And water-power is income also,
doled out day by day. We cannot anticipate it. Coal and oil are our only
capital. They are all we have for great important efforts. They are a
gift to mankind to use to some supreme end or to waste in trivialities.
Coal is the key to metallurgy and oil to transit. When they are done
we shall either have built up such a fabric of apparatus, knowledge and
social organization that we shall be able to manage without them--or
we shall have travelled a long way down the slopes of waste towards
extinction.... To-day, in getting, in distribution, in use we
waste enormously....As we sit here all the world is wasting fuel
fantastically."
"Just as mentally--educationally we waste," the doctor interjected.
"And my job is to stop what I can of that waste, to do what I can to
organize, first of all sane fuel getting and then sane fuel using. And
that second proposition carries us far. Into the whole use we are making
of life.
"First things first," said Sir Richmond. If we set about getting fuel
sanely, if we do it as the deliberate, co-operative act of the whole
species, then it follows that we shall look very closely into the use
that is being made of it. When all the fuel getting is brought into one
view as a common interest, then it follows that all the fuel burning
will be brought into one view.
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