should be known and emphasized by all influential men and organizations.
We talk of conservation, but 90 per cent of all the talk during the last
five years about the conservation of natural resources has been directed
toward 10 per cent of the resources. On the other hand, to improve and
to save the soils of America will require more than talk. Thought and
action are required, and the time for thought and action is already upon
us. Not conservation of soil fertility; but amelioration of good soils,
restoration of worn-out soils, and then permanent preservation of all
soils.
WHAT REAL RECLAMATION MEANS.
Our reclamation of land must be more than the continued exploitation of
so-called dry farming and irrigation on virgin soils and the drainage of
virgin swamp lands; we must reclaim, in the truest sense of the word, the
millions of acres of depleted and agriculturally abandoned lands lying
at the door of our greatest markets and already favored with an abundant
supply of unused water in the normal rainfall of our older states.
If 145 million dollars of federal funds can be wisely and profitably
expended (and I believe they can) in providing irrigation for three
million acres in the arid regions of the Far West, and if 300 million
dollars can be expended annually to support our army and navy, as we are
doing even in time of peace, then what should we do in comparison for the
restoration or improvement of the 900 million acres of farm lands in this
country? I would affirm and emphasize the fact that 145 million dollars,
if wisely and economically used, would make a soil survey of every farm
in the United States and furnish every farmer with definite and much
needed information concerning the composition or invoice of fertility
of every type of soil on his farm and proof of practical profitable
methods for its improvement, and still leave an endowment whose income
would support a permanent experiment field or demonstration farm in every
county in every state.
Private enterprise has already put twelve million acres under irrigation
in the United States, and the Federal Government has added one million
and has projects concerning two million more. This is doubtless all
good work and ought to go on, but the fact still remains that as a
nation we are penny-wise and pound-foolish, with millions of acres of
agriculturally abandoned lands in states surrounding the national capital.
The rapid investigation of the soils of every state should be
inaugurated, and this should be accompanied by the wide dissemination of
information by demonstration farms showing by actual field trial the most
practical methods of soil improvement and preservation. This is local
work and is best done by the state institutions directly responsible
to their home people, while the Federal Government must direct and
control the reclamation work on the federal lands. Because the revenue
of the Federal Government is ten times the total or combined revenue of
all the states, the federal appropriations to the state agricultural
institutions should be largely increased for the specific purpose
of increasing and extending the knowledge of practical methods for
restoring and improving the fertility of the soil, and these increased
appropriations might well be made in direct proportion to the acreage of
farm lands in the respective states.
All public schools should offer practical scientific instruction in the
principles of soil fertility, and every man and woman of mental power
should acquire information and exert influence toward saving the soil,
which is second in importance only to saving the soul. But the fact is
that not one American in a hundred knows what the soils contain or what
the crops require. They know of the rivers of Asia and of all the kings
of England, and perhaps of the wars of Caesar and the orations of Cicero;
but they do not know what is required to produce a grain of wheat or
a kernel of corn. And yet there is as much of culture and more of use
and value and of satisfaction in a study of clover roots and plant-food
compounds than in Greek roots and Latin compounds; and I insist that the
study of soil fertility is so simple and easy and so interesting that any
man or woman of ordinary education can become master of the essential
principles by studying the subject an hour a day for a single month.
President WHITE—Mr. Wallace will introduce Mr. F. D. Coburn, secretary of
the Kansas Board of Agriculture, who will preside this afternoon.
Mr. WALLACE—You people in Kansas have all heard of Coburn (applause), the
man who adorns, advises, and advertises the State of Kansas and the state
of the West. Mr. Coburn will preside with you this afternoon. (Applause)
Mr. COBURN—President Wallace, I thank you for your kindly introduction.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress, and delegates: Your temporary
chairman will base his claims to your charitable consideration this
afternoon on the fact that he has no speech to make, and further will go
on the assumption that the program which is provided him and for you will
be carried out. I thank you. (Applause)
President WHITE—Ladies and gentlemen: The Missouri delegation is
requested to meet immediately after adjournment. We will now listen to
Dr. W J McGee, the well-known authority on soils, of the U. S. Department
of Agriculture. (Applause)
DR. MCGEE—The relation of man to the earth on which he lives forms a
worthy theme for those who think and base action on thought. As it is
now, so it has been in every age; every early people had a creation
epic: the noblest of all recounts that out of the dust of the earth God
made man in His own image. The ancients gave chief thought to beginnings
seen vaguely at the best; moderns to current processes which may be
seen clearly and verified by repeated observation. In this way natural
science arose; and under the guidance of Darwin naturalists learned
that living organisms are controlled and perpetuated chiefly by the two
factors of heredity and environment. Into this scheme of nature man
entered, and through mental power gradually assumed control over lower
nature; for man differs from other organisms in that he adjusts himself
to his surroundings largely by reconstructing them. While still retaining
heredity as a vital factor like lower living things, man is essentially
an environment-shaping organism, and lives by doing. The factors of his
existence are heredity and exercise, and it is his role in nature to
reconstruct the face of the earth, to modify all other living things
for the welfare of his kind, and finally, by growing knowledge, to
progressively improve his own kind and ennoble humanity.
