The question of the conservation of our natural resources is not a simple question, but it requires, and will increasingly require, thinking out along lines directed to the fundamental economic basis upon which this Nation exists.  I think it can not be disputed that the natural resources exist for and belong to the people; and I believe that the part of the work which falls to the women (and it is no small part) is to see to it that the children, who will be the men and women of the future, have their share of these resources uncontrolled by monopoly and unspoiled by waste.

What specific things can the women of the Nation do for conservation?  The Daughters of the American Revolution have begun admirably in the appointment of a Conservation Committee, and other organizations of women are following their example.  Few people realize what women have already done for conservation, and what they may do.  Some of the earliest effective forest work that was done in the United States, work which laid the lines that have been followed since, was that of the Pennsylvania Forestry Association, begun and carried through first of all by ladies in Philadelphia.  One of the bravest, most intelligent and most effective fights for forestry that I have known of was that of the women of Minnesota for the Minnesota National Forest.  It was a superb success, and we have that forest to-day.  I have known of no case of persistent agitation under discouragement finer in a good many ways than the fight that the women of California have made to save the great grove of Calaveras big trees.  As a result the Government has taken possession of that forest and will preserve it for all future generations.

Time and again, then, the women have made it perfectly clear what they can do in this work.  Obviously the first point of attack is the stopping of waste.  Women alone can bring to the school children the idea of the wickedness of national waste and the value of public saving.  The issue is a moral one; and women are the first teachers of right and wrong.  It is a question of seeing what loyalty to the public welfare demands of us, and then of caring enough for the public welfare not to set personal advantage first.  It is a question of inspiring our future citizens while they are boys and girls with the spirit of true patriotism as against the spirit of rank selfishness, the anti-social spirit of the man who declines to take into account any other interest than his own; whose one aim and ideal is personal success.  Women both in public and at home, by letting the men know what they think, and by putting it before the children, can make familiar the idea of conservation, and support it with a convincingness that nobody else can approach.