engaged in promoting the development of humanitarian work in the United
States, and has also been useful in promoting a similar work in many
foreign lands. During October, 1910, there was held under the auspices
of this association, in the city of Washington, D. C., and under the
Honorary Presidency of William H. Taft, the President of our country,
the first American International Humane Conference. There were present
representatives from thirty foreign countries. The addresses, papers and
topics which were heard were of great value. There was also held, in
connection with the International Conference, the first international
exhibit of objects of humane interest. This was shown in the New United
States National Museum building, where the conference was also held. The
exhibition, which lasted a week, proved phenomenal in extent and interest.
As a direct and acknowledged result of the Washington conference,
there is to be held, during June, 1912, in London, England, a similar
international congress, which it is believed will greatly assist the
spread of work which we represent.
The result of international meetings of this description is to promote
the spread of humanitarian doctrines everywhere. Representatives
were present at Washington from Japan, China, India, Persia, Turkey,
Russia, Australia, and almost every section of the globe. We believe
that the choicest asset which any nation possesses is its childhood.
Our anti-cruelty societies are seeking all over the world to protect
childhood from influences which are prejudicial to health or morals. This
means a better standard and average in childhood, and the elimination of
great masses of the youth which, under present conditions, inevitably
become recruits of the armies of vagrancy and crime.
The other great field of humane endeavor is to promote the conservation
and protection of animal life. The livestock of a country constitutes one
of the most valuable assets, in an intrinsic sense, which a country like
ours can possess. As pointed out in our report last year, efforts which
may readily be made would result in the saving of hundreds of thousands
of horses and cattle for longer and more useful service.
The American Humane Association intends to ask Congress for relief of
transportation conditions which are responsible for great injury and loss
of livestock, by requesting that a minimum speed bill be enacted. This
proposition has been heartily endorsed by the Department of Agriculture
in Washington and by humanitarians generally. Various other reforms are
contemplated and will be pushed to a conclusion in the near future.
We feel that our work is a thoroughly practical one, and that in its
largest sense it stands for better citizenship and the promotion of the
moral interests of the commonwealth as well as its commercial ones. We
trust that the Third National Conservation Congress will approve of the
work in which we are engaged, which represents a membership of much over
one hundred thousand persons and an expenditure of more than a million
and a half dollars annually.
CONSERVATION OF BIRD LIFE.
BY DR. GEORGE W. FIELD, _Representing the National Audubon Society_.
I want to call your attention to one phase which has hardly been touched
upon—importance of the conservation of our bird life. When you realize
that the insect places a tax upon every one of us twice as great as we
are called upon to pay to our towns, cities and states, a tax of at least
five per cent on every agriculturist and consumer of food in this nation,
we realize the work of the National Audubon Society, which is organized
for the purpose of protecting the wild insectivorous birds. The resources
of this association last year were about $35,000. Over against that was
this damage to our agricultural interests of over one million dollars.
So you can see therefore that we have been able to do but very little
relatively. When we compare the condition in this country with that of
Germany, where they have one hundred times as many birds to the square
mile as we have in this country, we realize the importance of the work
which this association is carrying on. We ask your support, every one,
in every way, to assist the activities of this National Audubon Society.
(Applause)
I also represent the National Shell Fish Association. Now, the purpose
of this association is to issue, so to speak, a sanitary insurance to
every person who consumes oysters, clams, lobsters and that type of
sea food. In other words, we want to make it possible that when you in
Kansas, Missouri, and in the interior of the country, eat from your
table, or in your hotels, oysters brought from the seacoast of both sides
of this nation, to be certain that there is no chance of infection, of
typhoid fever, or other disease. To do that we are asking every state
in the Nation to realize the enormous waste of material in the form of
sewage and manufacturing waste which is pouring into our streams and
into our coastal waters. To take one concrete illustration, the city of
Boston, in Massachusetts, spent five or six millions of dollars for the
purpose of putting the sewage into the ocean. It did that, but when it
did it destroyed annually the potential capacity of that water to develop
shell fish food. In other words, it was precisely the same as if so many
thousands of acres in your farming country were utterly destroyed forever
for all farming purposes. It was reduced merely to a desert, whereas, if
that material had been placed on the land, where it belonged, there would
have been enormous benefits arising to the farm, and it would have been
possible to cultivate that land under water for raising food. Now, we are
demonstrating, acre for acre, that the land under water can raise more
food—nitrogenous food, the most expensive type of food for man—at a less
expense in time, in capital, and in labor, than the very best acres in
your boasted river bottoms, a type of food material which can be raised
nowhere else than on the coasts of our country, on both the Atlantic and
Pacific and the Gulf.
