number of bushels of wheat alone 3½ bushels to the acre. That is some
of the practical conservation of the soil. Minnesota used to have the
reputation of having the worst roads in the United States, and I think
she fully lived up to her reputation. That condition is very rapidly
being changed. The state wide campaign for good roads is being constantly
conducted by the good roads commission. The last legislature, in fact the
legislature of four years ago, took the matter in hand and levied a small
tax for the betterment of the state roads. These roads were required to
be built under the supervision of state engineers. If the roads were
so built the state contributed one-third of their cost up to a certain
maximum amount which to any one county did not exceed $2,000. That was
the starting of the state movement. The last legislature provided for a
tax that will raise something like $2,000,000 to be divided among the
eighty counties of the state to aid in the work of good roads. A project
is now on foot to build a state highway from the southern boundary to
the northern boundary, and one across the state from the city of Duluth
to the city of East Grand Forks. These to be great state highways, and
all other highways radiating out from them. These experimental roads are
built on scientific lines furnished by the state, and are conditioned
according to the quality of the soil through which the road runs. The
effort is first to get a system of good dirt roads. The state is not yet
developed sufficiently to warrant us going in to macadamized roads at
this time, except in the large cities.
In the matter of our mineral wealth the state long ago provided that the
people at large shall receive the benefit of it. No state land is now
sold except where the mineral rights are retained and the mines already
opened and in operation pay very large taxes toward the maintenance of
the state government, thus contributing to the welfare of the whole
people. These are some of the things that the state of Minnesota is
trying to do and is doing. I do not feel that I can take the time to
go into detail of many other things that we are just starting, the
prevention of disease—already one or two tuberculosis institutions have
been started in the pine woods of Minnesota—and a general campaign
against the great white plague is constantly in progress. My time is up.
I thank you. (Applause)
REPORT FOR NEBRASKA.
BY GEORGE COUPLAND.
I have been very strongly reminded today in these remarks that I have
heard made that the state that I represent is purely an agricultural
state. That is about all the industries that we have. I thought perhaps
of one manufacturing interest that we were trying to develop, that of
furnishing presidential timber, but we had to give that up, and the
factory is in the hands of the repairers today. (Applause.) I think
that perhaps there is no more important factor in the development of
a sentiment that means what it says, than such a gathering as this. I
notice in the paper that I just picked up it is, “Back to the Land”—yes,
I am glad that that is the story—for it is out of the land that this
country has to maintain its position as a nation.
The state that I represent, I am glad to say, recognizes the importance
of perhaps its only industry, and how much its future was tied up in its
development. It has had in motion for quite a number of years agencies
that are looking forward to the betterment of life upon the land and
the development of the natural resources, the only natural resources
perhaps that we have. And I am glad to say that this movement had its
inception in the hearts and minds of the men who lived upon the land in
Nebraska. I am also glad to say that the men who lived in the cities,
the business men, have responded in splendid manner to this idea. My
mind runs back to that fine pioneer of my state, J. Sterling Morton,
and the idea that he had in mind, and I want, Mr. President, to impress
the thought that you so beautifully expressed today, that it is not the
giving of more expert ability to exploit the soil, but it is the building
up within the heart of the man and the boy and the woman and the girl
who live upon the land a love for the place where they live; to love the
tree that father planted; to love the home that father built, to love
the farm that father homesteaded. That is what we want to cultivate. If
along with these other agencies that we have in motion, we will see to
it that this is emphasized in our educational system, then we will have
a better conception of what real country life means. I like to think of
my ancestral home, the generations that were born and died on the land.
I was born on the land and I hope to die on the land. My children were
born there, and I hope that they will have the same sentiment, and be
willing and glad to die upon the land. Our state has in motion today—I
will hurriedly tell you—I do not want to take any more of your time than
necessary—I will tell you the agencies that we have at work. We have a
farmers’ congress; we have a conservation congress; we have a rural life
commission that was authorized by our last legislature, which I consider
one of the most potent agencies for the betterment of rural conditions
in the state of Nebraska; an affiliated agricultural society which takes
in all the agricultural organizations. Every year our state university
is their host, and nearly every year we have two thousand representative
farmers of Nebraska gathered in our capital city to discuss questions
pertaining to agriculture. Then we also have a conservation soil survey
which is doing splendid work.
There is one feature to which I want to draw your attention, that I
think is very important, and that is the question of sanitation upon the
farm, sanitation in the small town. And this has been taken up by our
conservation congress. We have different divisions of this congress, and
we have splendid men at the head of these divisions, who during the year
take pains with the particular work that has been assigned them, and
then each year we meet and hear their reports. We have a lot of splendid
things that are going forward in our state, and I am sure what we have
heard today is inspirational, and that we will go home vowed to do better
things. I do not want to boast, but I just thought as I listened to what
every man who has spoken for his state had to say, I must tell you this
story.
