organization may be of service to the other; that which I represent
gaining an enlarged interest in those social, economic and moral
questions which so vitally affect human welfare, and you, perhaps,
utilizing the trained experience available to most fully disclose
the true conditions upon which conclusions must depend, so that the
principles advocated may always be based upon ascertained facts.
As I listened to the reading of the resolutions on the last afternoon, it
seemed to me that if the situation referred to in my last paragraph had
been utilized, the statement with regard to the purity of rivers would
have been materially modified. I think that civil (sanitary) engineers
are rapidly realizing that there is a practicable limit set by conditions
of civilization to the absolute purity of rivers, in some cases, which
has been theoretically deemed desirable. However, I wish to say in
general, that it seems to me the resolutions passed by the Congress are
excellent.
ADDRESS.
BY J. C. BAUMGARTNER _of California_.
I regret exceedingly that a gentleman from our state with whom many of
you are well acquainted, a former governor, George C. Pardee, who is the
chairman of our State Conservation commission, is not here. I feel wholly
incompetent to represent California upon this occasion, but have been
asked to say just a few words.
When the governor of California asked me a few days ago to take a place
upon the state Conservation commission I was very proud and glad to do
so. I happened to be a newspaper man by profession, and quite a number of
papers throughout the state had little items about my appointment, and
the heading in many instances read something like this: “Baumgartner gets
a fat plum,” “An editor recognized,” and so on down the line. I made a
little reply to that in this way: I said that I was very glad indeed to
be recognized as a man who was willing and perhaps in some little measure
competent to have a part in the great work of conservation, without
money and without price, as you all know, and as was expressed from this
platform this morning, this work is a work in which no individual has any
selfish interest. It is a public-spirited work. And it is certainly one
of the biggest and best things that is going on in this country today.
Nothing has been done in California by the state government by way of
recognition of this work until within the past few months. So that we
who are here from that state are here to learn, and not to attempt to
instruct. If we can learn our A B Cs here, we shall feel that our time
and money have been well spent in coming here.
About five or six months ago—I haven’t a recollection of the exact
date—the Conservation commission of California was appointed and began
its work. I have had the pleasure and the privilege of attending only
one meeting which was held a week ago last Friday, and at that meeting
I was prevailed upon to come to this Congress, because other members,
more competent to represent the state, could not leave home. Accompanying
me are other gentlemen from that state. The secretary of our state
commission, and representatives of other phases of conservation are
here. We have a great deal of rich agricultural land in California, and
we are a little shy of water in some places. We have ideal conditions
in many respects for manufacturing, but we are also a little shy on
coal. So that we turn our attention naturally to water and power first.
We have entered into coöperative agreements with federal employes,
representatives of the various federal bureau departments, who are
working in our state, especially the geological survey people, and
the representatives of the department of agriculture, and we have men
of our own in the field gathering data on those important phases of
conservation in California—water resources and power resources. The work
has only just begun, but we feel that we were fortunate in securing this
coöperation of the National Government. It is barely possible that this
may be a suggestion to some other state. We entered into agreements with
these people to gather the data that we need in order to give us the
information necessary for intelligent recommendation to the legislature
as to the necessary legislation in our state. This work has just begun,
and we feel that we have saved a great deal of time in not having to
organize a complete force of our own, and also a great deal of money has
been saved in eliminating overhead charges. These gentlemen are gathering
for us complete data as to the amount and character of lands that can
be irrigated, and complete data as to the water that is available for
irrigating those lands. We also in our last legislature, in addition to
providing for this commission, provided for a board of control of water
power, and under that law the state has absolute control and regulation
of water power. In California there is sufficient water power to turn
every wheel that is now turned in the United States. It is estimated
by federal government experts that we have in California in use and
operation 250,000 horsepower, and that we might easily develop five
million. It is also estimated that this five million horsepower on the
basis of the price of coal in California is a billion dollars a year.
So you can see how important that phase of the work is to us. We are
accompanied here by the secretary of our commission, Mr. Louis R. Glavis,
and during the course of the convention if there is anything that any one
wishes to ask about our work or plans, Mr. Glavis can no doubt answer the
questions intelligently. Very likely I could not if the questions were
put to me.
We wish to say in this same connection that we would indeed be glad to
have the representatives and the conservation commissions in other states
and all conservation bodies and organizations, send us any information
they have that may be of benefit to us, and we shall be glad, indeed, to
reciprocate that courtesy. I do not think there is anything else that I
can say, ladies and gentlemen. We merely wanted you to know that we were
awake, or just beginning to get awake in California on this important
subject, and that we shall give it our best efforts, and invite your
hearty coöperation. I thank you. (Applause)
REPORT FROM IDAHO.
BY MRS. HOLLAND C. DAY.
