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Show CONSERVATION OF NATIONAL RESOURCES. Dozens of notable public and private careers in our history have been dedicated to the principle of conservation of national it?sources. Greeley and Grady and Watterson and other great editors thundered anathema at many administrations for neglect of the riches with which nature has endowed the country. .More than one cabinet crisis -resulted from determined attempts to safeguard the nation's mineral and timber supplies. It remained for the National Recovery Act to bring about this fundamental economic reform. In a manner that to one unfamiliar un-familiar with the high purposes of our president, the accomplishment accomplish-ment may have seemed almost incidental. Yet, like child labor and: sweat shops and racketeering- and other obnoxious evils, protection pro-tection of public wealth in the president's mind is a major matter and he gave it immediate concern. As the 300,000 young men in 1,500 forest camps are engaged in scientific preservation of timber on government reserves, so there is now mandatory provisions in the code of fair competition of the lumber industry which definitely lines up the owners of all private forests in the United States behind the fixed policy of foret conservation. Secretary of Agriculture Wallace said of this code provision: "It strikes at the heart of the problem of forest depletion by destructive lumbering." Five millions is being spent in checking soil erosion to provide pro-vide for reforestation. Destruction of forests by fire, plant disease, dis-ease, and insect pests is being fought by the Civilian Conservation Conserva-tion Corps. Under the operation of the codes of the oil and coal industries already there is assurance that there will no longer be waste, so recent y wanton, of those irreparable resources. These seemingly secondary phases of the national recovery program will restore incalculable national wealth and re-create confidence in the efficacy of government. n |