ecision is largely wrong.
Fortunately it is not yet final.

The question we are deciding with so little consciousness of what it
involves is this: What shall we do with our natural resources? Upon the
final answer that we shall make to it hangs the success or failure of
this Nation in accomplishing its manifest destiny.

Few Americans will deny that it is the manifest destiny of the United
States to demonstrate that a democratic republic is the best form of
government yet devised, and that the ideals and institutions of the
great republic taken together must and do work out in a prosperous,
contented, peaceful, and righteous people; and also to exercise, through
precept and example, an influence for good among the nations of the
world. That destiny seems to us brighter and more certain of realization
to-day than ever before. It is true that in population, in wealth, in
knowledge, in national efficiency generally, we have reached a place far
beyond the farthest hopes of the founders of the Republic. Are the
causes which have led to our marvellous development likely to be
repeated indefinitely in the future, or is there a reasonable
possibility, or even a probability, that conditions may arise which will
check our growth?

Danger to a nation comes either from without or from within. In the
first great crisis of our history, the Revolution, another people
attempted from without to halt the march of our destiny by refusing to
us liberty. With reasonable prudence and preparedness we need never fear
another such attempt. If there be danger, it is not from an external
source. In the second great crisis, the Civil War, a part of our own
people strove for an end which would have checked the progress of
development. Another such attempt has become forever impossible. If
there be danger, it is not from a division of our people.

In the third great crisis of our history, which has now come squarely
upon us, the special interests and the thoughtless citizens seem to have
united together to deprive the Nation of the great natural resources
without which it cannot endure. This is the pressing danger now, and it
is not the least to which our National life has been exposed. A nation
deprived of liberty may win it, a nation divided may reunite, but a
nation whose natural resources are destroyed must inevitably pay the
penalty of poverty, degradation, and decay.

At first blush this may seem like an unpardonable misconception and
ov