Scoutmaster's Minute: Conservation Is Important

Who can tell me what is the greatest food factory in the world?
(Pause for answers.)

The greatest food factory in the world is a leaf. The plant's branches are like an assembly line, bringing supplies to the leaves from the root of the plant. And then something like magic takes place. Do you know what it is? What is the magic ingredient that makes the factory work?

(Pause [again] for answers.)

It's sunlight! With the elements taken from the earth through the roots, the leaf makes food through the power of sunlight. This magical process is called photosynthesis!
(Pause here a long while for emphasis!)*

Did you ever consider that we cannot live without this food factory? That's right! All life, including us, is completely dependent on this factory for our food. Even animals which eat nothing but flesh must feed on others which eat plants for food. You see, the plants on this earth support all the life there is.
(Pause here while this bit of ecology sinks in.)

That's why the Scout's outdoor code tells us we must not hurt plant life. When we carelessly destroy a living plant, such as a tree, we actually kill part of the human and animal life of this world. A good Scout always minds his outdoor manners.

--Ideas and Stories for The Scoutmaster's Minute: Conservation is Important, Boy Scouts of America, pub. 1956.
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*Sorry, but the WB Scribbler feels compelled to add a long pause here not in the original SM Minute because he thinks watching a leaf on a sunny day "work its magic" has gotta be the slowest magic show in the forest. Good conservation practices as defined by the Outdoor Code then was considered simply the wisest use of our God-given natural resources. I think Scouts in the 1950s probably didn't worry too much about the moral consequences of trying out a new Hudson's Bay axe on the nearest pine tree or blazing a trail of botanical mayhem through the woods--at least, I know I didn't back then.

--WB Scribbler