The first duty of the human race is to control the
earth it lives upon.
We are in a position more and more completely to say how far the waste
and destruction of natural resources are to be allowed to go on and
where they are to stop. It is curious that the effort to stop waste,
like the effort to stop forest fires, has often been considered as a
matter controlled wholly by economic law. I think there could be no
greater mistake. Forest fires were allowed to burn long after the people
had means to stop them. The idea that men were helpless in the face of
them held long after the time had passed when the means of control were
fully within our reach. It was the old story that "as a man thinketh, so
is he"; we came to see that we could stop forest fires, and we found
that the means had long been at hand. When at length we came to see that
the control of logging in certain directions was profitable, we found it
had long been possible. In all these matters of waste of natural
resources, the education of the people to understand that they can stop
the leakage comes before the actual stopping and after the means of
stopping it have long been ready at our hands.
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