The French in the Heart of America Part 22

This is one picture. I put beside it another. Out on the farther edge of the Mississippi Valley one finds the other extreme. Within the past twenty-two years certain tracts of vacant land have been purchased by the government from the Indians (and let me here say that the government has been trying to deal fairly with these people; mistakes have been made, but I should say that the nation had in its recent treatment of them, despite reports I have heard in Paris, pauperized rather than robbed them). These tracts have been opened to settlement--all the rest of the great public domain that was immediately desirable having been occupied, as we have seen. When, in 1889, the first of these tracts, nearly two million acres, was to be opened, twenty thousand people were waiting just outside its borders--some on swift horses, some in wagons or buggies, and some in railroad trains. When the signal was given there was a race across the border and a scramble for farm sites; and on the part of the pa.s.sengers on the trains, for town lots, when the trains had reached the predetermined sites of cities. At the close of the first day the future capital of what has for many years been a State had a population of several thousand inhabitants living in tents, and within a hundred days a population of fifteen thousand people, mostly men, an electric system in operation, a street-railway under contract, streets, alleys, parks, boulevards, stores, and bridges, four thousand houses under construction, five banks, fifteen hotels, fifty grocery stores, six printing-offices, and three daily papers--about as striking and unpleasant a contrast to that peaceful life on the St. Lawrence as one can well imagine. Practically all of the available land (nearly two million acres) was taken during the course of a few days.

At the later opening of another tract one hundred thousand persons took part in the race for the "last of the people's land." And these scenes but ill.u.s.trate the rough races to the gold-fields and the iron mountains and the oil-wells, in eagerness to seize whatever earth had to offer and turn it to immediate wealth--rough, restless precursors, producers, poets eager for to-day, yet coming by and by, as we have seen, to be ready to spend for to-morrow, building schools and universities, enlarging the field of public provision and service, and filling the land, once neighborly, individualistic, with inst.i.tutions of philanthropy.

But the habitant of that farther valley is considerate neither of himself nor of generous nature. He is ready to spend his all, or her all, of to- day for to-day and for to-morrow, and to some extent unselfishly, but not to save it. He lives "angerously" and takes all the risks. His thought of the future is not nepotic or thrifty; it is likely to be altruistic, publicistic. I suppose that the const.i.tution and laws of Oklahoma, whose land was the last to be added to the public domain and its commonwealth among the last to the roll of States, has been more generous-minded toward its children than any other. It set apart not only sections sixteen and thirty-six in every towns.h.i.+p for the public schools; it reserved two more sections in every towns.h.i.+p for kindred uses. But in all this, as I pointed out, it is spending for the future, not saving, h.o.a.rding.

The nepotic conservationist of the St. Lawrence, fixed in his place, saves because if he leaves but an exhausted field behind him he is robbing his children and grandchildren of their rightful, personal heritage. The "boomer" of Oklahoma exploits and spends lavishly because of a sublime confidence in the illimitability of the resources of nature and in the resourcefulness of the coming generations.

But the natural scientists--the foresters, the physiographers, the geologists--have within a very few years been making themselves heard in warning. They have said that "the mountains of France, of Spain, and China have been denuded of their forests in large measure so that the supply of wood is inadequate to meet the needs of the people," [Footnote: C. R. Van Hise, "Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States," p. 3.]

that "in Spain and Italy, though warm countries, the people suffer more from the cold than in America because of insufficient fuel," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 2.] that "one-half of the people of the world go to bed hungry," [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 3.] or at any rate insufficiently nourished for the next day's work. But few listened to them except in the hills and in the valleys of abandoned farms. France, Italy, Spain, China were remote. The optimism fostered of new teeming acres and newly discovered mines was heedless of the warning. It tore down barns and built bigger, and it gave even more generously to the need of the hour and the day.

But the scientists came even nearer home in their studies and statistics.

These are some of the ominous and disturbing facts that are getting to the ears of the people out of their laboratories and experiment stations:

The coal-fields of the United States (which lie almost exclusively in and upon the eastern and western edges of the Mississippi Valley) were, at the rate at which coal was used a few decades ago, practically inexhaustible.

