morning of September 25, 1911, President Henry W. Wallace in the chair.
President WALLACE—The convention will come to order and will be opened
with an invocation by the Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Lillis, Bishop of the Roman
Catholic Diocese of Kansas City.
INVOCATION.
_In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, Amen. Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy
name; Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in
Heaven; give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen._
President WALLACE—An address of welcome will now be delivered on behalf
of Kansas City by its Mayor, the Honorable Darius A. Brown. (Applause)
Mayor BROWN—Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In the very brief time
in which I have to speak to you, if there is one fact of which I want to
convince you it is that I am absolutely not responsible for the condition
of the weather this morning. Convention Hall, the walls of it, have
probably enclosed many important conventions and congresses, but I do not
believe in the entire history of the institution, or of Kansas City, that
there has ever gathered here a congress or convention whose deliberations
and conclusions are of such vital importance to the great mass of people
as that which will soon convene here this morning. We have had all sorts
of conventions for the purpose of discussing ways and means of pursuing
their public avocations, and how to best carry on the business in which
they are engaged, but this is a Congress which is not gathered for the
purpose of determining how it is best to make money or to carry on
business, but for the purpose of solving some of the great problems which
are necessary to be solved in order that we should go forward in the way
in which this Nation should go forward.
Beginning with a strong desire to prevent waste of some of the lands and
natural resources of this country, the principle of conservation has
been so extended and its scope so widened that today it is only limited
by the bonds of human activity, and this principle of conservation is
certainly of vital importance to the great cities of this country, and
it has lately come to be given a practical application in the saving and
preventing from waste of the valuable rights which the people of great
cities have in their streets and public thoroughfares. For a long time
past when private individuals sought certain valuable rights in the
streets and thoroughfares of our great cities it has been the custom
to give them for the asking, but now has come a time when the minds of
the people are turned to the principles which demand that none of these
things should be wasted or granted away unless there is a fair and just
return to the people for the rights which are granted. There is another
application of this principle of conservation in the life of our great
cities. Conditions have arisen and exist today, and have existed, the
cause of which has not yet been definitely determined, whereby the lives
and the health and the morals of the people are being wasted; and so the
thinking patriotic people of every city in this country are directing
their minds, not so much to anything that is the result of these
conditions as to get directly at the cause and prevent the results which
are flowing from the causes which have existed. And the officers of this
Congress have become so saturated and so imbued with this principle of
conservation that the secretary, in sending out his notices to those who
have been selected to deliver these addresses of welcome this morning,
inserted therein a clause wherein he said there will be five addresses
for the morning session, and therefore all of them will necessarily have
to be brief; and the secretary was right. And it is absolutely right that
it should be so, for many reasons, particularly two: Because there will
assemble here this morning and during the days of these sessions some
of the most distinguished, able and learned men of the United States,
men who have shown their right to speak authoritatively on these great
subjects; men who have devoted their time, energy, their lifetime, to
the study of the proper solution of the great problems of American life;
men who are coming here with a message to deliver to the people of this
Congress and to the people of this great country; and therefore it is not
right and proper that their time and the time of the people who have come
here to listen should be wasted by an address of welcome.
And it has been suggested that on account of the fact that possibly
some of those who are to deliver these addresses of welcome have caused
considerable delay, that they ought to be abolished altogether. There
is another reason why no time should be wasted in hearing addresses of
welcome. I do not know why this custom has grown up in this country that
when any considerable body of citizens of one part of the country gathers
in another part that it is necessary for some high dignitary or executive
of the city to deliver an address of welcome. Perhaps it came from the
older countries of the world, where the provinces and the municipalities
and states were clutching at each other’s throats, and they built great
walls around the city, and when one man wanted to visit another community
it was necessary for him to go to the gate and rap on it and have some
high dignitary bid him enter. In this great country of ours we have
been drawn so closely together by the influence of the newspapers, the
magazines, the railroads, telephone and telegraph that today we are one
great common people, actuated by the same great motives and inspired by
the same high ideals, and so a citizen of one portion of this country
today is just as welcome in another portion of the country as the rising
sun in the morning. (Applause) And so I say it is not necessary for any
representative of the city to say to this gathering that they are welcome
in Kansas City, or to say that the arms of the people of Kansas City are
extended in a hearty welcome, because we believe that the result of the
deliberations which you will hold here and the conclusions which you will
reach will not only be of lasting and vital benefit to the people of this
city, but to the people all over this country. And it is an encouraging
sign of the times that in every branch of human endeavor the people
are gathering periodically, yearly or monthly, or biennially, for the
purpose of discussing the questions which affect them in their peculiar
avocations. It has been said a great many times that perhaps democracy
is a failure, that the people all have shown themselves incapable of
governing themselves. But the most prolific cause of that opinion has
been that in the past the public servants have been selected and the
public questions have been solved by a small body of men, sometimes
too many of which are actuated only by a desire for their personal
aggrandizement.