I live on a little farm in eastern Nebraska, which is typical of a large
area of our state. If I had to go to the commercial fertilizer man and
buy the fertilizing matter, the lime, the phosphorus, the potash, and
nitrogen that are wrapped up in the first four feet of the soil that I
till it would cost me $7,000 per acre. If I had to buy the same kind
of fertilizing matter that is wrapped up in the first ten feet of the
soil that I till, and which my alfalfa fields, when they are planted,
supplied, it would cost me $28,000 per acre. I feel that we own pretty
good land in Nebraska, and for that reason we are anxious to take good
care of it. (Applause.)
REPORT FOR NEW YORK.
BY JOHN D. MOORE, _Member State Conservation Commission_.
On my arrival in Kansas City this morning a man at the hotel asked me
where I came from, and I said I came from New York. And he said, “What
have you fellows got in New York you want to get conserved?” And I said,
“We have the greatest conservation problem in New York of all the states
in the Union.” In the first place, we have nine million people, over
one-tenth of the population of the United States. It is one of our jobs
to provide these nine million people with pure water to drink. I told
him about the great reservoir on which the city of New York alone has
spent upwards of two millions of dollars in order to bring into New York
drinking water at the rate of five hundred millions of gallons per day. I
told him furthermore that in the state of New York there were 32,000,000
acres of land, and of that more than one-third wild forest land. I told
him, too, that in the public parks of New York we had a conservation
problem of our own which did not begin three years ago, or five or ten
years ago, but began forty years ago when Governor Seymour appointed a
commission in 1872 to investigate the matter of public parks and public
forests.
Since that time the state of New York has accumulated more than 1,600,000
acres of the greatest parks in this Union, and of that 1,300,000 acres
are in the Adirondacks, and in these parks any citizen of New York,
or any other state can come and hunt and camp as freely as he will.
Furthermore, of the timber land of that park, which is of priceless
value, and a value which has been protected by a constitutional
amendment adopted in 1894, and not yesterday, or the day before, but
sixteen or seventeen years ago. This law says that these lands shall
neither be leased or sold or exchanged nor taken by any person, or by
any corporation, and the timber thereon shall not be removed, or cut
or destroyed. That has placed a perpetual safeguard, the like of which
exists in no other state in the union. (Applause.)
In the reforestation we have six state nurseries. In these nurseries
there are at the present time 15,000,000 trees. A man this morning said
he did not believe it. I told him they were there and he could go and
count them. (Laughter.)
Last year we sold to the railroad companies, and to the lumber companies
of the state of New York approximately two million seedlings, and
obtained for the state of New York something upward of ten thousand
dollars. The state law says we must sell those seedlings at cost. We
are able to furnish to the lumbermen and the railroad interests of New
York seedling trees at the rate of less than one-half cent apiece.
Furthermore, the state has reforested, as an example to her citizens,
more than 6,000 acres of its own land. Those trees are there, and
constitute an object lesson to every visitor to the Adirondacks. This
afternoon I heard some of our friends say what their state was doing
for good roads. The state of New York has expended within the last five
years upwards of $100,000,000 for its state roads. (Applause) Of that we
have built 10,000 miles of road—not dirt road, or earth road, but the
finest kind of macadam roads, running from sixteen to twenty-four feet
in width. We are gridironing New York with a system of highways the like
of which is not found under the Stars and Stripes. More than that, we
are not devoting our attention entirely to the development of our land
locomotion. We are equally strong with water ways.
The Birch canal of the State of New York will be completed within three
or four years. The state has appropriated money, sold bonds, and got
the money in the treasury for $101,000,000 of Birch canal improvements
in order that you Western gentlemen can bring your wheat on boats to
the seaboard at the lowest possible cost of transportation. (Applause)
Furthermore, we have a system of fish and game laws which is extremely
rigorous and has had a marvelous tendency to improve the condition of
the wild life of the state. I hold in the State of New York, ladies and
gentlemen, that we must not look after only our water power and our
forests; we must look after the wild things that live in the water and
forest—the fish and the game. (Applause) The deer have been so thoroughly
protected by our laws that they have increased so that last year in the
Adirondacks there were killed 16,000 deer. Trappers tell our woodsmen
today that never in the history of the Adirondacks have so many deer been
seen.