ADDRESS.
BY W. J. RUSHTON, _President American Association of Refrigeration_.
I desire to thank the Congress in the name of the members of the American
Association of Refrigeration for the invitation to be represented here by
official delegates.
We consider it especially fitting that our association should participate
in the deliberations of this Congress, because it stands for the
conservation of the perishable foods of the people in the broadest sense.
In order that those who are not already familiar with the objects of
our Association and with the methods it employs in carrying these into
effect, and to illustrate how well our work meshes with the purposes of
this National Congress, I will call your attention to several statements
taken from the statutes by which our organization is governed. Among our
objects are:
“To institute investigations, experiments and tests for the
purpose of demonstrating, correct solutions of scientific,
technical and industrial problems pertaining to the art of
refrigeration.
“To inspire confidence in the public mind, and appreciation
of the beneficial effects of refrigeration upon perishable
food products, both in transit and when stored for the purpose
of conservation, by collecting and disseminating authentic
information on the subject.
“To encourage the expansion of American trade, commerce and
transportation of perishable agricultural products, and to
assist the commercial and industrial interests affected by
mechanical refrigeration, both at home and abroad.
“To further its purposes and extend its influence by
publications, meetings, conferences and courses of lectures,
and by encouraging the introduction in educational institutions
of regular courses in refrigeration.
“To coöperate with the International Association of
Refrigeration in the organization of international commissions
for the discussion of questions of international import, and in
the determination of correct basic data pertaining to the art
of refrigeration.”
The conservation of the natural resources of the country is now
recognized by all thinking persons as a vital factor in our national
life, both as an obligation to posterity and because of its immediate
influence on the material welfare and the health of the people.
The influence of this Congress, as it is felt more generally over the
country, must result in strongly stimulating thrift and economy as well
as respect for law among the people. The exercise of these qualities is
essential to the conservation of the waters, the forests, the lands and
the minerals, as well as all of the vital resources of the country.
Our people—in fact, the people of all the civilized countries of the
world—are now confronted with serious problems due to the high prices of
the necessaries of life, principally their food supplies.
It is believed that these conditions largely grow out of neglect to
properly conserve and market perishable foods and to lack of adequate
means for promptly collecting and transporting them in sound condition
from regions capable of ample production to the thickly populated
centers; also to insufficient means for preserving such supplies from
seasons of overproduction to periods of scarcity.
It is certainly a very necessary and laudable mission, to concentrate the
intelligence and energy of a body of men such as compose this Congress
for the conservation of the forests, lands, waters, minerals and vital
resources of the country. Our association is very much interested in
all of this, because lumber, minerals and water are very necessary to
the refrigerating industry, while the conservation of the soil is of
paramount importance as the source of the fuel of the great human engine
through the operation of which all of the other resources are harnessed
to the world’s work.
We are, therefore, here particularly to emphasize the necessity of
conserving the perishable foods of the people by refrigeration, that much
misunderstood and often misrepresented natural mode of preservation.
However productive the soil may be made, and however ample the supply of
highly nutritious food may be, unless such food is made available for use
when and where it is needed, and where it must be supplied at prices the
people can afford to pay, the conservation of the soil will have failed
of extending the fullest measure of its possible benefits to the people.