But the per-capita consumption has increased from about a ton in 1870 to 5.6 tons in 1907. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 23.] Up to 1908, 7,240,000,000 [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] tons had been mined, but over ten million tons were wasted in the mining of seven billions. You may recall the prophecy which I quoted earlier, that if the mining and wasting go on at the same rate of increase as in the past few decades the supposed illimitable fields will be exhausted in one hundred and fifty years--that is by the year 2050. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 25.] This is one of the statistics of those watchmen on the walls who, instead of standing in high places with telescopes, sit at microscopes or over tables of figures. That seems a long period of time, one hundred and fifty years, but it was only a little longer ago that a French explorer saw the first signs of coal in that valley along the Illinois, and, as the scientist has intimated, there is no reason why we should not expect a future of thousands of years for the coal that has been thousands or millions of years in the making.

The petroleum and natural-gas fields are also nearly all in that valley or on its edges. (I think it was in the narrow valley of La Belle Riviere, which Pere Bonnecamp found so dark on that Celoron expedition, that this oil of the rocks was first found.) [Footnote: Natural gas and burning springs were early known to the French pioneers and Jesuits who penetrated the Iroquois country, as the following extracts show:

"It was during this interval that, in order to pa.s.s away the time, I went with M. de LaSalle, under the escort of two Indians, about four leagues south of the village where we were staying, to see a very extraordinary spring. Issuing from a moderately high rock, it forms a small brook. The water is very clear but has a bad odor, like that of the mineral marshes of Paris, when the mud on the bottom is stirred with the foot. I applied a torch and the water immediately took fire and burned like brandy, and was not extinguished until it rained. This flame is among the Indians a sign of abundance or sterility according as it exhibits the contrary qualities.

There is no appearance of sulphur, saltpetre or any other combustible material. The water has not even any taste, and I can neither offer nor imagine any better explanation, than that it acquires this combustible property by pa.s.sing over some aluminous land."--Galinee's journal, 1669, in "Marshall Historical Writings," p. 209.

"... The spring in the direction of Sonnontouan is no less wonderful; for its water--being of the same nature as the surrounding soil, which has only to be washed in order to obtain perfectly pure sulphur--ignites when shaken violently, and yields sulphur when boiled. As one approaches nearer to the country of the Cats, one finds heavy and thick water, which ignites like brandy, and boils up in bubbles of flame when fire is applied to it.

It is, moreover, so oily, that all our Savages use it to anoint and grease their heads and their bodies."--"Jesuit Relations, 1657," 43:261.

Pierre Boucher (governor of Three Rivers in 1653-8 and 1662-7) thus mentions the mineral products of Canada, in his "Histoire veritable et naturelle de la Nouvelle France" (Paris, 1664), chap. 1: "Springs of salt water have been discovered, from which excellent salt can be obtained; and there are others, which yield minerals. There is one in the Iroquois Country, which produces a thick liquid, resembling oil, and which is used in place of oil for many purposes."--"Jesuit Relations," 8:289.] If we a.s.sume that the fields have all been discovered and that the present rate of exploitation is to continue, the supply of petroleum will be exhausted by 1935 (twenty-one years), or, if the present production goes on without increase, in ninety years (_i.e.,_ eighty-six years), [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 48] and that of natural gas in twenty-five years (i. e., twenty-one years from 1914). [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 56.]

Iron, the metal which the Indians wors.h.i.+pped as a spirit when they first saw it in the hands of the French, a substance so precious that their name for it meant "all kinds of good," has, too, been taken with feverish haste from its ancient places. Joliet and Marquette saw deposits of this ore near the mouth of the Ohio in 1673, but it was a century and a half before the harvesting of this crop, down among the rocks for millions of years before, began. And now, if no new fields are found and the increased use goes on at the rate of the last three decades, all the available high- grade ore will have become pig iron and steel billets, bridges, battle- s.h.i.+ps, sky-sc.r.a.pers, and locomotives, and all kinds of goods, within the next three decades. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 68.]

