The loss from fire in the United States is said to equal the value of our total product of gold, silver, copper, and petroleum.

The buildings consumed by fire in 1914, if placed on lots of 65 feet frontage, would line both sides of a street extending from New York to Chicago.  A person journeying along this street of desolation would pass in every thousand feet a ruin from which an injured person was taken.  At every three fourths of a mile in this journey he would encounter the charred remains of a human being who has been burned to death. [Footnote:  “The Fire Tax and Waste of Structural Materials in the United States,” Bulletin 814, U. S. Geological Survey, Department of the Interior.]

THE SERVICE OF GOVERMENT

Protection against loss of property is one of the chief services performed for us by our government.  We have already noted in Chapter xii what a great deal of work both the national and state governments are doing to prevent loss of crops and of livestock from disease, insects, and other causes.  What this may mean to the individual farmer and to the country is suggested by the case of a farmer who had hundreds of acres of corn destroyed in some manner unknown to him.  A single visit from a representative of the Department of Agriculture showed him the cause of the trouble, the corn rootworm, and how it could be eradicated by a simple rotation of crops.  The farmer said that this knowledge would save him $10,000 a year.

LEADERSHIP AND COOPERATION

The state and national governments spend a great deal of money in equipping experimental laboratories and employing scientists to seek out these enemies of the farmer and of the nation, to find methods of destroying them or counteracting their effects, and to advise the farmer how he may protect himself and his neighbors.  While the government provides leadership in these matters, it depends upon the cooperation of the people to get results, as we have seen in so many cases.  A farmer may destroy all the rats, or ground squirrels, or prairie dogs on his place, but the trouble will be repeated unless there is community cooperation.  The same thing is true of animal and plant diseases, insect enemies, and so on.

Investigate and report on: 

Further facts regarding losses to farmers of the United States due to insect and bird enemies, predatory animals, animal and plant diseases.

Similar losses in your own state.

Estimated losses of individual farmers in your locality from any of these causes.

The value of insect-eating birds as property savers.

Campaigns against rabbits and prairie dogs in the West.

Bounties on wolves and other predatory animals in your state.

The work of your state experiment station to prevent loss of property.

NATIONAL COOPERATION FOR FLOOD PREVENTION