The conservation movement marks a step in human advancement; for it is a
conscious and purposeful entering into control over nature, through the
natural resources, for the direct benefit of mankind. In truth it means
a revolution (arising, like all other beneficent revolutions, in clear
thinking) against an old order of things, preparatory to the framing of
principles on which a new order may arise; and in essence it reaches
those fundamental relations between man and earth which have stirred deep
thought and inspired high motives during all the generations of men.
Conservation is no passing caprice, no fantastic whim of a day; the idea
expressed by the term runs back to the mainsprings of human existence
and of righteousness, and it is in no way surprising that it has already
spread from sea to sea and found lodgment in millions of minds—albeit
still as seed rather than in the full bloom and rich fruitage destined to
follow as question grows into conviction and conviction into action.
THE PRESTIGE OF THE TREE.
As a vital factor in our national life, conservation began with forests
used and destroyed several times faster than they grew. Now a tree is
a noble object, a sacred thing; “the groves were God’s first temples”;
the apple is the theme of earliest legend, and the vine and fig tree
are emblems of domestic peace; the oak is the symbol of strength and
the pine of perpetuity; the memories and affections of the happily born
cluster about the old homestead trees under which their happiest hours
were spent. And so the material argument for conserving forests was
supported by deep-lying sentiment—and what obstacle can long resist the
united assaults of profit and sentiment? Then as growing knowledge showed
that the woods conserve the waters the force favorable to forests was
further increased. At the critical time the prophet of the forest arose
in Gifford Pinchot, and the gospel of conserving nature’s good for the
Nation’s strength took form.
Even before the public conscience was awakened to the woodland waste
the farm lands available for homesteads were nearly gone out of public
possession, and a plan to eke out the supply by irrigating arid districts
was framed by John Wesley Powell, soldier and scientist, whose grasp of
the relations between man and earth was stronger than any other of his
generation. His plan was extended and carried out by Frederick Haynes
Newell, engineer and builder, one of the live leaders of the conservation
movement. Thus Powell planted and Newell watered, and the wilderness
blossomed; and the aspiration for an independent home-owning citizenry
which shaped the Nation in its infancy, and then fell into neglect, was
revived. The Reclamation Service virtually extended the habitable and
productive area of the country; but its best gift was a re-awakened
desire for homes on the land, a re-kindling of that home sense which is
the mate of patriotism and handmaid of conservation.
Through genius fostered by stress of pioneering, this became a country
of invention; and through plentitude of coal and wood and iron,
manufacturing grew as never before, until the riches of one after another
of the forests and coal fields and ore beds were exhausted. Meantime
the contact of free citizens with nature—the common touch of man and
earth—made this a country of science, and scientific surveys measured the
mineral resources used and remaining for use. More than any other, Joseph
Austin Holmes came up as the apostle of better things in economical
exploitation and in the saving of human life in mine and factory, and the
last of these stirred deeper sympathy and evoked wider appreciation than
could the merely material considerations untouched by humane sentiment.
THE ROOSEVELT POLICY.
Though moved directly by desire for better use of the rivers, it was on
these three pillars—forests, lands, minerals—that the original structure
of conservation was founded by Theodore Roosevelt, humanitarian and
statesman, no less than president. Yet—“lest we forget”—it cannot be too
strongly emphasized that while the argument for conservation was and
is statable in terms of board feet and acres and tons and dollars, the
strength of the movement lies in the human feeling behind the material
units: in love of trees, in love of home, in love of country, in love of
family and fellow men. In truth, the material argument merely justifies
and gives formal warrant for the sentimental outgrowth born of increasing
intelligence coupled with increasing interdependence between man and
earth—for even like Anteus of old, modern men gain new life by contact
with earth.