While I am not a native of Idaho, I must say that I claim allegiance to
the state of Missouri, and Governor Hadley is my governor. (Applause)
But, as I spent many months in Idaho, I was appointed by the newspapers
to speak a word for Idaho in case there was no one else here to represent
her. Therefore that is my excuse for appearing before you.
Through the Carey act Idaho has had more opportunity to be settled than
through the general homestead act, as there is not so much time required
to stay on the land before beginning to cultivate. Of course, you all
know that is a sage brush country, and there is lots of grubbing to be
done there. A few years ago I helped to plant an orchard of 167 acres.
Eight thousand fruit trees were planted there. It is called Pasadena
valley. From my little hut we counted sixteen settlements of school
teachers and their wives, and young people settling in that valley,
making a new start in life. That valley blossoms, I was going to say,
like a rose, but I mean like an apple tree. For two years now these
apple trees have been growing and putting out fine new shoots and they
have been obliged to cut these twigs away in order to have the best kind
of apples two years from now. Dr. Morrison’s orchard is situated in
Pasadena valley: he has 167 acres there. He is a man well known in the
State of Washington, and he took up this land for the sake of inducing
others to come. Now, as far as the irrigation problem is concerned, you
all know about it. I am confined to five minutes, but I want to say that
the sooner the people of the United States, especially of the East, will
not think so much about the productiveness of the soil as they will of
the locality, and they think more of the locality I would say, than the
productiveness, then the whole western country will be a Mecca for some
of the hide-bound people of the East. (Applause)
Now, I am a New Yorker myself originally. I was a New York girl up to
thirty years ago, and now I am a Missourian, and once a Missourian always
a Missourian. And when I went out West they did not have to show me,
either. (Applause) But I see the people of the East do not understand the
conservation theory as well as they might. I have talked with many, and
you take up the New York papers, and you will find that they are very
provincial. There is nothing outside of New York. You have to come West
and get the western papers to find out what is going on all over the
world, and conservation is the touch-word nowadays. I want to say that
Idaho is heart and soul in this movement. I represent a paper that goes
all over Idaho and is looking forward to some report from this Congress
with a great deal of interest, and I shall be pleased to report it as
well and effectively as only a woman can. I thank you very much, and if
you want to plant any orchards and have them grow and make money, and
send your apples to Europe and all over the world, come to Idaho, to
King’s Hill or Glenn’s Ferry. I thank you. (Applause)
REPORT FROM ILLINOIS.
BY COLONEL ISHAM RANDOLPH.
COL. RANDOLPH—I bring you God speed and the good will of our Governor who
cannot be here himself. He is lying upon a bed of pain with a broken leg,
but that is the only thing that is lame about him. He is as determined
in spirit, and as earnest in his efforts for the good of his own people
and for the good of the whole Nation as though he was sound in every bone
in his body.
Illinois, the sister state to Missouri, is not a novice in the
conservation movement. She began it a long time ago. She has had her
conservation work going on for many years, and she has learned that in
union there is strength. In Illinois we have had for a number of years,
the Internal Improvement commission, which joined hands with the State
Geological Survey, with the United States Government Survey, with the
water survey, with the fish commission, and hand in hand they have
worked for the development of the state and the conservation of our
resources. Something has been said about the failure of the land in the
East. It was my good fortune to be a delegate to the first Conservation
Congress in the White House. The president of our Illinois University,
in the course of his remarks said, that so much was said about the
misfortunes, of the impoverishment of the land of New England, of the
lands of New York, of the lands of Virginia and other eastern states,
but, he said, “My friends, I do not so regard it. The impoverishment
of these lands has sent the sons of those states to build up the West.
They have carried with them their energy, their brains, their character,
and they are making the great West what it is today.” I repeated that
to a distinguished educator in agricultural lines who is now in this
audience, and what do you think his remark was? He said, “Did he also go
on to say that wherever the English-speaking people had set foot they had
robbed the soil, and given it nothing back?” Now, our universities are
teaching our English-speaking people, and our people of all languages,
how to give back to the soil that which has been taken from it. Our
University of Illinois, with its experiment stations, its work on behalf
of agriculture, has so educated its people that each year the results of
that education is to give back to the state more than all the money that
Illinois has ever put into this great institution. It has been said of a
great eastern college that it is a kindergarten for hell. Not so of our
great institutions. That is a kindergarten from which we are educating
men to upbuild our state, to make it agriculturally and in every other
way, what that great state should be. We have in Illinois a number of
things to be conserved. We have our coal resources. These problems have
been taken up by the Geological Survey, and are being handled in a way
which still result in great good for the state. We have no arid lands in
Illinois, but we have flooded lands, overflowed lands. We have hundreds
of thousands of acres which we are now starting in to reclaim. It is the
business of a commission which was appointed by the State of Illinois
to study its streams, to look out for the interests of the state, to
recover from all unlawful owners, unlawful seizure of lands which
rightfully belonged to the state. It is the business of that commission
to conserve the water power of the state. There is a great asset for
which our Governor is making an excellent fight. The question is, shall
Illinois own the water power of the Illinois river, and conserve it for
all use, or shall private capital own that, and all the people use it
by paying for it? It has been said that we have been defeated in this
thing. Why, gentlemen, as a great leader—I believe he was a commander
of a vessel—when called upon to surrender said, “We have just begun to
fight.” We are going to conserve that water power for the people of the
state and we are going to give the state and the Nation a water way.