And the great rank and file of the citizenship, the individual citizen,
has not seen fit to devote any of his time to a study of any of those
problems, but has left the whole government of the people to be done
by this small coterie of men. The people are awakening to their
responsibility as citizens of this country: they are beginning to ally
themselves with some such organization as this, which has for its
purpose the study and solution of these problems, and day by day, more
and more, by enactment of Congress, amendments of constitution, state
legislative action, amendments of city charters, more and more of these
great questions are being submitted directly to the people for solution,
and so I say, when the time comes through this awakening which we have
seen, when the individual citizen will come to a full appreciation of
his responsibility, and these problems are submitted to them, they will
all be solved right and properly. And I want to say in conclusion that
I hope, and I express the hope of every good citizen of Kansas City,
that this Congress will achieve great things, will do more than has ever
been done before to solve these great problems that are clamoring for
solution. I thank you. (Applause)
President WALLACE—On behalf of the Commercial Club of this city an
address of welcome will be delivered by Mr. John C. Lester, its honored
president.
Mr. Lester spoke as follows:
Mr. President and Members of the National Conservation Congress: I bear
to you the greetings of the Commercial Club and the other industrial and
civic organizations of Kansas City. We find nothing in our annals which
is a greater source of pride than our part in bringing this Congress to
Kansas City. We are proud to welcome an assembly of men and women who
are devoted to the idea of the salvation of the physical resources of
the nation, which means the physical salvation of our part of the race.
The moral benefit to ourselves of trying to do something for others,
is taught in an age-old lesson. What better way of illustrating that
principle, and securing that good than by teaching that the spendthrift
energies of this generation must be curbed in order that more be left for
the vital sustenance of the next. What more inspiring sight than this
great audience, drawn from the four quarters of the Nation with minds
intent on that one principle? We easily recognize the great impulses
and movements for the good of the race. They stand out in history
like mile-stones. Among them the cause of your meeting, the cause of
conservation is a pillar of fire. You are rightfully appalled by waste
and are fighting it as sin. You are fully conscious from the story of
life on this earth, of what a proper use of his resources means to man.
You are fully conscious of the folly of destroying today what will be
needed to save life tomorrow.
Your theme is Conservation. You tremble at conditions and seek a remedy.
To you the glory of the harvest, the wealth of the mine, the roar of the
falling water, the shadows of the forests, the flow of the streams, means
more than the happiness of today: you would also have them the joy of
tomorrow. If the world heeds your advice the day of the last man will be
put off for countless ages.
The products of the soil and the forest, in seeking a market, seek the
sea and its highways as naturally as do the waters of the streams. In
obedience to this law, this community is now engaged in an effort to
solve one of the great practical problems of conservation—that is, the
conservation of power in transportation. We are devoted to the idea of
the practical use of the Missouri River as a freight carrier. You have
taught us that saving coal means saving life. You have also taught us
that the same power required to move 8 tons on steel rails will move 34
tons on water; hence who dares say that our ambition to reach the sea
by water with our products is an idle dream, or that the immutable laws
of Nature are not on our side? Our critics are fighting the eternal
verities! They might as well fulminate against the law of gravitation!
The Missouri River is and will be navigated. In this effort we claim
kinship with all the sons and daughters of Conservation.
As that eminent Frenchman and conservator of peace, Baron Destournelles,
recently our guest, in writing a short time ago about this city and its
relation to the Missouri River, pointed out, the river and the railroads
have their separate burdens to bear, one class of freight will always
seek the quicker transit of the rails, another class will always seek the
vastly cheaper transportation afforded by a water channel.
But I must not anticipate a possible subject of your deliberations.
Pardon me, if I feel impelled when addressing conservationists to prove a
strong local bond of sympathy!