Largely after the conservation movement was under way came the
realization that the water of the country is the primary resource,
since on it depends that productivity without which the lands would be
uninhabitable, the forests non-existent, and the minerals merely so much
inert and worthless matter. Now, the material basis for appreciation of
water has been largely worked out; the quantity has been computed more
carefully than before; the amount required for the maintenance of life
has been reckoned, and it has been shown that the capacity of the country
for population is only half what it would be if the land were more
freely watered. It has been emphasized that there is no assimilation,
or germination, or tissue growth, or reproduction in the absence of
water—indeed it has been shown that these vital processes are apparently
but manifestations of properties inhering in water; but, except here and
there in arid regions and now and then in its esthetic aspects, water
has not yet fully found that place in sentiment which it deserves as the
final measure of life on the land, the direct medium between man and
earth.
As the movement proceeded it was realized, even before the National
Conservation Commission reported, that all the natural resources (as
commonly defined) are balanced against that human life in which alone
they find use and value; for without men to enjoy them the earth and
the fullness thereof were as dead cosmic matter. So human efficiency
was recognized as a sort of equation expressing the relations between
man and earth, measured by the powers of accomplishment, the prospects
of perpetuity, and the general welfare of mankind; and the survey was
extended, first by Irving Fisher to the public health, considered with
special reference to industrial capacity and viability, and later
(through another agency headed by Liberty Hyde Bailey) to that rural
living which may and should contribute so largely to national strength
and spirit. Thereby the material field and much of the moral purport of
conservation were rounded out, and the lesson of science that man is
master over lower nature became practical and entered into the daily
thought of millions.
THE SCOPE OF CONSERVATION.
Such, in broad outline, has been the course of conservation to date,
that earlier course predetermining the present and future trend of the
movement. Yet forecast or even current view would be futile without
the fullest understanding that, despite the impressive material facts
with which conservationists point argument and convince contemporaries,
the conservation movement is primarily and fundamentally moral, and is
material only in secondary and empirical aspects; the material resources
form property, but the moral forces make men who create property at
will. It is the quality of human knowledge to advance, not uniformly
but per saltum. In the individual a great idea (perhaps the offspring
of subconscious cerebration) springs full-armed—like the daughter of
Jove—under momentary inspiration, and is gradually adjusted to the
general fabric of thought. In the people, a great idea (conceived in some
individual) sweeps from one to another swiftly, according to its fitness
as a new faith, or doctrine, or cult, or means of life, until enough are
inspired to reconstruct the old ideas and customs.
Somehow, men need these inspirations; they are essential to advancement,
are indeed the very means of mental growth; and the whole course of human
progress is marked by great inspirations. In the unwritten past of our
ancestry (though in the observed life of other races) the recognition of
paternity came as a luminous idea, and the mother-right of savagery was
shifted to the paternal kinship of barbarism, while the deific powers
were transformed from fearsome to gracious. Within the time of written
record, consanguineal tribes gathered into civic groups, yet civilization
became effective only under monotheistic faith and the great inspiration
going out from Palestine with the injunction, “Do unto others as ye would
that others should do unto you.” Later, Luther and Loyola fired mankind
religiously, and Cromwell politically, through inspirations influencing
all Christendom. And then came, through resistance to attempted tyranny
over a strong people and unparalleled weighing of human rights, the
quickened conviction that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness which inspired enlightenment and gave a
new form of government already spread afar over the lands of the earth.
With each inspiration, the moral impulse quickly rose above material
structures and yielded better institutions on the higher plane.
Now the conservation idea has spread and is still spreading as an
inspiration for which the national mind was ripe; it crystallizes
intuitive feeling as to eternal fitness—the feeling that the riches of
the land belong not to the few but in due share to all, both living and
yet unborn. So in its essence, conservation is a cult based on deep-lying
moral sense; and, just as in the earlier stages of human progress, all
material structures must be adjusted, albeit gradually, to the moral
foundation. Happily, the new cult is peculiarly adapted to our country,
not only by our plentitude of resources and our constructive genius but
by historical association. Ever the highest human aspirations have been
for liberty, equality, fraternity. Our Revolution was fought for liberty,
and our Constitution was framed for equality; and the end of conservation
is fraternity—a stricter honesty, richer patriotism, broader charity, and
warmer philanthropy ripening in the brotherhood of man.
MAN AND THE FOREST.
Since 1776 and 1787, knowledge of the relations between man and earth
has multiplied. Then forests were but haunts for game and obstacles
to settlement—the waters unreckoned, coal unknown, and iron little
used. Then but two elements of national strength were conceived:
(1) land as both means and symbol of homes, and (2) the home-making
people; and on this balance between lower nature and the higher nature
residing in mankind the Nation was founded. In 1908 the several natural
resources, waters, forests, lands, minerals, were in large use and were
balanced against human efficiency, measured chiefly by public health
and viability; yet in the last three years, under the inspiration of
conservation, the spirit of citizenship has spread more than in the
preceding century, until today it is widely recognized that the earth and
all its riches are for all mankind, and the natural resources as a whole
may now be balanced against human welfare in the individual, the family,
the community, and the state, including commonwealth and Nation.