Our organization has made an especial study of the subject of the
production, the transportation and the conservation of perishable
foods, and of the laws and proposed laws applying to the subject. The
hearings before the Senate committees on manufactures of the Sixty-first
and Sixty-second Congresses, the reports of which are published by
the National Government, abound in evidences of the activity of our
committees and individual members.
Therefore, if it is in order and otherwise agreeable, I would like
to propose that, in furtherance of the purposes of this Congress,
and in order that its opportunities for doing good may be realized
in the fullest measure, a standing committee on food be added to the
present standing committees. Such committee to be composed of persons
best qualified to render the most efficient service in the study of
the questions involved in the production, collection, transportation,
preservation and marketing of perishable foods, and to report to the
Fourth Congress. Such report to be made the basis of measures to conserve
the perishable foods of the people, to improve their quality, increase
their production, and to promote such relations between the producer
and consumer as will bring about lower and more nearly uniform prices
throughout each year.
WILD LIFE PROTECTION.
WILLIAM EDWARD COFFIN, _Vice-President Camp Fire Club of America,
Chairman Committee on Game Protective Legislation and Preserves._
The Camp Fire Club of America was founded as an organization of big
game hunters, with the protection of wild life and forests as its great
objects. Dan Beard once characterized the club as a “Society of Criminals
for the Suppression of Crime.” Big game hunters have always been active
in game protection, indeed in all conservation measures, and that because
their touch with the woods keeps the problem alive.
To the sportsmen of America are due nearly all the existing game
protective laws.
Among the Camp Fire Club’s members are Dr. W. T. Hornaday, whom all
honor as the Washington of wild life protection; Ernest Thompson Seton
and Dan Beard, who by their work with the boys are doing more for the
future of conservation than any men living with but two exceptions:
Irving Bacheller, A. W. Dimock, Dillon Wallace, Gifford Pinchot—God
bless him—and many others, who with pen, time and money are laboring
ceaselessly for the great cause of conservation which is so near your
hearts and mine.
The club may fairly claim for less than two years’ work: Yeoman service
in the defeat of the bill permitting the sale of wild bird plumage in
New York; the defeat of a bill authorizing spring shooting of ducks on
Long Island; in securing the $20,000 appropriation for the starving elk
in Wyoming; in enlarging the Waterton lake, park and game preserve now
being formed in Southwestern Alberta.
To the Camp Fire Club belongs the sole credit, outside of Congress, for
defeating the proposed twenty-year renewal of the Fur Seal Killing lease
on the Pribilof Islands. Much of the credit for that public opinion which
forced the treaty stopping pelagic sealing. When the fur herd is, through
complete protection, restored to something like its old numbers, the
country will have the Camp Fire Club to thank for fairly snatching that
herd from the jaws of complete annihilation.
To Dr. Hornaday, our great leader, is due the famous Bayne-Blauvelt
bill—the greatest single piece of game protective legislation ever
enacted by any state or country. Think of it; that bill absolutely
prohibits the sale of all wild game in the State of New York. The lion’s
share of the campaign work incident to its passage was done by members
of the Camp Fire Club. How well it was done you will realize when I
state that the bill passed with only one dissenting vote in the whole
legislature; and how it was done when I say that upwards of 30,000
letters were written asking senators and assemblymen to support the bill.
The passage of that bill was the turning point of the war between the
army of destruction and the army of preservation in New York state.
I must not leave this subject without a tribute to Governor Dix of New
York, without whose hearty coöperation and steadfast support we would
have been helpless.
In spite of great pressure by selfish interests he stood like a rock and
has fully redeemed the ante-election pledges of himself and of his party.
Let his name be written in the Conservation Temple of Fame.
So much for the past. For the future: 1st. We propose to keep everything
we have gained. 2d. We have arranged for Gifford Pinchot and Overton
Price to visit the Adirondack Mountains, study the situation and make
a report which will make possible sound, seasonable legislation for
“Scientific Fire Protection,” “Scientific Reforestation,” “Scientific
Care of Existing Forests.” Legislation which combines sane utilization
with sound conservation.
I wish you all could have seen the cheerfulness with which Pinchot and
Price responded to the request of the club that they undertake this work.
