Congress must decide also whether immensely valuable rights to the use
of water power shall be given away to special interests in perpetuity
and without compensation instead of being held and controlled by the
public. In most cases actual development of water power can best be done
by private interests acting under public control, but it is neither
good sense nor good morals to let these valuable privileges pass from
the public ownership for nothing and forever. Other conservation matters
doubtless require action, but these two, the conservation of water power
and of coal, the chief sources of power of the present and the future,
are clearly the most pressing.
It is of the first importance to prevent our water powers from passing
into private ownership as they have been doing, because the greatest
source of power we know is falling water. Furthermore, it is the only
great unfailing source of power. Our coal, the experts say, is likely to
be exhausted during the next century, our natural gas and oil in this.
Our rivers, if the forests on the watersheds are properly handled, will
never cease to deliver power. Under our form of civilization, if a few
men ever succeed in controlling the sources of power, they will
eventually control all industry as well.
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