on more and more completely to say how far the waste
and destruction of natural resources are to be allowed to go on and
where they are to stop. It is curious that the effort to stop waste,
like the effort to stop forest fires, has often been considered as a
matter controlled wholly by economic law. I think there could be no
greater mistake. Forest fires were allowed to burn long after the people
had means to stop them. The idea that men were helpless in the face of
them held long after the time had passed when the means of control were
fully within our reach. It was the old story that "as a man thinketh, so
is he"; we came to see that we could stop forest fires, and we found
that the means had long been at hand. When at length we came to see that
the control of logging in certain directions was profitable, we found it
had long been possible. In all these matters of waste of natural
resources, the education of the people to understand that they can stop
the leakage comes before the actual stopping and after the means of
stopping it have long been ready at our hands.

In addition to the principles of development and preservation of our
resources there is a third principle. It is this: The natural resources
must be developed and preserved for the benefit of the many, and not
merely for the profit of a few. We are coming to understand in this
country that public action for public benefit has a very much wider
field to cover and a much larger part to play than was the case when
there were resources enough for every one, and before certain
constitutional provisions had given so tremendously strong a position to
vested rights and property in general.

A few years ago President Hadley, of Yale, wrote an article which has
not attracted the attention it should. The point of it was that by
reason of the XIVth amendment to the Constitution, property rights in
the United States occupy a stronger position than in any other country
in the civilized world. It becomes then a matter of multiplied
importance, since property rights once granted are so strongly
entrenched, to see that they shall be so granted that the people shall
get their fair share of the benefit which comes from the development of
the resources which belong to us all. The time to do that is now. By so
doing we shall avoid the difficulties and conflicts which will surely
arise if we allow vested rights to accrue outside the possibility of
governmental and popular contr