The club is, at the request of the New York State Conservation
Commissioners, to coöperate in a complete codification of the state game
laws.
This we hope will result in a series of stringent but reasonable laws;
simple, plain, readily enforced. Laws which the National Conservation
Congress will be proud of and can safely recommend as a model for other
states.
This is largely work in one state only, but it is wise to clear your own
door yard before preaching sanitation to your neighbors, and with the
beam removed from our own eye, we can the better see how to remove the
mote from our brother’s.
Outside of New York we propose: 1st. To push Bayne-Blauvelt bills in the
North Atlantic states for stopping the sale of game. Thus striking at the
root of game slaughter is far more effective than attempting to police
the army of market hunters or any other method of trimming the branches.
2d. We shall agitate ceaselessly for the complete protection of the fur
seal. 3d. We shall do what we can to put life into the Migratory Bird
Bill, which has been in congressional cold storage for so many years,
and to promote a migratory fish bill. 4th. We propose to urge upon
states—even upon counties—the formation of bird, game and fish refuges,
one of the most effective methods of game protection. 5th. We shall hold
ourselves in readiness to further any and every sound proposition for
the conservation of this country’s natural resources, whether animal,
vegetable or mineral.
And now having finished my report, permit me a few words of indictment
and a few words of appeal.
The National Conservation Congress and Association heretofore have
practically ignored wild life. Infinite and detailed attention has been
given to lands, minerals, water and forests, and the Camp Fire Club is
with you in all these, but are your halls so narrow, your boundaries
so confined, that you have no room for the great cause of wild life
protection?
Do you realize that in New York state alone there are nearly 150,000
active gunners; in Pennsylvania over 100,000, and that even a two shot
gun does not satisfy them?
The laws in all states are so liberal to the killers and so hard on the
game that wild life is swiftly vanishing.
The commercial interests of gun-making, game selling and feather
working are terribly destructive influences. No wild species can
stand exploitation for commercial purposes. In every case it spells
extermination. Look backward at the millions of bison, fur seal,
passenger pigeon, pinnated grouse and Florida egrets. Where are they all?
Exterminated to fill the cash boxes of greedy men.
How much longer is Christian civilization, how much longer are you going
to stand for such things? In birds alone six species are absolutely
extinct, thirteen more nearly so. Our states are spending millions to
fight insect pests whose increase is due chiefly to the decrease of bird
life. How can it be stopped? By your efforts, those of the Camp Fire Club
and other organizations. There must be a pull, a long pull and a pull all
together. The majority of the American people are conscientious, humane,
just and merciful toward all creatures; once arouse that majority and it
will right any wrong.
The protection of wild life requires a campaign of education and
publicity; given these, legislation will follow as light follows the sun.
Congressmen and legislators will do the right thing if they are asked to
do it often enough and hard enough by the people they represent. We do
not appeal to this Congress as sportsmen or in the interest of sportsmen;
but for the millions of men, women and children who love the outdoor life
and who do not shoot at all.
We therefore ask for two things: 1st. A broad definite recognition in
your platform organization and proceedings of this great branch of
the conservation movement. We ask a standing committee on wild life
protection. 2d. Your coöperation, collectively and individually. Bone of
our bone, flesh of our flesh, blood brothers, the Camp Fire Club, true of
heart, clear of hand, eager in support of all you stand for, calls to you.
Come over into Macedonia and help us.
PREVENTABLE FIRE WASTE: CONSERVATION EFFORTS FOR ITS REDUCTION.
_By a Committee of the National Board of Fire Underwriters._
In each of the previous national assemblages of this character the
National Board of Fire Underwriters has been represented and has
earnestly endeavored to portray the enormity of the preventable fire
waste of our country and its retarding effect on our national growth and
prosperity.