The forests of the United States--the forests primeval, with the voice of whose murmuring pines and hemlocks Longfellow begins his sad story of the Acadians--contained approximately one billion acres, [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 210.] a region not conterminous with, but almost as large as, the Mississippi Valley. Of that great, tempering, benign shadow over the continent, tempering its heat, giving shelter from its cold, restraining the waters, there is left about 65 per cent in acreage and not more than one-half the merchantable timber--five hundred million acres gone in a century and a half. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 210.]

And as to the land itself--the land first symbolized in the tuft of earth that St. Lusson lifted toward the sky that day in 1671 at Sault Ste.

Marie, when he took possession of all the land between the seas of the north and west and south--in the first place, the loss each year from erosion is six hundred and ten million cubic yards. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 307, quoted from W. J. Spillman, "Report National Conservation Commission," 3:257-262.] This is, of course, inconsiderable in a short period but in a long period of years means a mighty loss of nouris.h.i.+ng soil. With this loss is that of nitrogen, pota.s.sium, and phosphorus, things of which the farmer had not even heard the names a few years ago.

The yield of farms in the United States during the last forty years does not show a decreased average, but it must be remembered that in this period there have been brought under cultivation new and virgin acres, which have in their bountiful yield kept up the general average. One authority says that, taking the country by regions and by districts and considering what has actually happened, he is led to the conclusion that the fertility of the soil for 50 per cent of our country has been lessened. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 299.]

The significance of these facts lies in the desire of the people to know the truth and seek a remedy.

In a sense the public domain has been exhausted. The pick of the land has been pre-empted, occupied. But if it is to grow with all its crops, and to put forth with all its products such a public spirit as this, France will have given to America a treasure infinitely more valuable than the land itself which her explorers gave to Europe and the world.

The beaver, which the French regarded as the first opulence of the valley, remains only as a synonym for industry, one of the States being called the "Beaver State," perhaps in memory of the beaver days but now in characterization of the beaverlike activity of its people. The hide of the buffalo which La Salle showed in Paris is now almost as great a curiosity in the valley as it was in Paris in 1680. Wild beasts now slink only in the mountains' margins. Domestic animals, natives of distant lands, live about the dwellings of men.

Even the streams of water that bore the French into the valley have dwindled, many of them, or are in despair and tears, between shallows and torrents, longing for the forests, it is said by the scientists--longing for the days of the French, the poet would put it. So are the rivers crying, "In the days of Pere Marquette"--the days of the "River of the Immaculate Conception." And so are the prophets of science crying as the prophets of inspiration cried of old: O valley of a hundred thousand streams, O valley of a million centuries of rock and iron and earth, O valley of a century of man! The riches of the gathering of a million years are spent in a day. Baldness has come upon the mountains, as upon Gaza of old. The trees have gone down to the waters. The iron has flowed like blood from the hills. The fire of the ground is being given to the air.

The sky is filled with smoke. The soil is being carried into the sea; it's precious dust of nitrogen and phosphor blown to the ends of the earth. The fresh lands are no more. There are no mines to be had for the asking. The frontier has become as the centre, the new as the old.

But it is not a hopeless prophecy--an unconstructive, pessimisstic, lamentation. The way of reparation is made clear.

If I were to speak only of what has been done under the inspiration of that prophecy, I should have little that is definitely measurable to present, but in making a catalogue of the averting advice of that prophecy, I am giving intimation of what will in all probability be done.

For the people of that valley are not wittingly going to give their once fertile lands as stones, even to the sons of others who ask for bread, nor their streams as serpents of pestilence to those who ask for fish.

These are some of the items of their constructive conservation programme:

_Coal._--The waste in the mining of coal must be reduced from 50 and 150 per cent of the amount taken out to 25, 15, or 10 per cent by the working of upper beds first, the utilization of slack, etc. [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 26, 27.] The reckless waste of coal in the making of c.o.ke can be prevented by the use of the right sort of oven. It is estimated that there would be a saving of $50,000,000 per annum if such a subst.i.tution were made. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 28. ] The tremendous loss of the power value, [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 29, 30.] from 20 to 33 per cent, and of illuminating value [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 32.] (99 per cent) in coal because of its imperfect consumption can be greatly reduced by the employment of mechanical stokers and other devices. The use of the gas- engine in the place of the steam-engine, [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 31.] the use of power developed from water, and the diffused carbon dioxide in the air tempering the climate are also intimations of forces that may lengthen the life of the coal, 99 per cent of which still remains in the keeping of the valley. It is not too late. [Footnote: See "The Coal Resources of the World," International Geological Congress, 1913.]