This is a congress to consider the conservation of the land, the soil
development of the land, but, gentlemen, you must bear in mind that this
country is growing by leaps and bounds, and that the railroads of our
country cannot keep pace with the transportation demands. We must look to
the future. It is said that our water ways are of no use today. Ah, but
they will be of use. The time is coming when these water ways, when every
water way that can float a boat will be required to take the produce of
our farms to market. The time is not long past when our railroads were
so glutted with produce that the farmers were losing their hard earnings
because they could not put their grain into market. This occurred at a
time when the population of the states which may be considered tributary
to the Mississippi river were only 31.4 per square mile. The same census
gave Great Britain a population of 312.5 to the square mile, and these
states are so rich in soil that they will support a population equal to
that of any other area on the face of the earth, and that population is
coming—you cannot begin to get ready for it too soon. In 1913 at the
present rate of progress the Panama Canal will be opened to the nations
of the earth for business. Will the Mississippi valley be able and ready
to float its produce down to avail that great opening, or must it go on
forever shipping its produce by rail to some Pacific or Atlantic port, to
be there loaded into the vessels, and go through this canal in vessels
that ought to be loaded at your own doors, in your own city? I make this
appeal for the water ways, and I make it brief, because my time is up,
and I thank you for your attention. (Applause.)
REPORT FOR INDIANA.
BY HARRY EVEREST BARNARD.
I represent the Indiana branch of the National conservation association.
The state which is the center of population, the center of industrial
activity, the center of literary activity. We believe that Indiana is
the state most progressive in the way of constructive, conservative
legislation of any of the states of our great country. During the last
few years our legislature has been doing active constructive work.
We have this last year placed upon our statute books the first cold
storage bill passed in the United States which is really constructive
legislation. We believe, in Indiana, that conservation means utilization,
economic utilization, and that the manufacturers who know how to make a
better brick out of Indiana clay; the health officer who shows us how to
conserve and improve the health of our school children, or teaches us how
to build a better school house; the man who can produce a new product out
of Indiana oil, is a true conservationist. The state boards of health
of Indiana have been devoting most of their time in the last few years
to a study of stream pollution. We have been studying the pollution of
the southern end of Lake Michigan, by the industrial activities at the
northern end of our state. We have shown the citizens in that northern
part of Indiana how they are pouring their sewage into Lake Michigan
through one pipe and drawing water from Lake Michigan through another. At
the present time we are studying the pollution of the Ohio river by the
sewage of the cities of Indiana, and we have now demonstrated by a survey
which is still in operation, but which has covered over 300 miles of the
Ohio river, that wonderful stream of water is nothing but a stream of
sewage its entire length, wholly unfit for drinking purposes.
Indiana is regulating the propagation of the unfit, by effective
legislation. Indiana is taking a stand in the front of all health
organization work. It has this last year introduced compulsory medical
inspection of school children. Within the last two years Indiana,
although not at the present time a forest state, has become aroused to
the necessity of work along the lines of intelligent forest conservation,
not only because we need the lumber, and the timber and wood, but because
we need to preserve the life of our streams. Indiana has found that
within the last twenty years the ground water level throughout the state
has been lowered some twenty feet, and is now realizing that without
proper forest conservation it cannot expect to find sufficient water for
its needs in the not distant future. (Applause.)
REPORT FOR IOWA.
BY THOMAS H. MACBRIDE.
I shall say nothing about the resources of Iowa. This is an intelligent
audience (applause) and I take it there is not a man or woman in any
state in the United States who does not know all about the fact that
Iowa is the most magnificent garden on the face of the earth. I shall,
therefore, say nothing about Iowa. I do say, however, that my notion
of this whole conservation movement is simply the devotion to an idea.
