--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Gardner, Willard collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 2 published: 1916-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Willard Gardner, "Subduing the Earth," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 2 (December 1916): 149–150.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2002unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2002unse start_page: 149 end_page: 150 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1916-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2002unse publication_year: 1916 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1916, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Subduing the Earth THE MEANING OF EDUCATION 149 Those who work, the servants, must be cultured, strong of mind and spirit and free from contamination, if society is to be completely served. Christ was a workman, a servant. Logan, Utah Subduing the Earth* By Willard Gardner, Principal Murdoch Academy When a citizen of a state takes stock of his resources, he counts his cows, horses, hogs, and sheep; he lists his machinery and his equipment; he appraises his lands and houses; he takes an inventory of his merchandise; he adds the par value of his stock certificates and his bank balance, and makes a grand total of what he is worth. When a state takes stock of its resources, it must include, in addition, the great factory which produces these assets and the great source of energy utilized by the engines in the factory; and the valuation to be placed upon the factory and its engines and its energy supply must be governed by the efficiency of the factory and its engines. The great factory or plant owned by the state is literally a heat engine for the conversion of heat energy into work and potential energy of other kinds. Over every square centimeter of the surface of our state there flows to the earth an amount of energy per second equal to two calories multiplied by a factor which varies from zero, in the morning, to nearly unity, at noon, and back to zero, at night, and remaining zero again until morning. The factor at noon day is very nearly unity in the summer time, but diminishes to approximately five-tenths in midwinter. This amount of energyflow added up for a period of one year, and for the whole area of our state, (or as the mathematician would say, integrated through the given limits of time and space) would amount to approximately 15,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, (fifteen septillion) calories, or enough to raise from the ice point to the boiling point 160,000,000,000,000, (one hundred sixty trillions) tons ot water. In the ultimate processes of nature an equal amount of energy, or perhaps even a greater amount, is leaving the earth by radiation, but an engine deriving energy from the sun at 4,000 degrees centigrade, and exhausting the waste at 300, would, under the best conditions, give an efficiency of approximately nine-tenths, which means that under the most ideal conditions of factory operation, nine-tenths of this amount of energy could •Extracts from talks before the people\ of the Murdock Academy district. 150 IMPROVEMENT ERA be utilized in the manufacture of things for the good of man. Now, the question arises, how can we utilize this great source of energy with the greatest efficiency? And this is the great opportunity that lies before the young people of the state. The most efficient of engines, available at the present time, is the soil and irrigation water. This is the engine whose throttle is our agricultural schools. Other engines are our mines, our forests, our water falls, and our mountain ranges. In our deserts, millions of calories of heat energy are wasted in the production of scanty sagebrush and in heating up the soil to parch and blister from year to year. The annual precipitation, if uniformly distributed, is sufficient for the production of crops on every acre of tillable land in the state, and this great engine awaits the hand of young Utah for bringing up its efficiency. It is possible for the city of Los Angeles to carry water for its citizens several hundred miles through an expensive aqueduct, and who knows but that the great rivers carrying their thousands of second feet of water from our eastern watershed into the Colorado river, and on to the ocean, may some day be diverted into Utah's Great Basin and applied to a beneficial purpose. Through the streams flowing into the basin now many thousands of second feet are annually allowed to seep into the parched deserts, evaporate, condense again as rain and snow in the mountains, and go thundering down the canyons to repeat the cycle from year to year. We have been commanded of God to multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and this renovating of our great factory and improving its efficiency is the part we are expected to play. It is true that we obtain a great deal of valuable laboratory experience in our attempt to gain a livelihood here upon earth, but before we can possibly accomplish the results contemplated in this great command, subdue the earth and make it blossom as the rose, and build a Zion unto God, it will be necessary for the citizens of our state to go forth and prepare themselves for this great work. We are told that with faith we are enabled to accomplish great things, and we are also told that faith without works is dead. We are told that the glory of God is intelligence, and that man cannot be saved in ignorance. We are told that as man is, God once was, and that as God is, man may become. We are told that the kingdom of heaven is within us, and that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God. We are thankful that the gospel of Jesus Christ provides for the moral, physical, intellectual, and spiritual development of mankind. We sometimes are led to blind ourselves to these opportunities. The great educational systems of our Church and of our State were instituted for the benefit of the people, and to ignore the benefits to be derived therefrom is to add