assengers by inland
waterways, will be affected still more directly than the steam railways.
The cultivation of the soil, with or without irrigation, will be
hampered by the increased cost of agricultural tools, fencing, and the
wood needed for other purposes about the farm. Irrigated agriculture
will suffer most of all, for the destruction of the forests means the
loss of the waters as surely as night follows day. With the rise in the
cost of producing food, the cost of food itself will rise. Commerce in
general will necessarily be affected by the difficulties of the primary
industries upon which it depends. In a word, when the forests fail, the
daily life of the average citizen will inevitably feel the pinch on
every side. And the forests have already begun to fail, as the direct
result of the suicidal policy of forest destruction which the people of
the United States have allowed themselves to pursue.

It is true that about twenty per cent, of the less valuable timber land
in the United States remains in the possession of the people in the
National Forests, and that it is being cared for and conserved to supply
the needs of the present and to mitigate the suffering of the near
future. But it needs no argument to prove that this comparatively small
area will be insufficient to meet the demand which is now exhausting an
area four times as great, or to prevent the suffering I have described.
Measures of greater vigor are imperatively required.

The conception that water is, on the whole, the most important natural
resource has gained firm hold in the irrigated West, and is making rapid
progress in the humid East. Water, not land, is the primary value in the
Western country, and its conservation and use to irrigate land is the
first condition of prosperity. The use of our streams for irrigation and
for domestic and manufacturing uses is comparatively well developed.
Their use for power is less developed, while their use for
transportation has only begun. The conservation of the inland waterways
of the United States for these great purposes constitutes, perhaps, the
largest single task which now confronts the Nation. The maintenance and
increase of agriculture, the supply of clear water for domestic and
manufacturing uses, the development of electrical power, transportation,
and lighting, and the creation of a system of inland transportation by
water whereby to regulate freight-rates by rail and to move the bulkier
commo