For the Best Interests of Man; A N. McLeod

Oil existed in abundance before our forefathers discovered it. As soon as it was discovered it be came scarce. Who can comprehend that kind of perversity? Scarcity, they have been taught, is caused hymalevolence because "science" knows enough to permit every man to live like a king! The "scarcity" that concerns Dr. McLeod is Economist and Director of Business Affairs, Institute of Paper Chemistry, Appleton, Wisconsin. the typical conservationist is usu ally that scarcity having to do with a resource that men did not have the wisdom and foresight to bring under the rules and stric tures of private property. Often these resources are psychic and aesthetic in nature and pose ex tremely difficult problems to bring them into an exchange mechanism. You and I have, in our lifetime, seen air and water· pass from a category of free goods to economic goods - in other words we have seen the metamorphosis of scarc ity. It has happened rather sud denly and our institutions are not in shape to cope with air and water as we did with land. Al though the institutional frame work is not the barrier in the case of the oceans, the system that has worked so admirably'forland isn't being given a thought for its ap plicability to oceans.