit ourselves to those uses and pay famine rates for the lumber that they require? Yet that is the condition we shall rapidly approach if no care is used to keep in available condition the forests that we have. It is the time for prescribing the simple beginnings of scientific forestry, for inaugurating it on public lands and enforcing the practice on private lands. We may not yet be ready for the German system, that in the future will be called for here; but we are more than ready for the measures that will stop the destruction both of growing timber and of the sources of future timber.

Private monopoly is a hateful thing, for which good words are seldom to be said; but there is one palliative fact about a monopoly of forests, - that it would probably curtail production, and it would let new forests grow. In the single point of perpetuating the supply of lumber, the interests of a monopoly would more nearly harmonize with those of the state than those of ordinary proprietors. Vanishing resources would last longer in its hands than they will when held by private and competing owners. It would be more endurable to pay, in the shape of a high price, a small and permanent tax to a monopoly than to pay to anybody a famine price after the forests are largely destroyed. But why should we do either? If we must have nothing but purely private action, there is something to be said in favor of monopoly; but if we can have efficient regulation, all such apologetic pleas fail.

We can, if we choose, own forests publicly and manage them for the common good. The aversion to monopoly should be and is greater than the aversion to a limited amount of public production; and it is far greater than is the opposition to public regulation.

These two measures afford the escape from the hard alternative of the 'Devil and the deep sea,' - the former being the control of the lumber-supply by a great self-seeking corporation; and the other, the destroying of it by competing lumbermen. The logic of the entire situation points to some public forestry as one of the admissible and, within limits, desirable functions of the state; and a bold and effective statesmanship will lose no time in recognizing this fact and preparing to act on it. There is no taint of real socialism in such a policy. For various good reasons we must have forest reserves, and it is proper to use them in better ways than by letting the lumber go altogether to waste, or by intrusting the cutting to contractors. Let private forestry also continue on its present great scale, but let it be under regulation.

There are other wastes going on which rival the destruction of forests in sacrificing the future to the present. Oil is now offered as a fuel, and the owners of engines are invited to consider the comparative cost per horsepower of oil and of coal. The immediate cost-account, and no further consideration, will decide whether this material shall go the way of natural gas. Exploitation of the coal-supply is a serious matter in a view that is rational enough to range over the coming

centuries. To a world that neither knows nor cares what will happen more than a hundred years hence, it is a matter of indifference. Conservation in the case of coal, however, has to do with something besides the manner of using it, namely, the question of owning it. We shall use it freely enough in any case, but there is no reason for directly giving vast quantities of it to private persons or corporations. That depletes the immediate estate of the people.

In the general policy of conservation the issue is one of transient interests as against permanent ones, of small benefits as against great ones, of private gain as against public welfare. The appeal throughout is to the collective intelligence of the people. The more rational is the view that is taken, the more radical is the conservation that is favored. The people are as yet not fully alive to the necessity for a thoroughgoing protection of the resources of the near future; and those who thrive by wasting them are extremely alive to the desirability of continuing the operation. The case calls for a leadership that shall organize the people and enable them to act on the principles which they vaguely perceive in both guarding and utilizing their rich inheritance. The utmost that any party is practically trying to get is less than the welfare of even a single century requires.

I

AMONG the most persistent of my early dreams was that of being a missionary. I wanted to be a missionary before it occurred to me that I had any particular doctrine to communicate or manner of life to recommend. Indeed I now perceive that my call was more of Nature than of Grace.

I wanted to be a missionary because I longed to go on missionary journeys. The call of the wild, the lure of the unknown, the fascination of terrestrial mystery takes many forms. It is all a part of the romance of Geography, which has survived even the invention of maps.

When one is eleven and going on twelve, there comes a great longing to go to the Antipodes, to visit No Man's Land, to wander through forsaken cities, to climb lonely towers, and to look out through

magic casements opening on the foam

Of perilous seas.

In different generations this demand has been variously met. The institutions of civilization, besides their primary objects, have had the secondary function of satisfying the youthful desire to go into a far country, a desire not of the Prodigal alone. Patriotism, Religion, Commerce, each has its finger-post pointing to the unknown.

There lies the port, the vessel puffs her sail, There gloom the dark, broad seas.

The Roman youth, when he would visit Parthia and Numidia and Caledonia, had the donia, had the way made easy for him. All he had to do was to join the legions, and then the path of duty and the path of glory coincided. There was the promise of many a fine trip.

In the Middle Ages there were Crusades and pilgrimages to holy shrines, - capital ways of seeing the world. Chaucer's knight had ridden as well in Christendom as Hethenesse.' Or if one could not be a knight-errant he could be a saint-errant. He could journey far with never a penny to pay.

But if one lived on Paint Creek in Southern Ohio, the access to the world of romance was more difficult. It seemed a long way from Paint Creek to the lands old in story. It was a far cry to

Cambalu, seat of Cathaian Can,

And Samaachand by Oxus, Temir's throne,
To Agra and Lahor of great Mogul,
To Paquin of Sivian Kings and thence
Down to the golden Chersonese, or where
The Persian in Ectaban sate, or since
In Hispahan, or where the Russian Ksar
In Mosco, or the Sultan in Bizance.

So far as one's chances of seeing