The way we have been handling them is not good business.
Purely on the side of dollars and cents, it is not good business to kill
the goose that lays the golden egg, to burn up half our forests, to
waste our coal, and to remove from under the feet of those who are
coming after us the opportunity for equal happiness with ourselves. The
thing we ought to leave to them is not merely an opportunity for equal
happiness and equal prosperity, but for a vastly increased fund of
both.
Conservation is not merely a question of business, but a question of a
vastly higher duty. In dealing with our natural resources we have come
to a place at last where every consideration of patriotism, every
consideration of love of country, of gratitude for things that the land
and the institutions of this Nation have given us, call upon us for a
return. If we owe anything to the United States, if this country has
been good to us, if it has given us our prosperity, our education, and
our chance of happiness, then there is a duty resting upon us. That duty
is to see, so far as in us lies, that those who are coming after us
shall have the same opportunity for happiness we have had ourselves.
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