of the generations to follow.

The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the
natural resources now existing on this continent for the benefit of the
people who live here now. There may be just as much waste in neglecting
the development and use of certain natural resources as there is in
their destruction. We have a limited supply of coal, and only a limited
supply. Whether it is to last for a hundred or a hundred and fifty or a
thousand years, the coal is limited in amount, unless through geological
changes which we shall not live to see, there will never be any more of
it than there is now. But coal is in a sense the vital essence of our
civilization. If it can be preserved, if the life of the mines can be
extended, if by preventing waste there can be more coal left in this
country after we of this generation have made every needed use of this
source of power, then we shall have deserved well of our descendants.

Conservation stands emphatically for the development and use of
water-power now, without delay. It stands for the immediate construction
of navigable waterways under a broad and comprehensive plan as
assistants to the railroads. More coal and more iron are required to
move a ton of freight by rail than by water, three to one. In every case
and in every direction the conservation movement has development for its
first principle, and at the very beginning of its work. The development
of our natural resources and the fullest use of them for the present
generation is the first duty of this generation. So much for
development.

In the second place conservation stands for the prevention of waste.
There has come gradually in this country an understanding that waste is
not a good thing and that the attack on waste is an industrial
necessity. I recall very well indeed how, in the early days of forest
fires, they were considered simply and solely as acts of God, against
which any opposition was hopeless and any attempt to control them not
merely hopeless but childish. It was assumed that they came in the
natural order of things, as inevitably as the seasons or the rising and
setting of the sun. To-day we understand that forest fires are wholly
within the control of men. So we are coming in like manner to understand
that the prevention of waste in all other directions is a simple matter
of good business. The first duty of the human race is to control the
earth it lives upon.

We are in a positi