It can not be right, therefore, for us to grant perpetual rights to the one great permanent source of power.

It is just as wrong as it is foolish, and just as needless as it is wrong, to mortgage the welfare of our children in such a way as this.

Water powers must and should be developed mainly by private capital and they must be developed under conditions which make investment in them profitable and safe.

But neither profit nor safety requires perpetual rights, as many of the best water-power men now freely acknowledge.
Second, the men to whom the people grant the right to use water-power should pay for what they get.

The water-power sites now in the public hands are enormously valuable.