_Petroleum._--Its probable life may be lengthened beyond ninety years by its restriction to lubricating and illuminating uses only and by the prevention of its exportation. [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 50-55.]

_Natural Gas._--Its flame is ephemeral at best, but its light may be kept burning a little longer if the prodigious waste is prevented. During 1907 four hundred billion feet were consumed and almost as great an amount wasted through uncontrolled wells, leaky pipes, etc. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 58.]

_Iron (and, in less measure, gold, silver, and other metals)_, whose life does not, as coal and oil and gas, perish with the using, but some of whose value is lost in the transformation from one state of use to another, needs only to be more economically mined and used. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 68.] Non-metallic, inexhaustible materials, as stone, clay, cement, should be employed in their stead when possible. [Footnote: I watched day by day for weeks the erection of a great building in Paris, and I noticed how little iron or steel was used as compared with that in such structures in New York. We shall undoubtedly come to that.] Every sc.r.a.p of iron should be conserved, cry our constructive prophets, even as the Indians treasured it. We may not need it, but succeeding generations will. It may be recast to their use. We are but its trustees. [Footnote: See, "Iron Ore Resources of the World," International Geological Congress, 1910.]

_Forests_[Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 223-262.]--A reduction of the waste in cutting (this is 25 per cent of the total value of the timber cut); of the waste in milling and manufacture, and in turpentining. This last waste is appalling but preventable in full or large measure. The lessening the demand for lumber by a preservative treatment of all merchantable timber.

A utilization of by-products. (Undoubtedly science will be most helpful here.) Precautions against fires and their control. Reforestation.

Maintenance of forests on what are called essential areas, such as high alt.i.tudes and slopes, as tending to prevent floods and erosion. (France here gives most impressive example in planning to bring under conrol about three thousand torrential streams in the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, and Cevennes by means, partly at least, of afforestation, $14,000,000 out of $40,000,000 being provided for this purpose. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 247.]

Italy, because of the greatly increased destruction by the Po, has begun the reforestation of the Apennines to the extent of a million acres.) Battle with insect pests and finally the subst.i.tution of other materials for wood, thus not only saving the trees but diminis.h.i.+ng the losses by fire.

_Land._ [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 307-352.]--The control of water to prevent erosion, deep tillage, and contour ploughing. The restoration of nitrogen and phosphorus by rotation of crops, phosphates, fertilizers, and electricity. The destruction of noxious insects, mammals, and weeds. The reclamation of wet lands. The introduction of new varieties of crops.

_Water._--A fuller use in the place of other sources of power that are exhausted in use. It is believed that of the twenty-six million horse- power now developed by coal fifteen million could be more economically developed by water, thus saving not only $180,000,000 by the subst.i.tution, but 150,000,000 tons of coal for posterity. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 124.]

The leading of this power through longer distances, as from Niagara Falls; its impounding for a more steady supply; [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 125- 133.] the digging of channels of irrigation into arid places; [Footnote: Van Hise, pp. 185-207.] the drainage of wet regions; the fuller utilization of the carrying power of water to relieve the costlier use of wheels. [Footnote: Van Hise, p. 164.] Making the escaping, unsatisfying stream of Sisyphus turn the mills of the G.o.ds.

This is, indeed, as the writing of that ancient prophet of Israel who, in his vision of the restoration of his city and his land and the healing of its waters, saw a man with a radiant face, a line of flax in his hand and a measuring reed. And wherever this man of radiant face measured he caused the waters to run in dry places and deep rivers to course where the waters were but ankle-deep; fish to swarm again in the rivers and the seas to be free of pollution; salt to come in the miry places and trees to grow upon the land with unwithering leaves and abundant meat.

So have these modern prophets with optimistic faces written of their vision, only the fulfilment comes not simply of the constructive measuring of statistics. It takes some trees a hundred years to grow; and dams and reservoirs for the deepening of shallow streams are not made over night as once they were by nature, or as they grew in the vision of Ezekiel.

