istration circles, but they have exercised influence in Congress, especially in the Senate. They are not pursuing the same policy that caused such a scandal five years ago. Failing in their attempts to obtain possession of what is left of the public domain on their own terms, they content themselves with preventing any development at all. So far as developing our water-power sites, our oil, gas, and other mineral lands is concerned, the situation is precisely the same as when Mr. Wilson took control.

Mr. Roosevelt "withdrew" millions of acres, containing resources whose development would affect the comfort and wellbeing of millions of Americans, especially in the Mountain and Pacific states. These properties are still "withdrawn." Probably most people have read or listened to long discourses, the burden of which was that the "conservationists" were deliber

ately "locking up" these treasures. But this is not the truth. For several years these same conservationists have been working day and night to open up the public domain. Some large corporations have steadily resisted these attempts. Mr. Lane, in report after report, has called upon Congress for action: he has made frequent appearances before Congressional committees in the interest of immediate legislation. But so far nothing has been done. The explanation lies upon the surface. Mr. Lane's programme, while offering abundant returns to capital, would protect consumers from extortion. Unhappily, the corporations mainly interested in our water-powers and mineral beds have resisted all terms except unrestricted monopoly, with all its attendant profit to themselves. These two conceptions of conservation have been deadlocked now for several years. As already said, only

our absorption in other matters has prevented this from becoming one of the most active questions of the day.

Last year Congress passed the Ferris bills which provided for the utilization of the now withdrawn water-power sites and mineral lands. The measures were excellent. ones, representing the ideas of Secretary Lane, the National Conservation Association, and all forces interested in the honest use of Uncle Sam's rich acreage. The Senate defeated these bills. In early January of this year the House passed these same measures again. Will the Senate succeed in crushing them once more? Are these possessions-practically, the last parts of the public domain still in our hands-to be transferred as a free and unrestricted gift to monopolists, or are the public rights to be protected? It is, it will be observed, the old familiar conservation problem once more; and it has now reached a really acute stage.

The question affects all our 100 million Americans, but especially those living in the Far West. The Atlantic region, also, has a great wealth in water-power; but its undeveloped resources do not compare with those of the Far West. The scientists estimate that, of all the millions of horsepower lying unutilized, at least 72 per cent. is located in these Pacific and Mountain states. Three of them, Washington, Oregon, and California, contain nearly one half of all the water-power sites in the whole country. The great basin of the Mississippi Valley has comparatively few water-powers, and this section, as well as the Atlantic Coast, will probably have to depend indefinitely upon coal as its greatest source of power. But, in the Mountain and Pacific States, water will probably become the staff of their economic life.

Up to thirty years ago, the leisurely turning mill-wheel represented the agelong utilization of water-power. This mill-wheel dates back to before the Roman era; its use for other than grinding purposes, however, represents its modern advance. The development of electricity opened up new possibilities, for water, as well as coal, can turn the turbines that generate the electric current. In the last twenty-five years we have developed about

6,000,000 horse-power in this way. It is utilized chiefly for driving street cars and lighting purposes. But in the Far West other uses are already being found. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway is now equipping 450 miles of its linethe section between Harlowton, Mont., and Avery, Idaho with hydro-electric power. At present the road is spending $1,750,000 a year for coal on this linecoal which it has painfully to mine and then transport a long distance to its locomotives; the cost of power, under the new scheme, will be only $500,000. This experiment, it is believed, marks only a beginning; in ten years, according to the prophets, practically all the railroads in the Mountain and Pacific states will operate with hydro-electric power. To do this will take not much more than 10 per cent. of all the already known horse-power.

THE VAST RESOURCES OF THE WEST

After running all their long-distance railroads, the Western states will have plenty of water-power left for other purposes. It will operate their street railways, light their streets, heat their houses, and find numerous uses in the ordinary details of domestic life. Already, in some communities, electricity does the family cooking, operates vacuum cleaners, turns. the churn, and generally simplifies existence on the farm. But it can accomplish even greater things. The East and South have done most in developing hydroelectric power for manufacturing, but the West has the greatest possibilities. Nature has concentrated great reservoirs in these Mountain and Western states. Here are not only our greatest water-power sites, but our greatest forests; about one third of the hydro-electric powers, indeed, are located in the forest reserves. Wood and water-power are the two essentials for the manufacture of pulp and paper; possessing both these ingredients in large quantities, these states promise to become the great American headquarters of this industry. Norway and Sweden, by combining their forests and their water-powers, have developed a great paper business and annually ship large quantities into the United States. But their resources

are not great when compared with those of our Western country.