In this broad view, conservation deals not merely with the sources of
welfare found in lower nature, but in still larger degree with the
higher powers involved in the relations among men—in human rights and
institutions and laws, social, industrial, civil and political. For it
is not enough for the free citizens of this new era to conserve the mere
materials for national power and perpetuity; the Nation itself, with all
that strength of national character which has given us the lead among
the nations, must be conserved for ourselves, our children, and our
children’s children! This is the chief duty of the day.
While individual and family and community and state are interdependent,
human efficiency begins in the individual. Only in the individual mind,
howsoever warmed by association, are ideas conceived; only by individual
aptitude, howsoever instructed, are tasks accomplished; only by
individual conscience, howsoever quickened, is conduct guided. Individual
standards of righteousness are higher than those of crowds of communities
or states. In war it is the man behind the gun, and in peace the man with
hand on tool or throttle that achieves victory. No state can be powerful
unless its constituent individuals are efficient. Now, individual
efficiency involves suitable food and clothing and dwelling, with health
and sanitary surroundings assuring normal expectation of life. And in
even higher degree it involves those inspirations of humanity; especially
love of kind and love of country, in which incentive buds and ambition
blossoms. These things are among the rights of the individual on which
the strength of the state must ever rest—the rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, of late expressed in the single term,
“Opportunity.”
THE RIGHT AND NEED OF WORK.
The clearest right and most needful opportunity is for work, that
exercise wherein men rise above lower nature, especially productive
labor in which visible results incite the mind and invigorate the hand.
Despite current clap-trap, there is no “inalienable right not to work”;
none have the right to idleness, and the country owes no man a living
unearned, for it is no less true now than of old that “they who work not,
neither shall they eat”; and neither community nor state can conserve its
strength without opening wide the door of opportunity to its constituent
individuals.
Within any generation, efficiency is attained by individual work—that
exercise which combines with heredity to shape human progress. Yet it
is only through the run of generations that heredity acts and that
individuals, like communities and states, are perpetuated. Indeed,
the essential human unit is neither the individual nor the social
assemblage, but the procreative family. So the ultimate strength of any
nation, and the progress of mankind in controlling lower nature, hinge on
maintenance of the family triad with its vital angles of mother and child.
Herein moderns may learn something from the ancients and lower races.
When mankind commenced conquest over lower nature, mother-right
prevailed; the mothers were priestesses and law-givers for their clans,
and they and their daughters were esteemed as the bearers of the line
of life. Under the patriarchial condition, the child-bearers were seen
to measure tribal strength, and were set apart and supported, and often
multiplied, through warfare and polygyny, though sometimes degraded into
slaves and chattels. Under the militant motives of early civilization,
when the strength of cities and principalities was measured by the
fighting men, as shown by Fustel de Coulanges in “The Ancient City,” and
Sir Henry Maine in “Ancient Law,” wives and mothers were debarred from
councils and virtually disfranchised. Although “When Knighthood Was in
Flower” and romance in its heyday, the prolific sex was often both cause
and guerdon of strife; and it is only under enlightenment, with its
broad view of general welfare, that the pendulum is swinging toward that
equitable division of rights and duties and responsibilities between the
sexes and ages of mankind inhering in the family.
In the light of accumulated experience, it is to the interest of
community and state to vouchsafe mother and child exceptional rights;
the prospective mother has a right to family protection and to freedom
of choice in mating, and the bearing mother to both material sustenance
and the spiritual support of affection during her fruitful period. The
child has a right to be conceived in the inspiration of love (the most
potent force in humanity) and born to a welcome—and then to both material
sustenance and moral sympathy during infancy and early adolescence.
These rights may burden individuals and communities, yet the burden is
essential to the richness of heredity and the fullness of humanity. Now
the rights of the generation arise in the family. Conservation came up
with the new concept of continuity, added to that of present power. It
was first felt that each future generation is entitled equally with
the present one to a due share of the natural resources. Yet already
the moral light has shown that each generation in its turn is no less
entitled to the benefits of happy birth and good breeding, to normally
increasing numerical strength, and to the fittest laws and institutions
within reach of the parents, for each child and each generation naturally
inherit not merely parental traits but their share in the community
and state. Already conservation and eugenics and righteous decrial of
race-suicide are awakening a new sense of generational responsibility;
and it grows clearer every day that our present power and prestige
were of little worth unless assured of perpetuity by due regard for
generations coming up and yet to come.
THE GREGARIOUS INSTINCT.