This may appear to you strange. It is strange, except when we consider
that in primitive times before the settlers came with firearms wolves
were abundant in the Adirondacks and preyed upon the deer. Now there is
not, within the confines of the State of New York, a single wolf—not one.
The present legislature has passed a game law which has been in effect
since the first of September, and we take a fair view of the protection
of wild life. We are not confined to the protection of game in New York
State. We have extended it to every state in the Union. The game law says
in effect this: That you cannot bring into the State of New York and sell
in the State of New York a bird or animal which has been killed under
the American flag. In other words, we have closed to the pot hunter and
the market hunter, to the slaughterer of game, the richest and the most
plentiful market which they have enjoyed in the past. We have turned
it to good account. The law states that they may bring in from foreign
countries outside of the United States the unplucked carcasses of birds
and venison. Incidentally we expect to import this year 100 tons of
venison, and we have already imported 200,000 birds, and upon the leg of
each the state has fastened a tag, and exacted for the tag one nickel.
So out of the 2,000,000 birds which the dealers tell us they will import
this year the State of New York is going to exact the magnificent sum of
$100,000 and maybe more. This game law should be a lesson to every state
in the Union. It is not fair for a state to protect its own game and fish
and let the state be a market for the game of its neighbors.
The State of New York, gentlemen, is more prolific and a more bountiful
spender in water power and more bountifully supplied with this power than
almost any other state of the Union. I won’t dispute the figures of our
friend from California who says there are 5,000,000 horsepower running
loose there, but I do know that whereas his state has developed 250,000
horsepower, the State of New York, outside of the St. Lawrence river and
Niagara Falls, which are really international waters, and do not come
under consideration, my commission has upwards of 650,000 horsepower and
we know from actual survey which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars
and has been in progress some eight years, that a million horsepower is
still going to waste, but that million is to be harnessed and put to use,
so that the State of New York can get some of the profits which have
heretofore gone into private coffers.
REPORT FOR OKLAHOMA.
BY MILTON BROWN.
As yet Oklahoma is not conserved in presidents like Ohio. We have
conserved a lot of fads and vagaries and isms down there, but
nevertheless notwithstanding all that, Oklahoma for the past two years
has got down to a practical standpoint in this matter of the conservation
of our material resources and a few of the items I want to mention in
my five minutes are these. First, good roads. We are now constructing a
road, beginning at the north line of Oklahoma and running almost through
to the south, across the whole state, to be entirely of macadam. Of
course, the Automobile Association started the matter in one sense, but
yet all the farmers’ institutes joined in, and the two are now working
together. Not only have we state aid in that matter, but we have aid in
the counties. That is one item of the good roads that will make some of
these older states ashamed of themselves when they come down to Oklahoma
and see it. (Applause)
Another proposition is that we have gone into the development of our
water supply down there for our own consumption, not only for the farmers
but for the cities, and that, too, without any Federal aid. Some of the
older states have been aided by donations from the Federal Government,
and although millions of dollars have been taken from Oklahoma by the
sales of lands to the settlers of that state, not one penny has been
returned to Oklahoma in the way of any particular aid in the matter of
the conservation of these resources. Yet at the last session of our
legislature we appropriated $45,000 for the purpose of sinking deep wells
in the extreme northwestern part of Oklahoma to get down to the underflow
water, so that we can irrigate the lands out there in the extreme
Northwest. They are going ahead and now have several of those wells in
operation.
Another proposition is that these underground waters in the northwestern
part of the state are just like the underground water in Nebraska, in
Kansas and Colorado; they flow along with the country, with the fall
of the country from the mountain ranges. We enacted a law at the last
legislature to encourage any person, any firm, any corporation that will
come in and put down wells, drains, dams or anything of that kind, and
encourage them by exempting them from taxation for a period of five
years. That is having its effect already. Some parties are there now
engaged in the North Canadian and in the lower Canadian making surveys
and putting in plants to raise this underground water by a process of
gravity underflow and bring it out on the surface to spread it over our
broad acres.
Also we have a pure water supply for the city, keeping the sewage
separate and apart. We have laws upon that subject and they are being
enforced.
We finally had to go into the Federal Court to have one proposition
settled down there, so that our swamp lands could be drained under the
law passed by our state legislature. We had a state drainage law by
which they undertook to drain some of the lands southeast of Guthrie and
Oklahoma City. That entrenched upon the railroads, and they set up the
howl that the act was unconstitutional, that we could not change the
bed of the river, that we could not change the flow of the water so as
to bring our ditches in and drain the swamp lands. But Judge Cotterill
of the United States Court held that law constitutional, and that big
drainage ditch has been constructed and the swamp lands there have been
reclaimed within the last year.