None the less is the prophecy a long way toward fulfilment when the vision is seen. And that it has been seen is intimated by this sentence, too optimistic no doubt, from a book on the subject by one of the major prophets of conservation, recently published in America. "Conservation,"

he says, "has captured the nation."

It is not the thrifty, nepotic, static conservation of the St. Lawrence habitant, which depends upon the self and family interest of each landholder to keep the fields enriched and to prevent the was.h.i.+ng away of the soil. It is a dynamic and paternalistic conservation--a conservation that thinks of great dams for the restraint of waters and reservoirs for their impounding to the extent of millions or billions of cubic feet, forestation of great stretches of mountain slope, of restrictions and compulsions of other than personal and family interests--a paternalism that looks beyond the next generation or even two generations and to the feeding of other children than one's own lineal descendants--a paternalism that is not exploiting but fiduciary.

It is interesting to observe again how the beginnings of this conservation have been made in the fields where stood the first hospitals for the sick among the living, the first memorials to the dead, the first schools for the children of to-day that are to be the nation of to-morrow. Here also begin to rise the structures of the thought for the day after to-morrow.

The first notable a.s.sembling of men in the interest of conservation, chiefly of men already in public service--the President of the United States, the Vice-President, members of the cabinet, justices of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, the governors of thirty-four States, representatives of the other States, the governors of the Territories, and other public officials, with a number of representatives of societies and a few guests--met in 1908, to discuss questions relative to conservation.

Probably not in the history of the nation has there sat in its borders an a.s.sembly of men so widely representative. This gathering resulted in the appointment of a National Conservation Commission by the President, but Congress made no appropriation for meeting the expense of its labors; and so private enterprise and providence have undertaken the carrying out of the movement.

A great body of men and women scientists, public-spirited citizens from all parts of the nation, under the presidency of Doctor Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, began a campaign of education to the end that ultimately and soon--before the riches have gone--this concern for the far future may become fixed in the law and conscious provision of the people.

I spoke in the last chapter of Hennepin's seeing a savage making sacrifice to the spirit of the Mississippi, supposed to live under the Falls of St.

Anthony. You will recall the description of the great public university beside it that represents the sacrifice of the democracy of to-day for the nation of to-morrow. Instead of the beaver-skin which the poor Indian hung in the branches of a tree near the falls as his offering, the State has hung its gift of forty million dollars for the highest training of its sons and daughters. But there is still, if possible, a n.o.bler aspiration to put against that primitive background and beside the Indian's beaver- skin, for the gift is as yet little more than an aspiration.

A few miles back from these same falls there was held in 1910 a convention of many thousands from all parts of the Union, the President of the United States and his predecessor among them, a.s.sembled under the auspices of the National Conservation Congress to consider, as they avowed, not alone their own affairs, not even the good of their children with theirs, but primarily the welfare of unborn millions as well. It cannot be a.s.sumed that all were looking so far ahead, but the declaration of principles which had called this great a.s.semblage had in it this import--something loftier than any declaration of personal rights. It was a declaration of duty--of duty not to the past, not even to the present, but to the long, long distant future.

"Recognizing the natural resources of the country as the prime basis of property and opportunity, we hold the rights of the people in these resources to be natural and inherent and justly inalienable and indefeasible; and we insist that the resources should and shall be developed, used, and conserved in ways consistent with current welfare and with the perpetuity of our people."

When this or a like sentiment is framed out of the consciousness of a free people into a controlling declaration of public policy, we shall have not merely a n.o.bler offering to put beside the beaver-skin and the university, but a doc.u.ment worthy to be put above our Declaration of Independence even, and an interpretation of the words "the people of the United States"

in our Const.i.tution that will give them an import beyond the highest conception of its authors.

The movement which embodies this sentiment is as yet chiefly a private effort, as I have said, but its influence is beginning to run through the sentiment of the individualism which has so rapidly exploited the riches of the valley and spent with such generous hand for the immediate future.

And the boundaries of public service are already enlarged in making room for the previsions of the "Children of Always," as the mankind now in the thought of conservationists may well be called.

Already millions of acres of coal lands have been withdrawn from private entry, and plans are being made for the leasing of such lands; that is, the people are to keep them for their own.