THE MORAL ISSUE
The central thing for which Conservation stands is to make this country
the best possible place to live in, both for us and for our descendants.
It stands against the waste of the natural resources which cannot be
renewed, such as coal and iron; it stands for the perpetuation of the
resources which can be renewed, such as the food-producing soils and the
forests; and most of all it stands for an equal opportunity for every
American citizen to get his fair share of benefit from these resources,
both now and hereafter.
Conservation stands for the same kind of practical common-sense
management of this country by the people that every business man stands
for in the handling of his own business. It believes in prudence and
foresight instead of reckless blindness; it holds that resources now
public property should not become the basis for oppressive private
monopoly; and it demands the complete and orderly development of all our
resources for the benefit of all the people, instead of the partial
exploitation of them for the benefit of a few. It recognizes fully the
right of the present generation to use what it needs and all it needs of
the natural resources now available, but it recognizes equally our
obligation so to use what we need that our descendants shall not be
deprived of what they need.
Conservation has much to do with the welfare of the average man of
to-day. It proposes to secure a continuous and abundant supply of the
necessaries of life, which means a reasonable cost of living and
business stability. It advocates fairness in the distribution of the
benefits which flow from the natural resources. It will matter very
little to the average citizen, when scarcity comes and prices rise,
whether he can not get what he needs because there is none left or
because he can not afford to pay for it. In both cases the essential
fact is that he can not get what he needs. Conservation holds that it is
about as important to see that the people in general get the benefit of
our natural resources as to see that there shall be natural resources
left.
Conservation is the most democratic movement this country has known for
a generation. It holds that the people have not only the right, but the
duty to control the use of the natural resources, which are the great
sources of prosperity. And it regards the absorption of these resources
by the special interests, unless their operations are under effective
public control, as a moral wrong. Conservation is the application of
common-sense to the common problems for the common good, and I believe
it stands nearer to the desires, aspirations, and purposes of the
average man than any other policy now before the American people.
The danger to the Conservation policies is that the privileges of the
few may continue to obstruct the rights of the many, especially in the
matter of water power and coal. Congress must decide immediately whether
the great coal fields still in public ownership shall remain so, in
order that their use may be controlled with due regard to the interest
of the consumer, or whether they shall pass into private ownership and
be controlled in the monopolistic interest of a few.
Congress must decide also whether immensely valuable rights to the use
of water power shall be given away to special interests in perpetuity
and without compensation instead of being held and controlled by the
public. In most cases actual development of water power can best be done
by private interests acting under public control, but it is neither
good sense nor good morals to let these valuable privileges pass from
the public ownership for nothing and forever. Other conservation matters
doubtless require action, but these two, the conservation of water power
and of coal, the chief sources of power of the present and the future,
are clearly the most pressing.
It is of the first importance to prevent our water powers from passing
into private ownership as they have been doing, because the greatest
source of power we know is falling water. Furthermore, it is the only
great unfailing source of power. Our coal, the experts say, is likely to
be exhausted during the next century, our natural gas and oil in this.
Our rivers, if the forests on the watersheds are properly handled, will
never cease to deliver power. Under our form of civilization, if a few
men ever succeed in controlling the sources of power, they will
eventually control all industry as well. If they succeed in controlling
all industry, they will necessarily control the country. This country
has achieved political freedom; what our people are fighting for now is
industrial freedom. And unless we win our industrial liberty, we can not
keep our political liberty. I see no reason why we should deliberately
keep on helping to fasten the handcuffs of corporate control upon
ourselves for all time merely because the few men who would profit by it
most have heretofore had the power to compel it.
The essential things that must be done to protect the water powers for
the people are few and simple. First, the granting of water powers
forever, either on non-navigable or navigable streams, must absolutely
stop. It is perfectly clear that one hundred, fifty, or even twenty-five
years ago our present industrial conditions and industrial needs were
completely beyond the imagination of the wisest of our predecessors. It
is just as true that we can not imagine or foresee the industrial
conditions and needs of the future. But we do know that our descendants
should be left free to meet their own necessities as they arise. 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. There is no reason whatever why special
interests should be allowed to use them for profit without making some
direct payment to the people for the valuable rights derived from the
people. This is important not only for the revenue the Nation will get.
It is at least equally important as a recognition that the public
controls its own property and has a right to share in the benefits
arising from its development. There are other ways in which public
control of water power must be exercised, but these two are the most
important.
Water power on non-navigable streams usually results from dropping a
little water a long way. In the mountains water is dropped many hundreds
of feet upon the turbines which move the dynamos that produce the
electric current. Water power on navigable streams is usually produced
by dropping immense volumes of water a short distance, as twenty feet,
fifteen feet, or even less. Every stream is a unit from its source to
its mouth, and the people have the same stake in the control of water
power in one part of it as in another. Under the Constitution, the
United States exercises direct control over navigable streams. It
exercises control over non-navigable and source streams only through its
ownership of the lands through which they pass, as the public domain and
National Forests. It is just as essential for the public welfare that
the people should retain and exercise control of water-power monopoly on
navigable as on non-navigable streams. If the difficulties are greater,
then the danger that the water powers may pass out of the people's hands
on the lower navigable parts of the streams is greater than on the upper
non-navigable parts, and it may be harder, but in no way less necessary,
to prevent it.
It must be clear to any man who has followed the development of the
Conservation idea that no other policy now before the American people is
so thoroughly democratic in its essence and in its tendencies as the
Conservation policy. It asserts that the people have the right and the
duty, and that it is their duty no less than their right, to protect
themselves against the uncontrolled monopoly of the natural resources
which yield the necessaries of life. We are beginning to realize that
the Conservation question is a question of right and wrong, as any
question must be which may involve the differences between prosperity
and poverty, health and sickness, ignorance and education, well-being
and misery, to hundreds of thousands of families. Seen from the point of
view of human welfare and human progress, questions which begin as
purely economic often end as moral issues. Conservation is a moral issue
because it involves the rights and the duties of our people--their
rights to prosperity and happiness, and their duties to themselves, to
their descendants, and to the whole future progress and welfare of this
Nation.