You remember the Arkansas river; if you have ridden along on the Santa
Fe railroad out in Kansas you have seen it at times when you could walk
across it dry shod and would not get your feet wet, for the bed was as
dry as a bone. And yet from Arkansas City south there is more water.
Congress passed an act, and today they are working on a survey, making
the preliminaries up as far as Muskogee, and they propose to go on up to
Arkansas City, so as to make the bed of that river broader and run boats.
They have run boats up as far as Arkansas City in times past, and they
have run to Muskogee in more recent years. Now, they are going ahead on
that proposition to make the Arkansas navigable as far as Arkansas City.
REPORT FOR OREGON.
BY JOSEPH N. TEAL, _Chairman Oregon State Conservation Committee_.
On behalf of the Oregon State Conservation Commission and in response to
your request, I herewith submit brief report of its work and activities.
The first conservation commission in Oregon was appointed by Honorable
George E. Chamberlain, Governor of the state, on May 23, 1908. It was a
semi-official organization and consisted of fifteen members. All funds
were secured through voluntary subscription.
As the most pressing subject demanding legislation then was the use and
conservation of water resources, a water code was prepared and submitted
to the legislature for its consideration and action. The bill was
adopted substantially as prepared. The act is elastic and practicable.
It provides: (1) A simple, inexpensive method of determining and fixing
rights initiated under earlier statutes; (2) a precise and definite
procedure for initiating and perfecting new rights, beneficial use always
being the basis thereof; (3) an elastic administrative board, to insure
the enforcement of water right decrees and its own decisions.
The cost of administration is borne by those benefited. Water power
franchises are limited to forty years with a preference right of renewal.
While it was not expected the fees provided for would produce excess
revenue, the operation of the law has been very satisfactory and more
than self-sustaining under the intelligent and careful administration of
the State Engineer, John H. Lewis. The beneficial results following its
enactment are conceded and are set forth in the official reports of the
State Engineer. Since its enactment some minor changes have been made
respecting practice and procedure, but none as to principle.
We are now engaged in a careful study of its workings in order to
recommend such further changes as experience may show wise or necessary.
That changes will be necessary is not to be doubted, but I feel I am safe
in saying we have the foundation and framework of a water code based on
right principles.
The legislature of 1909 also passed an act creating a state conservation
commission of seven members, to be appointed by the Governor, carrying an
appropriation of $1,000. Upon the enactment of this measure the original
commission discontinued its work and Hon. F. W. Benson, then Governor,
appointed another commission, the membership of which was selected from
the original commission.
During the year 1909 the commission offered money prizes to students in
the various educational institutions of the state covering the following
topics: The Forests in Oregon; Irrigation Institutions in Oregon; Soils;
Dry Land Farming in Oregon; Roads in Oregon; Fish in Oregon.
The prizes were awarded and paid according to announcement. The money for
this purpose, as well as for other uses by the commission, was secured
through voluntary contributions, no public money being used for this
purpose.
In 1909 Mr. C. B. Watson, one of the members of the commission, called
the attention of the commission to the beauty and grandeur of the
Josephine County caves and asked that steps be taken to preserve and keep
them in their original beauty as a national monument. The commission
took up the matter with Mr. Gifford Pinchot, then Forester of the
United States, and on July 12, 1909, the caves were, by proclamation of
President Taft, duly set apart as a national monument by an act approved
June 8, 1906, under the name “Oregon Caves.” These caves are under the
immediate care of the Forest Service, being in a national forest. They
are of great beauty and will be preserved as a public monument forever.
During the year 1910 the work of educating the public to the necessity of
action in the protection of our forests from fire and other destructive
agencies was carried on. In coöperation with other organizations a law
was framed to submit to the legislature for action. The legislature of
1911 adopted this measure, and it was passed with but few amendments, and
in connection with the bill an appropriation of $60,000 was made.
We submitted to the same legislature a bill for coöperation between the
state and federal agencies engaged in gathering physical data of the
state’s resources and in disseminating the information so gathered.
This bill carried with it an appropriation of $20,000 in addition to
the $5,000 provided by the Act of 1905, conditioned upon the Federal
Government appropriating an equal amount. The legislature passed this
measure with substantial unanimity.
The commission has prepared and circulated annual reports for the years
1908, 1909 and 1910; also a special report during the years 1908 and
1910 on the rivers and harbors in Oregon, setting forth their needs and
requirements for improvement and justification therefor. In conjunction
with the Forest Service and other associations, the commission also aided
in the preparation of a pamphlet for general distribution on the use of
Oregon woods.
The only appropriation the commission has received from the state was the
one made in 1909 of $1,000.