More important still, the Western water-powers will perform a great service in adding enormously to the habitable Western country. The Interior Department, through its Reclamation Service, is already transforming millions of acres into successful farms. But there are at least 10 million arid acres that seem inevitably destined to remain arid. Water courses cross these areas, it is true; there are also many streams that flow silently and invisibly underground-those fascinating subterranean rivers and brooks that exist just as regularly and as palpably as those that freshen the surface. But these desert lands seem forever cut off from this water for one sufficient reason: they are so elevated that the water cannot reach them. Given this one simple ingredient of life, these lands will support a population of 2 million people and raise all the fruits and vegetables that now grow abundantly in the lowlands. The engineers have easily solved the problem of lifting the water that will irrigate these fields. Hydroelectric power, operating pumps, will make these rivers run up hill as well as bring the subterranean water courses to the surface. In this way water, merely by using its own power, apparently accomplishes the impossible it literally lifts itself by its own bootstraps. A stream in the lowlands, that is, itself develops the hydroelectric power. Then this same power raises the water in this identical stream into the desert lands above.

WATER-POWER AND NATIONAL DEFENSE

These Western power sites will not only feed, warm, and even clothe millions of Westerners; they will help defend the whole nation from invasion. They are really a great national safeguard against any possible foreign foe. The enterprising German or Japanese, plotting against the Monroe Doctrine, or seeking vengeance for wounded national pride, would find perhaps his main obstruction in the thousands of swiftly running streams and the beautiful waterfalls of the great Far West.

This relation is not remote and fantastic; it is immediate and real. In

deed, had Germany not developed her water-powers, and thereby obtained nitrogen from which to make explosives, the war would probably have ended months ago and ended in Germany's defeat. England, which has few water-powers of her own, is going, in self-protection, to Iceland, just as she goes to the four quarters of the world for her food and raw materials of manufacture. Explosives are indispensable to modern warfare; and nitrogen is a foremost ingredient in the manufacture of explosives.

For many years the world has depended upon one source of supply for nitrogen. Some haphazard convulsion of Nature, eons ago, fixed large quantities of this gas in the soda beds in the rainless districts of Chile. The whole world has been drawing for many years upon these deposits in the most lavish fashion-at such a tremendous rate, indeed, that the end of the Chilean resources is now in sight. The authorities place 1923 as the date when Chile will export her last nitrates. We import annually nearly 700,000 tons, paying an export duty of $12,000,000 to the Chilean Government for the privilege. We use these nitrates both for fertilizers and in the manufacture of explosives. That is, we are largely dependent, in time of war, upon a country that is thousands of miles away.

But Nature has furnished us an inexhaustible supply of nitrogen. We eat it, we breathe it-it makes up a considerable part of our bodies. We do not have to go to Chile for this necessity of life; it exists, on an enormous scale, in the atmosphere. Every square mile above the earth contains 20 million tons, of which plant and animal life consume only about 10 per cent. in the normal physical processesthe rest, so far as life is concerned, goes to waste. If we could put out our hands and seize sufficient quantities of this tasteless, odorless, invisible, gaseous substance. the exhaustion of the nitrate beds in Chile would cause us no loss of sleep. We have heard much in recent months of this great German miracle of taking nitrogen from the air. The feat has been so widely advertised that we have come to regard it as something new-as another feather in

the cap of German efficiency. In fact this "miracle" is nothing novel. Other countries have been doing it for years: an American chemist, at Niagara, was one of the first, if not the very first, to develop a process. Norway and Sweden have for several years been obtaining atmospheric nitrogen on a large scale. Their great advantage has been their large supply of water-power-for great power is needed successfully to fix nitrogen in lime. France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Japan, Austria, and Germany were obtaining nitrogen in this way long before the war began. Our own country has made no such provision for the future. But, in this great Western region, we have probably greater resources than any other country. Southern cotton planters still get fertilizers from the nitrate beds of Chile when they can produce them right at their own doors. And so our agriculture, as well as national defense, waits on the development of our vast water-resources.

A MONOPOLY IN WATER-POWER

I think that I have made sufficiently plain the fact that these resources affect intimately the welfare of the citizen and the safety of the Nation. That they should not lay idle is plain; that they should be developed in the way that makes them useful to the great majority rather than immensely profitable to the few is also evident. Unfortunately, monopoly has already laid its heavy hand upon these water-powers. The people little understand how far it has already progressed. The Water-power Trust is no figment of the yellow journalist; it is a sober reality. The latest report of the Agricultural Department discloses that the United States possesses certainly 27,000,000 horse-power of undeveloped water-power and possibly as much as 53,000,000 horse-power. Most people labor under the impression that we have enough to supply power for practically all our needs. Apparently that is not so. Unless new sources are discovered and new methods of transmission developed the larger part of the United States will have to depend upon other sources than water for electric energy. Before the Far West can supply the Central and

Atlantic states, we shall have to discover some method of sending the electric current more than 300 or 400 miles from the source. West of the Rocky Mountains, however, the use of coal will probably disappear. Large business interests have apparently grasped this fact, for they are rapidly accumulating all the water-powers in sight. Up to 1912 public service corporations owned about 50 per cent. of installations in California, Washington, and Oregon. Now they control about 90 per cent. Mr. Scott Ferris, chairman of the House Public Lands Committee, recently said that eighteen corporations owned 51 per cent. of all the water-power developments in the United States, and that nine control one third. Moreover, these dominant corporations were SO "interlocked" that there was every evidence of one dominating monopoly. "It is as near frenzied finance as can be described," he said.

