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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.

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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

who engage in them must of necessity spread themselves over wide areas in proportion to their population. They are compelled by the nature of their industries to live in scattered homes or in small villages located far apart. They are therefore called "rural," that is, "field," or "open space," industries, and those who engage in them are called "rural,” “field,” and "open space" people. Living so far apart, with plenty of room, in close contact with nature but in little contact with other men because of the distances between them, produces a profound reaction upon their lives and characters. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that those who engage in the indoor industries are so cramped for space, and have so few contacts with nature and so many contacts with one another, that a profound and artificial change is produced in their lives. By the indoor industries are meant all those which, in contrast to the field industries, require so little space that they can be walled in and roofed over. It is sometimes difficult for indoor and outdoor people to understand one another.

We have seen in the last chapter that the utilization of the soil, not only on our own frontier but also in the development of civilized life among our remote ancestors, passed through several distinct stages, such as the hunting stage, the grazing stage, and the agricultural stage. These are progressive stages in the economizing of space. It takes a great deal more territory to support a given population by hunting than by grazing, and by grazing than by agriculture. When game grew scarce, or when population increased, those who had the wisdom to make the change were forced into grazing, and again into tillage, in order to increase their means of subsistence. What an uneconomical use of land hunting was may be inferred from the fact that there were never, according to the best authorities, more than one million Indians within the boundaries of the present United States. This territory now supports approximately a hundred times that number of people, and supports them more comfortably than the Indians were supported.

Each Indian tribe was forced to guard its hunting grounds, lest they be invaded by hunters from other tribes and the source of its subsistence cut off.

Tillage. Tillage consists essentially of three processes: first, preparing a good seed bed, in which plants can grow more vigorously than in natural, or unprepared, soil; second, planting in this prepared seed bed the seeds of such plants as are deemed most useful or desirable; and, third, destroying all other plants, commonly called weeds, which may start to grow in the seed bed in competition with the plants whose seeds were planted.

Scientific agriculture. While tillage consists essentially of these three processes, scientific agriculture includes many things besides. We need to be on our guard, however, against a pedantic use of the word scientific as applied to agriculture. Scientific agriculture is nothing more nor less than the most economical and effective use of all the factors of agricultural production. Specifically it consists mainly, though not exclusively, in economizing, first, the plant food in the soil; second, space; third, labor; and, fourth, capital or equipment. Economizing plant food means getting as large a product as possible without depleting the supply of plant food. Economizing space means getting as large a product as possible from a given area ; that is, as large a product per acre as possible. Economizing labor means getting as large a product per unit of labor, or per man, as possible. Economizing capital or equipment means getting as large a product per unit of capital or equipment as possible.

Excessive economy of any one of these factors always involves a certain amount of waste with respect to some of the others. For example, it is quite possible to economize space to such an extent as to exhaust plant food, and vice versa. That is to say, a farmer may try for a period of years to get so much from each acre as eventually to deplete the fertility of his soil. By a judicious rotation of crops, and the keeping of live stock, he may preserve the fertility of his soil for indefinite periods of

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