y clear that one hundred, fifty, or even twenty-five
years ago our present industrial conditions and industrial needs were
completely beyond the imagination of the wisest of our predecessors. It
is just as true that we can not imagine or foresee the industrial
conditions and needs of the future. But we do know that our descendants
should be left free to meet their own necessities as they arise. It can
not be right, therefore, for us to grant perpetual rights to the one
great permanent source of power. It is just as wrong as it is foolish,
and just as needless as it is wrong, to mortgage the welfare of our
children in such a way as this. Water powers must and should be
developed mainly by private capital and they must be developed under
conditions which make investment in them profitable and safe. But
neither profit nor safety requires perpetual rights, as many of the best
water-power men now freely acknowledge.

Second, the men to whom the people grant the right to use water-power
should pay for what they get. The water-power sites now in the public
hands are enormously valuable. There is no reason whatever why special
interests should be allowed to use them for profit without making some
direct payment to the people for the valuable rights derived from the
people. This is important not only for the revenue the Nation will get.
It is at least equally important as a recognition that the public
controls its own property and has a right to share in the benefits
arising from its development. There are other ways in which public
control of water power must be exercised, but these two are the most
important.

Water power on non-navigable streams usually results from dropping a
little water a long way. In the mountains water is dropped many hundreds
of feet upon the turbines which move the dynamos that produce the
electric current. Water power on navigable streams is usually produced
by dropping immense volumes of water a short distance, as twenty feet,
fifteen feet, or even less. Every stream is a unit from its source to
its mouth, and the people have the same stake in the control of water
power in one part of it as in another. Under the Constitution, the
United States exercises direct control over navigable streams. It
exercises control over non-navigable and source streams only through its
ownership of the lands through which they pass, as the public domain and
National Forests. It is just as essential for the public welfa