s, cheap bridges, badly-constructed public
buildings, that cost less heavily in the first place but that will need
to be renewed in a few years, they are really paying much more than if
these had been substantially built in the beginning.

The fire loss of the United States amounts to over half a million
dollars a day, and all insurance men agree that most of this might be
prevented.

The remedies are to build fewer wooden houses, especially in crowded
districts, to exercise greater care in the building and management of
chimneys, greater care in electric wiring, and general watchfulness in
handling matches and lighted cigars.

For the forest fires which mean so much to all of us the remedy lies in
forest patrol. The amount usually set aside for fighting fires was not
allowed by some states in 1910, and the fires which cost hundreds of
millions of property and many lives were the result.

Much of the most fertile land in our country is used for raising
tobacco, and grains that are made into alcoholic liquors. As these can
never be considered necessities it is well to think to what better uses
the land might be put.

The yearly bill of the United States for pleasure is gigantic, and a
large proportion of the pleasure tends to lower rather than raise the
standard of American life and morals.

The greatest of all wastes is the waste of time and labor. The waste of
time by drunkenness, by poor work that must be done over, and by
idleness, makes a large item of loss in every line of business.

Proper education will teach every child to work neatly and with perfect
accuracy, will teach eye, hand and brain, will teach the value and
pleasure of work, careful management and economy and a regard for the
general good.

A study of the great facts of our national possibilities that have been
gathered together in this book should arouse in the heart of every
American, old and young, the feeling that here is a work for every hand
and every brain, not only to save, but to use wisely; to develop all the
possibilities of our great resources no less than to conserve them. In
searching for new by-products or machinery for checking the waste and
adding to the usefulness of these resources there is a field for
invention that will not only bring wealth to the inventor, but
prosperity and length of life to the nation.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Checking the Waste, by Mary Huston Gregory

*** END OF THIS PROJECT