e helpful than that the women of the United States are taking hold of
the problem. We must make all the people see that now and in the future
the resources are to be developed and employed, yet at the same time
guarded and protected against waste--not for small groups of men who
will control them for their own purposes, but for all the people through
all time.

The question of the conservation of our natural resources is not a
simple question, but it requires, and will increasingly require,
thinking out along lines directed to the fundamental economic basis upon
which this Nation exists. I think it can not be disputed that the
natural resources exist for and belong to the people; and I believe that
the part of the work which falls to the women (and it is no small part)
is to see to it that the children, who will be the men and women of the
future, have their share of these resources uncontrolled by monopoly and
unspoiled by waste.

What specific things can the women of the Nation do for conservation?
The Daughters of the American Revolution have begun admirably in the
appointment of a Conservation Committee, and other organizations of
women are following their example. Few people realize what women have
already done for conservation, and what they may do. Some of the
earliest effective forest work that was done in the United States, work
which laid the lines that have been followed since, was that of the
Pennsylvania Forestry Association, begun and carried through first of
all by ladies in Philadelphia. One of the bravest, most intelligent and
most effective fights for forestry that I have known of was that of the
women of Minnesota for the Minnesota National Forest. It was a superb
success, and we have that forest to-day. I have known of no case of
persistent agitation under discouragement finer in a good many ways than
the fight that the women of California have made to save the great grove
of Calaveras big trees. As a result the Government has taken possession
of that forest and will preserve it for all future generations.

Time and again, then, the women have made it perfectly clear what they
can do in this work. Obviously the first point of attack is the stopping
of waste. Women alone can bring to the school children the idea of the
wickedness of national waste and the value of public saving. The issue
is a moral one; and women are the first teachers of right and wrong. It
is a question of seeing what loyalty to