emerge from this forest onto the great prairies of the West. Timber was so abundant as scarcely to be considered an economic good. Certainly the settlers had little occasion to economize it. The best of it they used rather lavishly; the rest they destroyed in order that they might use the land for things which they needed more than they needed timber. Along the northern tier of states the great forest extended as far west as Minnesota. In the middle strip the prairies began in parts of northern Indiana. Farther south the forest followed the Ohio valley to the Mississippi, and extended beyond through central and southern Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana into portions of eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Other forests were found in the high mountains of the West, but the finest of all were found in the region of Puget Sound in our extreme Northwest. After the first onslaught of the settlers, who were bent on getting rid of the timber in order to clear the land for cultivation, lumbering became a regular business in every part of our forested area. Its greatest development was in lands which were not the most valuable for agricultural purposes. Along our northern border, where the climate was somewhat severe, and where the soil was rather light and sandy, the timber was not destroyed in order to clear the land, because better lands were available farther south. When the timber of this northern strip came to have a commercial value, it became the scene of lumbering on a large scale. Large companies were formed, thousands of men were employed, and great fortunes were made. Lumbering in this region, particularly along the Great Lakes and the upper tributaries of the Mississippi River, that is, in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where water transportation was cheap, developed rapidly during the latter half of the nineteenth century and then declined rapidly. A similar development took place in the southern states. Here the greatest activity was along the southern coast, just outside of the cotton belt; that is, on land which was not cleared primarily for the purpose of growing cotton, but where the timber was left standing until it had acquired a commercial value through the increased demand and the improvement of transportation facilities. The most valuable timber tree of this belt was the yellow pine, as the white pine had been of the northern belt. Lumbering, however, has by no means been confined to these two belts. Much timber of various kinds and qualities is cut every year in every state in the Union, though naturally it is less in the prairie states than in the states which were originally forested. In the older states some of the timber lands have been cut over several times since the first settlement and will doubtless yield many harvests in the future. But the greater part of our original virgin forest has been destroyed. Such cut-over lands as are not suitable for other purposes, or not needed immediately for agriculture, will undoubtedly be allowed to reforest themselves or be reforested by scientific methods, but it is safe to say that the days of cheap and abundant timber in this country are past. From this time forward careful conservation will be necessary in order to safeguard an adequate supply. The magnitude of the lumber industry of the United States for the years 1899-1913 is shown by the following table: 1 NUMBER OF ACTIVE MILLS REPORTING AND QUANTITY OF LUMBER, 1899-1913 1 Bulletin No. 232, United States Department of Agriculture. Washington, 1915. 2 In 1913 the number of active mills included only those cutting lumber, while the figures for the other years include mills cutting laths and shingles as well as lumber. In addition, much timber is cut for local use on farms, both for firewood and for mechanical purposes. Mining. The greatest of all our extractive industries is mining. Within the boundaries of the United States is found a wealth and variety of minerals such as no other country is known to possess, though no one knows what new discoveries may yet be made in this and other lands. Notable among our mineral products are the following. The values given are for the year 1915. Silver, lead, zinc, aluminum, cement, building stone, lime, and salt are also valuable products, besides many others of less value. Our total mineral production for the year 1915 aggregated more than two and a third billions of dollars. Since minerals are not reproduced or replaced when once extracted from the earth, it is only a question of time before all of our rich deposits will be exhausted. In some cases the deposits are so enormous as to remove the time of their exhaustion so far into the future that it is difficult for us to realize that it is coming. Authorities agree that our coal deposits will last for many hundreds of years, some say many thousands of years. A thousand years seems a long time to an individual, but it is not so very long in the life of a nation. If, however, we have enough coal to last, let us say, for only a thousand years, it is a difficult question to decide to what extent that should give us concern for the future welfare of our country. It is easy to laugh and say that it need not concern us, for we shall not be here to suffer inconvenience. It is also easy to become too much alarmed; with the progress of invention we may find other sources of heat and power before our coal is gone. Probably our best policy is merely to avoid unreasonable waste or destruction of mineral resources, and then leave future generations to work out their own problems. Wisdom will not die with us of the present generation. Instability of the extractive industries. All our extractive industries have not only added greatly to our material wealth; they have likewise given rise to picturesque but somewhat unstable phases of our social life. The early hunters and trappers were a hardy, adventurous race, whose deeds and prowess have become a part of our national history. Our herdsmen likewise, especially those who developed the cattle business on the Great Plains, supplied an element of romance and adventure which still appeals to the imagination of our people. Our hardy fishermen and whalers have given splendid examples of the courage and strenuosity which can wrest a living from the unconquerable ocean. Our lumber camps and our mining camps have attracted adventurous and unstable characters from the ends of the earth, and furnished much excellent material for the story-writers. But instability is a characteristic of these industries, and consequently of the life which grew up around them. Stability can only be supplied to our national life by industries which are themselves self-perpetuating. The genetic industries must supply that need. CHAPTER XVII THE GENETIC INDUSTRIES What are the genetic industries? By the genetic industries are meant those in which men make conscious and systematic efforts to direct the biological processes of reproduction so as to increase the supply of desirable plants and animals. The greatest of these is agriculture, which includes both the cultivation of plants and the breeding of animals. Forestry and fish culture are also included under the head of genetic industries. Agriculture, however, is sometimes carried on in such a slipshod manner as scarcely to deserve to be classed as a genetic industry. When farmers make no effort to preserve the fertility of their soil, but exhaust it by wasteful methods of tillage and by reckless overcropping, and then move on to new and unexhausted areas, their business is sometimes called mining the soil. A genuinely genetic type of agriculture can endure and even improve for indefinite periods of time on the same soil; that is, it not only preserves but improves the fertility of the soil, generation after generation, for hundreds and thousands of years. It thus makes possible a stable, an enduring, and an expanding civilization such as could not be supported exclusively by any of the extractive industries. Demand of all outdoor industries for space. All of those industries which appropriate or increase the products of the soil, such as hunting, grazing, lumbering, forestry, and farming, have one characteristic in common. They all require a great deal of space as compared with mining and the secondary industries, such as manufacturing and merchandizing. So great is this demand for space on the part of those industries which gather in or develop the products of the soil, that those |