creasing run-off in the form of freshets and floods,
while innumerable source spring and streams have
disappeared altogether.
How shall we arouse our people to a realization of
their sense of public duty and responsibility sufficient
to overcome this inconsiderate greed and selfish
desire to over-commercialize and thus destroy these
gifts of Nature which we hold in trust for ourselves
and our descendants? The losses of the past have
been largely due to disorderly commercialism and it
still goes on, e.g., the murder and waste of the
millions of little Christmas trees each year which
belong to the future generations and not to us.
When all the gifts of Nature that can be commer-
cialized have been converted into dollars and cents,
this will be a very poor place to live.
"GOD has lent us the earth for our life. It is
a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are
to come after us as to us and we have no right by
anything we do or neglect, to involve them in any
unnecessary penalties, or to deprive them of the
benefit which was in our power to bequeath."
John Ruskin.
This country is rapidly losing its productive, soil.
water, forests and the things they produce and re-
produce as well as other resources and at the same
ti me increasing its population. Life is ever changing.