3. Try to find out what sort of man represents you in each chamber. What is his business? How long has he been in the legislature? Does he stand for the things you and your friends admire? Who nominates him?

4. Make a list of the laws passed recently by the legislature which affect you in any way. Ask some older person to help you to do this. Do you think these are good laws?

5. Do the people of your neighborhood think the legislature should make laws on some important matters which have been neglected? What are these matters?

6. If you think a law should be made to prevent the fast driving of automobiles, try to write out such a law, and see if it is easy to do it without doing injustice to the careful driver.

7. Has your State a compulsory education law? See if you can find out when it was passed, and who persuaded the legislature to pass it.

8. Are there people in your neighborhood who do not seem to you to be represented in the legislature? How would it be possible to arrange the government so that their ideas could be represented when new laws are made?

9. Make a list of the laws that you know about. Then mark with a cross those which you think have been laws for a long time, and with a circle those which have been made because of new conditions such as factory work.

10. Read a message from your governor to the legislature in your State and see if he asks for new laws.

11. Read the newspapers and see if new laws are demanded.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONSERVATION BY THE STATE

229. Work of the State Government. The most important work of the government is to enforce the law. If it is not enforced we have anarchy, and where there is anarchy no one is safe from thieves and bullies. It is very important to have a community in which people will work. Unless we work we must starve. But people will not work if they are not certain of being able to keep what they work for; therefore where there is anarchy people suffer from hunger and cold. In a happy State there must be a strong government which selects wise men to compel all to obey the law. The last four chapters have spoken of the way the law is made, interpreted, and enforced. In this chapter and in the two which follow it, we discuss other work that the State government does. There is not time enough to say very much about this work. But enough will be said to show how important it is to find a way of selecting able and well-trained men and women to serve the community.

230. Conservation. The word conservation means taking care of things. It means much the same as preservation. Those who have more fruit than they need in the summer preserve some of it for the winter; this is a work of preservation or conservation. The work of the State government for the preservation of the good things we have is so important to the people who will live a hundred years from now,-our children and our children's children,

-that we must plan for it very carefully. This work may be compared to city planning. It does not do us very much good in our own time. Some selfish people object to the State spending money for conservation because they do not care what happens to other people after they themselves are dead. But fair-minded people think this work should be well done, and they are willing to help the government to do it.

231. Kinds of Resources. All of our living comes out of the water, the land, or the air. Probably there will always be enough air; but the people of the world are increasing so rapidly that to have enough land and water is coming to be a serious problem. Most of the work we do is part of the task of getting food, fuel, shelter, clothes, and other things out of the land or the water or the air. The farmer, the miner, the herdsman, the fisherman, the hunter,-millions of workers are busy every day collecting the wealth of the world for use; and we are all consuming it as fast as they collect it. A large part of the work of government is to protect people in this task and to encourage those who do it well; but another part of its work is to conserve the supply of wealth so that future generations will have something to work with.

232. Water for the Home. When we studied the government of the city we saw that even a supply of drinking water might possibly be hard to find for the people who live in crowded places. The supply of good drinking water is limited, and cities are growing so near together that it will soon be necessary for the State governments to tell each city how much water it may have and whence it is to take it. As the State becomes more thickly settled it will be necessary for us to have stricter laws about the use of

land near the places whence drinking water comes in order that it may be clean and wholesome. In New York there was recently a long dispute between the city and the State government over a plan to place some hospitals where they would drain into the city water supply.

233. Water for Agriculture. Some States have insufficient rainfall and must depend upon irrigation for their crops. The supply of water for this purpose is often very small, and crops cannot be grown unless this supply is carefully saved and distributed. So long as a State is thinly settled it is possible for a few people to get possession of the streams as private property. When the population increases these people naturally think that the State should protect them in holding this property even though it has become very valuable. But others think that the things which nature gives must not be held by private individuals when the community needs them. It would have been wiser had the State governments taken control of the water supply earlier; but we are all wiser after a thing has happened than before. This paragraph cannot tell how the water for irrigation should be handled, for it is a large and difficult question. It can only call your attention to the need of a wise and strong government to manage such affairs.

234. Water for Power. The supply of coal and wood for fuel is decreasing rapidly. We do not know how much oil may still be found. But when wood, coal, and oil are gone, the world may have to depend upon water power changed into electricity to run the machinery and to supply light and heat. A great force like Niagara Falls may save millions of people from cold and darkness and may run hundreds of factories. It is said that a plan to get drinking

water from the mountains to San Francisco will give power enough from the flow of the water down the hills to pay for all the cost of the city water supply. It is important for the State governments or the government of the United States to do two things: first, to see that no carelessness dries up the supply of water; and, secondly, that private individuals do not get such control of it that the community will have to pay them large prices for it later on.

235. Forests. The subject of forests is brought up just after that of water because the water supply cannot be saved unless we save the forests. Water power comes from the streams flowing steadily down the hills all the year. This means that it must not run off too rapidly when it first falls as rain. The forests on the mountains help to keep it from running off rapidly. It soaks into the ground at the roots of the trees, and trickles through the soft earth to springs, and so remains for months. It neither runs off rapidly nor dries up. But if the forests are cut or burned off, the hard rains wash the earth away, no leaves fall to restore it, nothing is left but the rocks. We are tempted to cut the forests off rapidly to sell the lumber, and this has been done in many places. But a wise government generally forbids this, and when it does permit all of the trees to be cut it provides for reforestration; that is, it helps to plant new trees so that the forests will grow again before the soil is washed away. All of this work requires foresight and planning, and it also requires the employment by the government of men who have been educated to care for forests. These men should be kept in office as long as they give faithful service, so that they may be able to carry out the plans they make.

236. The Land. Some people believe that the end of