As apostles of conversation-conservation, you, at your third annual
meeting, have made a splendid beginning. You have supported precept by
example in that you have selected a place for your Congress, just 125
miles east of the geographical center of the United States. You have thus
conserved both the time and money of your members in meeting at Kansas
City!—a most excellent centre from which easily radiate all influences
for good, either moral or commercial!
It is my part, however, on behalf of all our civic organizations, to
supplement and, if possible, strengthen your official welcome. You are
thrice welcomed; first, because we are proud to honor as great a nucleus
of brains and character as ever assembled under Convention Hall; second,
because we know your purpose and your work and believe in them; and,
third, because we expect to learn from you how to conserve the health of
our children, how to conserve the purity of the streams from which we
must drink, how to conserve the fertility of our soil from the exhausting
wastes of ignorance, how to conserve the happiness of the country home,
and turn the tide back from the cities—all save this one perhaps—and in
all things to live in and enjoy this world so that the generations that
come after will bless us and the great doctrines of conservation.
We are honored by your presence.
May we all follow the banner bearing your motto, “The greatest good for
the greatest number for the longest time.”
President WALLACE—An address of welcome will now be delivered by the
Honorable Herbert S. Hadley, Governor of Missouri, on behalf of that
great state. Governor Hadley. (Applause)
Governor HADLEY—Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: His Honor, the Mayor,
and the President of the Commercial Club have made welcoming on my part
a work of supererogation. I know, of course, that you are welcome,
and you know are welcome, or you would not be here. The President of
the Commercial Club has referred to you and to himself as apostles of
conversation as well as apostles of Conservation. And so it is upon that
suggestion, I suppose, that in making speeches of welcome, we are making
speeches in discussion of the subject that has brought them here. I take
it, however, the explanation of my presence on the program this morning,
is not for the purpose of welcoming you here to the State of Missouri,
because you were welcomed here when you decided to come. I am here among
these apostles of conservation and apostles of conversation simply for
the purpose of giving a little variety to the program. It seemed well
to those who were managing this Congress that on an occasion when the
people gathered together from all the states in the Union to consider the
important question of a proper conservation of the soil, that it would be
well to have at least one farmer among those who were gathered together
for the purposes of that discussion. (Applause) And so they came down to
Jefferson City to ask me to turn aside from my executive and agricultural
pursuits long enough to come up here and lend a little variety to the
program this morning, because to those who come from other states it may
be necessary to impart that although I have been regarded and referred to
upon various occasions as something of a political curiosity, I am far
more than that in that I am the first farmer Governor of the State of
Missouri in over a half a century, and I think the first Governor in the
entire history of the state who became a farmer after he became Governor.
(Laughter and applause). So consequently I represent in and of myself
both the principles of conversation and the principles of Conservation.
Consequently, what I have to say to you this morning will be along the
line of congratulation that you have come to a state that has such a
splendid example, not only of the necessity, but of the practical results
of the application of that great national policy that you are gathered
here to consider. As has been suggested by the remarks of the Mayor, and
the President of the Commercial Club, this question of conservation is a
question which has so many sides, and has so many practical and important
applications that you have, Mr. Chairman, to come to a great state like
the State of Missouri, with its diversified interests and resources, in
order to see just exactly how great a question you are dealing with.
(Laughter) So I congratulate you upon the wisdom that you have displayed
in selecting your place of meeting. I say this advisedly, because
Missouri, which is the oldest of those states lying wholly west of the
Mississippi to have been admitted to the Union, is one of the youngest or
most undeveloped states between the Mississippi and the Pacific.
Even before the territory where we meet today had become a part of the
American Republic, the hardy pioneers, hunters, trappers and traders who
had carried English civilization across the Alleghanies and into the
valley of the Mississippi had pushed westward even to the banks of the
Missouri. Following the acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana and our
organization as a territory and admission as a state, Missouri stood for
forty years as an outpost of civilization, reaching out to the unknown
and the undiscovered West. And from her borders stretched those two great
highways of commerce, the Oregon Trail, and the Santa Fe Trail, along
which, in turn, were to march the soldiers, hunters, trappers and traders
who were to bind the Trans-Mississippi country to the United States by
ties stronger than those of treaties and of laws. The Missourian became
the pioneer of the West. And in practically every state that lies in that
vast empire between the Mississippi and the Pacific the sons of Missouri
have felled the forests, dug the mines, cultivated the soil, written the
constitutions and laws, held the offices and directed the commercial and
industrial activities.
MISSOURI’S UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES.