And that idea is the right use of this world. Our problem, therefore,
is the right use of the state of Iowa. Now, then, we have magnificent
soil; we have streams that run riot in spring and winter and are so dry
in summer that all the large catfish have to move away. We have lakes,
the most beautiful perhaps of all the lakes, the small lakes, on the
northern plains. We have some forests, and Nature put the forests in
the right place; she put it to protect the streams. Four years ago the
legislature of Iowa made provision for a commission which should report
upon the proper conservation of our soils, our lakes, our streams and our
woods. That commission did make a report. That report is available for
the members of this Congress; it can be had. That report was presented to
our last legislature, our latest legislature was called to the momentous
task of choosing a senator for the senate of the United States, and in
devotion to that tremendous problem the report of the commission was
entirely overlooked. That report was a good one; I say so because I was
a member of that commission, and I therefore make this apology for the
legislature of my state, in view of the fact that I think the legislature
overlooked the most magnificent piece of work. But in all seriousness,
Iowa is at work. The people of Iowa are alive to these problems. We have
there many agencies that are at work. Our whole subject is before our
state colleges of agriculture, than which it is admitted there are none
better. There are many men in all parts of the state who are devoted to
this idea, and one of them has been so prominent that he stands above us
all today as the president of this Congress (applause). It is therefore
less necessary that I should say anything about Iowa. Mr. President, do
you believe that hundreds of men and women would leave their homes at
their own cost, and at the cost and sacrifice of their own business,
for anything less than an idea? And, Mr. President, the time has come
when that idea shall win. It must win, if we are going to use this world
rightly, because no problem is solved until it is solved rightly. Then,
when that time comes, you will see in Iowa, and in all these border
states, not only the freest people on the face of the earth, but the
happiest. (Applause.)
REPORT FROM KANSAS.
BY DEAN H. J. WATERS, _Of the State Agricultural College_.
I understand that this is a report of progress in the great movement of
conservation. I regret that Kansas, unlike Iowa, has no beautiful lakes.
They have all long since gone dry, as has Kansas in other particulars,
and where these lakes once were are now growing crops, great and
bountiful crops of alfalfa, and in the places where Kansas went dry in
other particulars there is now growing a great crop of temperate and
stalwart men and women. (Applause.) It was said by your distinguished
chairman this morning that Kansas was the experiment station of this
Nation, and she pleads guilty to the charge, and is proud of it. They
have the courage to try any experiment in government, in business, in
farming that promises to be successful, and that promises real progress.
You ask what Kansas is doing to conserve its resources? She is conserving
her resources of men and women by having less intemperance than any
other state in the union; by having less illiteracy than any other state
in the union; by having empty jails and almshouses, and having full
school houses with seven months of school in every district in Kansas
each year; with a teacher the minimum salary of which is $50 a month.
(Applause.) And, with a larger proportion of our sons and daughters
in colleges, in proportion to our population, than any other state
in the Union. (Applause.) But, speaking more specifically concerning
the questions immediately before this Congress, what is Kansas doing
towards the conservation of her so-called material resources? Our last
legislature made provision for a state commission of conservation, and
I regret exceedingly that the chairman of that committee happened to be
absent at this particular moment, so that I might have been spared the
embarrassment of speaking for the state on this occasion. That commission
is actively at work, and is considering the matter of soil fertility,
of the education of the people in the country and in the city, and
considering all matters that would naturally be considered in connection
with this subject.
And then, what has the agricultural college been doing along this line,
and these agricultural colleges have been the pioneers in this field of
conservation? Last year the Kansas state agricultural college spoke to
150,000 people in Kansas concerning the question of conservation, and at
every farmers’ institute held in that state for the last six years the
question of soil fertility has been discussed, and has been the topic of
discussion at meetings, and the details of soil fertility has come to be
a household word.
There are today in the state of Kansas 340 farmers’ institutes or
farmers’ clubs, that meet once every month, with a membership of 14,000
heads of families, the membership representing sixty or seventy thousand
persons. They discuss once a month the details of prosperous, progressive
and successful farming, including soil fertility. In the great corn belt,
on an average fully 25 per cent of our great corn crop—and the greatest
crop we produce—is wasted for the want of a silo in which to preserve it.
In Kansas four years ago there were 62 silos. The agricultural college
has made a special campaign through its extension department along this
line, and today there are 2,000 silos in Kansas, and all of them full.
That is the only thing I know of in Kansas that is full. Within the last
six years the area of alfalfa has been doubled; and this is in the line
of conservation, for here is a crop that enriches the father but does not
impoverish the son, and that is but a part of what Kansas is doing. I say
these things not boastfully, for Kansas is not doing a quarter of what
she ought to do in these lines, and not a quarter of what she will do in
the very near future through the stimulus of great Congresses like this.
(Applause.)
REPORT FOR LOUISIANA.
BY FRED L. GRACE.
Just a few words about conservation from our state, Louisiana. Our very
emblems are symbolic of conservation. Our state emblem is a pelican, the
only bird of flight that will pull the flesh from its own breast to feed
it to its young. Our state flower is the magnolia, whose stately trees by
the same name grow all over our state, and whose wood is very valuable
for furniture.