The man who plunders the soil is in very truth a robber, for he takes that which is not his own, and he withholds bread from the mouths of generations yet to be born. No man really owns his acres: society allows him the use of them for his lifetime, but the fee comes back to society in the end. What, then, will society do with those persons who rob society? The pillaging land-worker must be brought to account and be controlled, even as we control other offenders. I have no socialistic program to propose. The man who is to till the land must be educated: there is more need, on the side of the public welfare, to educate this man than any other man whatsoever (page 36). When he knows, and his obligations to society are quickened, he will be ready to become a real conservator; and he will act energetically as soon as the economic pressure for land-supplies begins to be acute. When society has done all it can to make every farmer a voluntary conservator of the fatness of the earth, it will probably be obliged to resort to other means to control the wholly incompetent and the recalcitrant; at least, it will compel the soil-robber to remove to other occupation, if economic stress does not itself compel it. We shall reach the time when we shall not allow a man to till the earth unless he is able to leave it at least as fertile as he found it. I do not think that our natural soil resources have yet been greatly or permanently depleted, speaking broadly; and such depletion as has occurred has been the necessary result of the conquest of a continent. But a new situation will confront us, now that we see the end of our raw conquest; and the old methods cannot hold for the future. The conquest has produced great and strong folk, and we have been conserving men while we have been free with our resources. In the future, we shall produce strong folk by the process of thoroughness and care. _Ownership_ vs. _conservation_.