These corporations are heavily capitalized; their stock is liberally "watered." Nearly all have obtained water-power sites practically as a free gift and have then based upon these franchises large issues of stocks and bonds. The California Public Utilities Commission, in an attempt to fix reasonable rates, recently called upon the Northern Power Company for a statement of its assets. These assets included $9,000,000 as the value of a waterpower site which had cost the corporation practically nothing.

This is the kind of exploitation that Secretary Lane is attempting to stop. This fictitious capitalization means, naturally, that the people using street railways and lighting systems have to pay dividends dividends upon paper securities. The forces of monopoly, however, are working hard to assemble the remaining sites. They are raising cries of "locking up," "stagnant water-power policy," and asserting that the people are suffering because these resources are wasted. The fact is that water-power development is not stagnant. We have made more progress in the last three years than in any other time in our history. The West has more water-power now than it can use. "The real demand," says the latest report of

the Agricultural Department, "is for more markets rather than for more power." The use of water for irrigating projects, manufacturing, and nitrogen will play a great part in our national development; but the present trouble is not too little power, but too little inclination to use that which we have.

The monopolists, however, have their eyes upon the future. The propaganda takes the form of states' rights. Practically all the undeveloped powers are located on the public domain. The Federal Government owns the sites, though a recent court decision has settled that the states own the water. The demand now is that the Federal Government surrender these sites, as well as the rest of the public domain, to the several states. Such a step would end all attempts to conserve our resources, for they would rapidly find their way into the hands of monopolists. The most active advocate of this policy in the House is Congressman Mondell, of Wyoming. His proposed amendment to the Ferris bill sufficiently indicates the central idea that inspires this agitation. It proposes that water-power sites should be sold, in fee simple, for not less than $1.20 an acre and not more than $20. In other words, Mr. Mondell wishes to return to the old days when water-powers were disposed of under the general homestead law. The Ferris bill, supported by Mr. Lane, ex-Secretary Fisher, Mr. Gifford Pinchot, and the National Conservation Association, and, presumably, by President Wilson, provides that water-power sites shall be leased for fifty-year periods. The money derived from rentals is to go into the reclamation fund-the money that builds the great engineering works which are reclaiming arid lands. After the fifty-year period expires, the Government has the option of renewing or discontinuing this lease. The purpose back of this provision is merely to give it control; if the lessee has used his privilege wisely and honestly, he will probably get a renewal if not, we can give the right to some one else. In any event he will lose nothing as, in case the lease is cancelled after fifty years, the Government will purchase his improvements at a market

valuation and any additional land he has acquired at cost. Manifestly it would be criminal folly, at this stage of proceedings, to give these water-powers away. At present we only faintly understand their value; in fifty years they may have infinite uses of which we know nothing.

THE NEED OF THE PRESENT PROGRAMME

The present conservation programme applies the same leasing, or royalty, principle to all the remaining national resources -the phosphate beds, the coal lands, oil, gas, sodium, and other minerals. The same reason exists for royalties in these cases as in water-powers. The same opposition is made to the policy, by the same people and for the same reasons. Again the Western Senators lift up the standard of "states' rights." But the Administration is wisely determined to conserve these ! national possessions for popular use on the most favorable terms. Indeed, there is greater need of protection from monopoly in these resources than in water-powers. Water-power has one great advantage over coal, oil, and other minerals. The word "waste" in connection with water is hardly applicable, for water is a steady resource it will run millions of years in the future as it has for millions of years in the past. Only such changes in the earth as would make the earth itself uninhabitable to man will ever deprive us of hydro-electric power. But we can easily use up our coal and our oil; once consumed, we can never use them again. Compared with the rest of the world, we have large supplies of these national products. But the supplies are still limited. We have enough bituminous coal and lignite to last perhaps for hundreds of years; but anthracite, unless new beds are discovered, will last for only seventy-five years. Unless we find new oil wells, the quantity in sight, at the present rate of consumption, will last less than twenty-five years.

Clearly these facts force home the need of real conservation. Unregulated exploitation has already wasted enormous quantities of coal, oil, gas, and other necessaries of life The bills recently passed by the House offer better assurance for the future.