We have taken note of the great natural wastes: how two-thirds of the wood cut is wasted, and how insects and fire destroy the standing timber; how the soil is washed down into the valleys, taking the best from the farms; how we are steadily robbing the soil of its most necessary elements; how our waters are unused and we pay for this non-use by the use of other resources that we can ill afford to spare; how millions of acres of land which might be profitably farmed lie useless for lack of water and other millions are useless because they are covered with water. Consumers pay high freight rates and the railroads are so overcrowded that they are unable to care for all the business, while the rivers, the cheapest of all carriers, flow idly to the sea.
We have seen how one-fourth of the coal is left in the mines, and how small a part of that which is mined is actually turned into heat, how gas is allowed to escape unchecked into the air. And greatest and most serious of all, the useless waste of human life and health.
But there are scores of other wastes and extravagances that all growing boys and girls should think of, so that when they enter active life, they may do their part to prevent them.
It is going to be necessary to learn to economize in every department of life as all the European peoples do. We must learn, in this new country, to do things more with the idea of the future in mind. In all European cities, there are hundreds of houses that have lasted many centuries, but there are few houses in America that are built in an enduring way. This building up and tearing down taxes not one, but many, resources heavily. As the housewife learns that a good kettle that costs a dollar and lasts five years is cheaper than a poor one which costs fifty cents but will wear out in one year, so people must learn the lesson that in building poor light houses of wood which will last a comparatively short time, they are really paying the higher price; that in putting in poor roads, 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