cognize it, can we reasonably expect
even a fairly good reputation at the hands of our descendants?

Business prudence and business common-sense indicate as strongly as
anything can the absolute necessity of a change in point of view on the
part of the people of the United States regarding their natural
resources. The way we have been handling them is not good business.
Purely on the side of dollars and cents, it is not good business to kill
the goose that lays the golden egg, to burn up half our forests, to
waste our coal, and to remove from under the feet of those who are
coming after us the opportunity for equal happiness with ourselves. The
thing we ought to leave to them is not merely an opportunity for equal
happiness and equal prosperity, but for a vastly increased fund of
both.

Conservation is not merely a question of business, but a question of a
vastly higher duty. In dealing with our natural resources we have come
to a place at last where every consideration of patriotism, every
consideration of love of country, of gratitude for things that the land
and the institutions of this Nation have given us, call upon us for a
return. If we owe anything to the United States, if this country has
been good to us, if it has given us our prosperity, our education, and
our chance of happiness, then there is a duty resting upon us. That duty
is to see, so far as in us lies, that those who are coming after us
shall have the same opportunity for happiness we have had ourselves.
Apart from any business consideration, apart from the question of the
immediate dollar, this problem of the future wealth and happiness and
prosperity of the people of the United States has a right to our
attention. It rises far above all matters of temporary individual
business advantage, and becomes a great question of national
preservation. We all have the unquestionable right to a reasonable use
of natural resources during our lifetime, we all may use, and should
use, the good things that were put here for our use, for in the last
analysis this question of conservation is the question of national
preservation and national efficiency.

CHAPTER VII

THE MORAL ISSUE

The central thing for which Conservation stands is to make this country
the best possible place to live in, both for us and for our descendants.
It stands against the waste of the natural resources which cannot be
renewed, such as coal and iron; it stands for the perpetuati