With each annual meeting of our organization, statistical information has
been prepared and furnished to the public and press, setting forth the
tremendous money value in property which was being annually destroyed
by fire throughout our country. As an aid toward convincing our people
that a vast amount of real wealth was being wiped out of existence
annually by preventable fires, our committee on statistics and origin
of fires, by the aid of the Federal Government, secured figures of the
fire loss in European cities and countries, which were compared with the
fire loss of the cities of the United States and the United States as a
whole and reduced to a comparison of the loss per capita. These figures
were published by the National Board of Fire Underwriters in 1906. The
comparison was so startling as to attract very wide attention and gave
activity to the fire conservation movement.
The Geological Survey, through its technologic branch, investigated
the fire loss and the cost of fire protection in the United States in
1907, and published Bulletin 418, known as “The Fire Tax and Waste of
Structural Materials in the United States”—a pamphlet most impressive in
the facts presented and irrefutable in its arguments. We quote a section:
“The investigation disclosed the fact that the total cost of fires
in the United States in 1907 amounted to almost one-half the cost of
new buildings constructed in the country for the year. The total cost
of the fires, excluding that of forest fires and marine losses, but
including excess cost of fire protection due to bad construction, and
excess premiums over insurance paid, amounted to over $456,485,000, a
tax on the people exceeding the total value of the gold, silver, copper,
and petroleum produced in the United States in that year. The cost of
building construction in forty-nine leading cities of the United States
reporting a total population of less than 18,000,000 amounted, in 1907,
to $661,076,286, and the cost of building construction for the entire
country in the same year is conservatively estimated at $1,000,000,000.
Thus it will be seen that nearly one-half the value of all the new
buildings constructed within one year is destroyed by fire. The total
fire cost in this country is five times as much per capita as in any
country of Europe. This fire cost was greater than the value of the real
property and improvements in any one of the following states: Maine, West
Virginia, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alabama, Louisiana,
Montana.
“The actual fire losses due to the destruction of buildings and their
contents amounted to $215,084,709, a per capita loss for the United
States of $2.51. The per capita losses in the cities of the six leading
European countries amounted to but 33 cents, or about one-eighth of the
per capita loss sustained in the United States. In addition to this waste
of wealth and natural resources, 1,449 persons were killed and 5,654 were
injured in fires.
“The total loss on buildings in the United States was $109,156,894 and on
contents $105,927,815. There were fires in 36,140 brick, iron, and stone
buildings, with a loss of $31,092,687 on the buildings and $37,332,580 on
the contents, and in 129,117 frame buildings, with a loss of $78,064,207
on the buildings and $68,595,235 on the contents. In cities and villages
with a population of 1,000 or more there were 6,324 fires that extended
beyond the building of origin, with a total exposure loss of $13,913,694.
The loss on fires that were confined to the building of origin in the
cities and villages amounted to $93,179,589.”
The records of this board herewith subjoined show to what extent our fire
loss has increased almost yearly since 1875.
-------+-------------
| Aggregate
Year. | Property
| Loss.
-------+-------------
1875 | $78,102,285
1876 | 54,630,600
1877 | 68,265,800
1878 | 64,315,900
1879 | 77,703,700
1880 | 74,643,400
1881 | 81,280,900
1882 | 84,505,024
1883 | 100,149,228
1884 | 110,008,611
1885 | 102,818,796
1886 | 104,924,750
1887 | 120,283,055
1888 | 110,885,665
1889 | 123,046,833
1890 | 108,993,792
1891 | 143,764,967
1892 | 151,516,058
1893 | 167,544,370
1894 | 140,006,484
1895 | 142,110,233
1896 | 118,737,420
1897 | 116,354,575
1898 | 130,593,905
1899 | 153,597,830
1900 | 160,929,805
1901 | 165,817,810
1902 | 161,078,040
1903 | 145,302,155
1904 | 229,198,050
1905 | 165,221,650
1906 | 518,611,800
1907 | 215,084,709
1908 | 217,885,850
1909 | 188,705,150
1910 | 214,003,300
-------+-------------
The fire insurance interests have carried on an aggressive campaign for
the reduction of our discreditable fire losses and have been foremost in
suggesting practical and reasonable remedial measures.