NATURE’S UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF HER GIFTS

Pure, fresh air is free to all of us, for, like an ocean, it surrounds the whole earth. We need pure water just as much as we do pure air, but it is not always easy to get. A large part of the earth is buried beneath water so salt that we cannot use it. Other parts of the earth are so dry that if we venture into them we may die of thirst. The solid land on which we make our homes is not all of the same value. Thousands of square miles are so rocky or so cold or so dry that they support no living thing. Other thousands of miles of the earth have been so favored by Nature that they are fairly alive with every sort of creature.

We say that a country is rich in natural resources when it has an abundance of those things that men need or can make use of for their pleasure and comfort. A country is poor when it has few of these things.

The first men were poor, although they lived in a rich part of the earth. They did not know how to make use of what lay around them. If civilized men are poor now, it is because they have wasted Nature’s gifts or because they live in a country upon which she has bestowed little.

When we say that the far North where the Eskimos live is a dreary, desolate region, we mean that it lacks most of those things necessary to make men comfortable and happy. When we read of the life of the wandering Arabs in the desert of Arabia, we think of a country to which Nature has not given its share.

When we speak of Spain as poor, we have in mind a country once favored by Nature, but no longer prosperous because its resources have been wasted. Our own land is now rich and prosperous because of the abundance of its natural resources. We should guard these well lest we meet a fate similar to that of the people of Spain.

If we journey over our own land, we shall discover that Nature has been very partial to certain parts, giving them more than they need. Other parts have been left with little. We shall also discover what wonderful things men are doing to make up for the failures of Nature, and to make habitable many of those places which she left uninhabitable.

The forests of the eastern half of the country have been thinned out. West of the Mississippi River there are thousands of square miles of prairies where there are almost no trees. In such places the first settlers had difficulty in getting firewood, and had to build their houses of earth or stone.

Upon the northwest coast there is fog and rain and little sunshine. There the forests grow so dense that it is difficult to travel through them. In the deserts of the Southwest the sun shines out of a cloudless sky almost every day in the year. The ground becomes very dry and the living things found there have strange and curious habits.

In the Central and Eastern states there is much coal; and because of this, millions of people have gathered there to engage in manufacturing. In California coal is scarce and has to be brought from other parts of the earth.

The vast prairies of the Mississippi Valley are covered with fields of waving grain, much of which is shipped to distant regions. In New England much of the soil is rocky and not enough grain is raised there to supply the needs of the population.

The work that people do in different places is determined by the way in which Nature has distributed her resources. The farmers are mostly found in the valleys where the soil is best. Cattle are pastured on those lands not suited to farming. The miners go to the mountains, where they can more easily find the minerals they are after. The lumberman finds his work where the climate favors the growth of forest trees. The manufacturer seeks the waterfalls, where there is power to turn his mills.

Now let us try to discover in how far we can change Nature’s plan and make habitable those places which she left uninhabitable. There are some things which we cannot do. We cannot make the air warmer or colder. We cannot cause rain to fall even though the fields are parched with drought. We cannot stop the rain falling, and we cannot stop the winds blowing.

While we cannot stop the water falling from the clouds, we can drain the lowlands and marshes and so make them fit for the farmer. We can raise great dikes or embankments along the rivers and so shut out the flood waters. The people of Holland have saved thousands of acres from the sea by building dikes and pumping out the water from the inclosed fields.

While we cannot make it rain where not enough rain falls, we can do that which is just as good or better: we can carry water by ditches and pipes to the land that needs it. Much of the soil of the great deserts in the southwestern part of our country is rich in plant food. All that it lacks is water.

The Indian roamed over the rich lands of the great delta of the Colorado River. He often went hungry and thirsty. He did not think of taking the water out of the river in a ditch and allowing it to flow over and wet the rich soil. The white man came and turned the river out of its channel and spread the water over hundreds of square miles of the richest land on the earth. Now, where once you would have died of thirst and hunger, there are green fields and growing crops as far as you can see.

The city of Los Angeles is situated in a dry region where there is not water enough for the needs of a great city. There has now been completed a great aqueduct which brings a river of water through deserts and mountains from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, over two hundred miles away. There is now sufficient water for hundreds of thousands of people.

When it rains too much, many rivers rise and overflow their banks. The farmer’s crops are destroyed, his cattle drowned, and his buildings washed away. We can lessen the danger from these floods, which are very bad in such river basins as those of the Ohio and Mississippi, by building reservoirs in the highlands where the rivers take their start. If when summer comes these rivers are too shallow for safe navigation, the reservoirs can be opened and the streams supplied with this stored water.

The lack of trees upon the prairies was once a serious matter for the settler. We must not think, however, that because Nature placed no trees on the prairies that trees will not grow there. She may not have had handy the seed of the kind suitable for such dry lands. Our government has found in the dry regions of other countries trees that will grow upon our prairies. In their own home these trees had become used to a dry climate like that of our prairies.

Steep canons and cliffs of rock once kept people, living on the opposite sides of mountain ranges, from becoming acquainted with one another. Our ancestors were afraid to venture out on the boundless oceans with their small, frail boats. Because of this the continent that we live on long remained unknown. Those who first found it, the ancestors of the present Indians, came here by accident. Storms probably blew their boats across the North Pacific Ocean, and thus they found a new home. Now railroads enable us to cross the deserts in perfect comfort. Tunnels have been made through the mountains, so that we can go easily from one valley to another. Boats of giant size carry us safely and quickly across the stormy oceans. Nature did not intend us to fly through the air or swim beneath the water, but we are learning so much about her laws that we shall soon be almost as much at home in the air and the sea as the birds and fish are.