Similar waste in the case of other minerals is less
serious only because they are less indispensable to our civilization
than coal and iron. Mention should be made of the annual loss of
millions of dollars worth of by-products from coke, blast, and other
furnaces now thrown into the air, often not merely without benefit but
to the serious injury of the community. In other countries these
by-products are saved and used.
We are in the habit of speaking of the solid earth and the eternal hills
as though they, at least, were free from the vicissitudes of time and
certain to furnish perpetual support for prosperous human life. This
conclusion is as false as the term "inexhaustible" applied to other
natural resources. The waste of soil is among the most dangerous of all
wastes now in progress in the United States. In 1896, Professor Shaler,
than whom no one has spoken with greater authority on this subject,
estimated that in the upland regions of the states south of Pennsylvania
three thousand square miles of soil had been destroyed as the result of
forest denudation, and that destruction was then proceeding at the rate
of one hundred square miles of fertile soil per year.
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