So bounteously, in fact, has Missouri contributed of her citizenship
to the development of other states and territories that she has left
undeveloped many of her own natural resources and uncultivated almost
one-half of her soil. Of the 44 millions of acres which constitute the
State of Missouri, little more than one-half has ever been touched by a
plowshare; and of her 20 millions of acres of uncultivated soil, there
are 17,500,000 acres of woodland awaiting the stroke of the woodman’s
axe. Of lead and zinc, we produce more than any state in the Union, yes,
more than all of the states of the Union combined, or any nation in the
world. And yet the geologists tell us that greater stores of mineral
wealth lie beneath the surface of our soil than have even been discovered
by the drill of the miner or the pick of the prospector. We have within
and along our borders 6,000 miles of navigable rivers, a larger number
of miles of navigable waterways than any inland state in the Union. By
the cultivation of one-half of our 44 millions of acres we produce over
100 million dollars worth of corn each year, nearly 1 million dollars in
value of this product for every county in the state. Missouri lies in
the very center of the American corn belt, and there are no corn lands
superior to those found in this state. One farmer in Missouri grows more
corn each year on his farm than is grown in the nine States of Utah,
Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Rhode Island, Wyoming and
Nevada combined. Three counties in Missouri grow more corn than nineteen
other states, in which is included all of New England. These three
counties grow more corn than do the states of New York, Maryland or West
Virginia. Three times as much corn is produced in Missouri each year as
is produced in all of South America, three-fifths as much as in all of
Europe and nearly one-half as much as is produced in the whole world
outside of the United States. The average yield of corn in Missouri per
acre is forty bushels, a higher average yield than in any state in the
Union, and yet by the proper application of the principle of conservation
in the use and cultivation of the soil, this production could doubtless
be increased 25 per cent. And by the proper use of the uncultivated
corn lands of the state, our production could be made greater than any
state in the United States, and probably greater than the entire corn
production of Europe.
The same thing is true as to our other important crops. Our average wheat
crop sells for 30 millions of dollars, which is also the average value of
our crop of hay which is sold upon the markets, not including the immense
acreage of blue grass, clover and timothy pastures.
THE OZARK REGION.
The character of our soil, as well as of our climate, is peculiarly
favorable for the growing of grass. Grass is not only the greatest
of all agricultural products, but its production under most favorable
conditions is an indication of the most desirable place of habitation for
man. One of the early travelers who investigated the conditions in the
Trans-Mississippi country, who was also much of a philosopher, made the
statement that the best place for human habitation is in that country
farthest south where grass grows well. And the country farthest south
where grass grows well is to be found in the Ozark region of Missouri.
When the first Spanish explorers crossed the Mississippi, they found
the largest herds of buffalo, elk, deer and antelope feeding upon the
splendid pastures of blue stem and of blue grass in what is now the
southern half of Missouri. Prior to the coming of the white man, this
region was a vast upland prairie, noted for its splendid growth of grass
and favorable hunting ground. And so long as the Indians remained, the
growth of trees, except along the rivers and the streams, was prevented
by the burning of the grass each year. But with the coming of the white
man and the driving out of the Indian, the growth of the timber extended
back from the rivers and the streams, and what was once the greatest
pasture in the country is now covered by a growth of timber.
Through the proper application of the principles of conservation, this
timber can be cleared in such a manner as to restore the growth of
blue grass and of blue stem to make this region the most favorable for
dairying and the raising of live stock that the country affords, and at
the same time preserve enough of the trees to give the natural commercial
advantages to be derived therefrom.
Of our 20 millions of acres of uncultivated soil, three and one-half
million consist of swamp and overflowed lands to be found in the valleys
of our great rivers. If this land were reclaimed by the application
of the principles of conservation, so as to produce a certain annual
harvest, it would produce enough of agricultural wealth each year to feed
all of the people of Missouri, and leave the balance of our 23 millions
of acres for the production of surplus products.
In support of this statement, let me refer you to facts of history, for
Egypt, during the palmiest days of her civilization, never had under
cultivation to exceed six millions of acres in the Valley of the Nile.
And yet these six millions of acres supported a population of 10 millions
of people. Holland reclaimed from the sea two and one-half millions of
acres of land which supported a population of 8 millions of people. And
yet the swamp and flooded lands of Missouri are as rich as the reclaimed
lands of Holland or the Valley of the Nile.
THE NEED OF SWAMP LAND RECLAMATION.