ution of local
transportation problems. In many parts of the country local and
interurban lines are providing transportation to farm areas, thereby
increasing facilities for moving crops and adding to the profit and
convenience of farm life. However, there seems to be a very general
lack of appreciation of the possibilities of this water-power
resource as governing transportation costs.

"The streams may be also used as small water power on thousands of
farms. This is particularly true of small streams. Much of the labor
about the house and barn can be performed by transmission of power
from small water wheels running on the farms themselves or in the
neighborhood. This power could be used for electric lighting and for
small manufacture. It is more important that small power be
developed on the farms of the United States than that we harness
Niagara.

"Unfortunately, the tendency of the present laws is to encourage the
acquisition of these resources on easy terms, or on their own terms,
by the first applicants, and the power of the streams is rapidly
being acquired under conditions that lead to the concentration of
ownership in the hands of the monopolies. This constitutes a real
and immediate danger, not to the country-life interests alone, but
to the entire nation, and it is time that the whole people become
aroused to it.

"The forests have been exploited for private gain not only until the
timber has been seriously reduced, but until streams have been
ruined for navigation, power, irrigation, and common water supplies,
and whole regions have been exposed to floods and disastrous soil
erosion. Probably there has never occurred a more reckless
destruction of property that of right should belong to all the
people.

"The wood-lot property of the country needs to be saved and
increased. Wood-lot yield is one of the most important crops of the
farms, and is of great value to the public in con trolling streams,
saving the run-off, checking winds, and adding to the attractiveness
of the region. [Taken up in a special chapter of this book.]

"In many regions where poor and hilly lands prevail, the town or
county could well afford to purchase forest land, expecting thereby
to add to the value of the property and to make the forests a source
of revenue. Such communal forests in Europe yield revenue to the
cities and towns by which they are owned and managed."

These revenues would furnish good roads even in the poores