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<br />the statistics on resource availability and economic growth in the United <br />States, 1870-1955; and a description and analysis of relationships between <br />regional economic growth and natural resources. Among the more par- <br />ticularized endeavors that had reached the first-manuscript stage were <br />studies of long-range trends in copper costs, problems and prospects of <br />reSOurce development in southeast Alaska, administrative behavior of <br />United States forest rangers, urban flood-plain occupance as a problem <br />in water development, and trends in United States imports of industrial <br />materials from Canada. <br />- Twelve new grants, totaling nearly ~235,000, and three new research <br />agreements, totaling more than $9,000, were made during the year. The <br />grant figure is larger than that for last year when uncommitted funds <br />remaining for such purposes were running low. This is because the new <br />grant from The Ford Foundation, in addition to providing $5,000,000 <br />in support of the whole program for the five years beginning with 1960, <br />included $375,000 to supplement our grant-making capacity in the last <br />half of the 1958 program year and for all of the 1959 year. Largest of <br />our 1958 grants was to the Joint Council on Economic Education: <br />$154,000 for a three.year program to extend and improve the teaching <br />of resource use and conservation in the public schools. This will build <br />on the promising work done during the past three years under a 1955 <br />grant from Resources for the Future. Similarly, several of the other new <br />grants continued or extended programs initiated under earlier grants; <br />among them were grants to the Arctic Institute of North America for a <br />study of resources development in all of Alaska as a follow-up of the re- <br />cently completed southeast Alaska study, and to Harvard University for <br />continuing the seminar in conservation and land-use policy. <br />- Most of the staff activity during the year aimed at carrying forward <br />the main lines of work laid down at the start of the current (1954-59) <br />phase of our over-all program, but there were two notable new develop- <br />ments-sponsorship of a program of public lectures and discussions, the <br />first of what we hope will be a continuing series of such forums; and <br />inauguration of an intensive effort to bring together the facts on the <br />nation's resource position and outlook and to interpret them for interested <br />general readers. <br />The 1958 Forum, held in the fiftieth anniversary year of the conserva- <br />tion movement in the United States, brought a variety of expert viewpoints <br />and opinions to bear on the history and meaning of the movement thus <br />far and on its prospects for the next half century. Public response to the <br />six lectures encouraged us to arrange for a 1959 Forum on the subject <br />oi science and technology in resource development. <br />\Vork on the broad survey of natural resources trends and prospects <br />mentioned above was well advanced by the end of the program year. This <br /> <br />9 <br />