Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/172

 168 permanent gain to the assets of the state, Chippendale sofas are. The accumulation within the state of art treasures, that is to say of fine work in fitting material is, therefore, a means of increasing the wealth of the state. And schools and professional feeling which shall help the workman to become the artisan, to put individuality into his work and feel a pride in it, and money spent in the production and education of men who serve mankind and whose footsteps will be gazed upon with reverence by coming generations are directly helping the prosperity of the commonwealth. In so far then as work of artistic value is expended upon material which is retained in the state, there is a definite increase in the wealth of the state.

As a second class we have the resources of which there is a continuous and transitory supply, in contrast to those of which there is a stock, in the using of which we are drawing on an original supply or the accumulation of generations. The farmer's windmill in using wind power is using a resource of the former class, while the use of coal is drawing on a reserve.

Farm products so far as they are due to air, water, sunshine and hard work, the minting of golden sunshine into golden grain, are a development of resources continuously supplied, but there is also a little ash or mineral matter which, if not replaced by manure or fertilizer, is a draft upon the capital of the commonwealth.

Most important perhaps of these resources is water power, which is indeed largely used, but of which there are millions of horse power yet unused. Any permanent substantial dams which may help us to utilize this will be a permanent gain to the resources of the state.

Third, are the resources which are wasting away in the use. As we gaze on a piece of soft coal across the cleavage, we shall see dozens of alternating bright and dull bands in an inch. Each of these may represent an annual or semi-annual change of climate, and a ton of coal may represent thirty tons of wood. Thus in using coal we are dissipating in a few years the accumulations of generations heaped up millions of years ago.

Now of these reserve accumulations, and I can not emphasize the fact too strongly, there is never an inexhaustible supply. People a scant half century ago used to talk of the inexhaustible supplies of pine in the Saginaw. There is now hardly a stick standing. Men prate of inexhaustible mines. There are no inexhaustible mines. The bottom of perhaps the greatest mine in the world, the Calumet and Hecla, on its conglomerate is much too visible. The Spindletop bubble has already burst, and its wealth has practically vanished, wasting what should have been the industry of a generation in a scant decade. The towns that had natural gas no longer burn it in flambeaux that burn millions of cubic feet a day, but charge twenty cents a thousand for it. Of course sometimes the supplies are in a way practically inexhaustible.