producer, should be our constant aim. His well-being is the measure of
the well-being of the country. The commission has therefore undertaken
to aid and further better agricultural methods throughout the farming
sections of the state, particularly in the semi-arid regions of eastern
Oregon. It is its desire to encourage improved methods, wise selection
of products, diversity of crops and increased animal productions.
It is operating in close and sympathetic affiliation with the State
Agricultural College, the railroads and others taking an active interest
in this work. It is proposed to offer prizes, employ an expert farmer
to live in the particular section in question during the coming harvest
year, to encourage the holding of district fairs, and in every way
possible awaken an active interest in better farming methods. It seems to
us that a more fruitful field for the principles of conservation cannot
be found. It is practical and shows that conservation is a real vital
force with a definite object and aim.
It is hoped something can be accomplished toward encouraging the
development of this industry in the state. One of the members of the
commission is especially qualified for this task, and he has it in hand.
While Oregon is a great agricultural state, it also has large mineral
resources. The state, however, has not given the encouragement to this
industry that it deserves.
The laws for the protection of game birds and other fowl and food fish
are constantly being improved. A very excellent game commission has
been appointed with a game warden of national reputation who has the
keenest sympathy with animal and bird life, who does not believe in
extermination, and who will, we believe, enforce the law.
It has been suggested that the national resources in the various states,
and heretofore undisposed of, be turned over to the respective states
by the National Government. Personally, I do not think this would be
the wise course to pursue. Those of us—and there are many—who were born
and raised in the West understand how little regard has been paid in
the past to the public interest in the disposition of public resources
by both state and Nation. We know that it is not necessary for the
rapid development of the West that every valuable right and resource
now belonging to the public should irrevocably pass from the public
to be monopolized by the few. It is my conviction that in every state
on the Pacific Coast the great mass of the people is in favor of the
conservation of the public resources in the interest of the people as a
whole. I do not believe the methods of the past appeal to them. Their
face is toward the rising sun. The conservation in which they believe is
that which secures the greatest, widest and wisest use. They believe in
equal opportunities now, and, what is of more importance, opportunity for
their children hereafter. They are not alarmed at national conservation
where necessary or proper. They realize that many of the public resources
are the property of the Nation and not that of the state. That there
must be a wise and sympathetic coördination of purpose and effort.
The Nation has its duties and functions; the state has its duties and
functions; and the individual has his. They must all unite in a common
cause, under a common banner, for the common good. No matter by what name
conservation may be called, conservation has come to stay. No more will
the great resources of this country, either public or private, be treated
or allowed to be treated as they have been in the past. An enlightened
public opinion and a growing one will in itself prevent it. A much higher
standard in viewing this matter now prevails than formerly. Money and
material prosperity are not everything. Patriotism and good citizenship
are much more important. We look at things now from a different point of
view than we did formerly. Those who are primarily responsible for this
great movement builded more wisely than they knew and their work will
endure forever. No one need feel in the least discouraged—the old ways
are gone forever. All that is needed from now on is a wise, prudent,
conservative policy, meeting the problems as they arise and allowing for
the greatest possible use, without unnecessary waste, of every resource.
The principles are understood. It is in their wise application that
wholesome results will be secured.
REPORT FOR PENNSYLVANIA AND PHILADELPHIA.
BY EMIL GUNTHER.
As a concrete example of what conservation has done, I desire to cite
the County of Lancaster, which, according to its area, occupies the
distinction of being the leading county in agricultural wealth in this
country. I am also informed that the children in the public schools are
taught the importance of each planting at least two trees each year.
The campaigns inaugurated throughout the states for the conservation of
the national resources of our country have secured the attention of the
whole Nation. To some it may seem that the East has looked supinely upon
the movement which has received the most practical endorsement of the
western half of our continent. The City of Philadelphia, however, which
I have the honor to represent, may justly claim to have been a pioneer
in questions of conservation, nor is there any state more alive to the
importance of this matter than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia’s place in the history of this movement may not be known
to all, but it is interesting to note that as early as 1868 there was
organized in our city a national board of trade largely under the
initiative of our local board of trade of the Executive Council, of
which I have the honor to be a member. That this board has taken an
early interest in such matters permit me to quote from an address lately
delivered by Mr. George H. Maxwell at the annual meeting of the National
Board of Trade.
“I should like to say for Philadelphia that its local board of
trade was among the first to recognize by official utterance
its deep interest in the question of national irrigation. It
expressed in its petitions and memorials the view that the
national control of this important subject was of the deepest
interest to the whole Nation, independent of locality. It
has likewise strongly urged upon the National Government the
improvement of all navigable rivers and harbors, believing that
such improvements must inure greatly to the prosperity of our
whole country and to place our manufacturers and producers in a
position successfully to compete with foreign trade.”
It is hardly necessary for me to call to your attention the place which
Philadelphia holds in the manufacturing world due to its position upon
the banks of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Nor have these waterways
alone been put to commercial use; they have also afforded to the
inhabitants of Philadelphia opportunities of real recreative value.
Philadelphia has recognized that true conservation is to put to proper
and immediate use those resources which are peculiarly its own. From the
days of the proprietors large areas have been set aside and improved
for the enjoyment of the people; under the Fairmount Park Commission
has been developed the largest—and it would seem to many of us the most
beautiful—park of its kind in the world. Thirty-five hundred acres
abounding in streams and woodlands, with formal gardens and wild ravines,
are always open to the use of our citizens. There have been organized,
not only under municipal control but also through the instrumentality of
private citizens, many associations to conserve those resources which are
our heritage.
Therefore, it is with pleasure that on behalf of the city of Philadelphia
I bring to this Congress a word of greeting and assure you that our
interest in all that pertains to conservation is both practical and
sincere.
ORGANIZATION OF THE CONSERVATION MOVEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA.
BY A. B. FARQUHAR, _President of the State Branch of the N. C. A. of
Pennsylvania_.
Our movement is nowhere a thing of yesterday and least of all in
Pennsylvania, where work of the highest value for conservation in certain
particular directions has for a number of years been conducted. Only
within three months, however, has the cause of conservation in general
progressed so far as to have an organization especially devoted to it,
and it was on the 23d of last June that the Pennsylvania state branch of
the National Conservation Association was formed in Harrisburg. It is of
and for that branch that I speak.
The aims and purposes of the branch which I shall first set before
you are in ten sections, designated by Bishop Darlington, one of the
conferees, as “_The Ten Commandments of Conservation_.”
“1. _A Purified Water Supply._ Since the physical, mental
and moral health of our people is the most important of all
national resources, and since stream pollution by sewage and
by factory wastes is a menace to the health as well as to
the comfort of all citizens, the state should continue and
extend its systematic investigation of the extent, sources and
effects of stream pollution to the extreme headwaters of every
stream in the commonwealth, where danger is often the greatest
because least suspected, in order to discover the facts and to
propose adequate remedial measures. Any further legislation
required should be promptly enacted into law, under conditions
which would continue, strengthen and fully enforce the present
admirable work of the Department of Health, under Dr. Dixon and
his assistants.
“2. _Forest Fire Protection._ The state authorities should
have power in dry and dangerous seasons to establish, in such
localities as need protection, efficient patrols for the
prevention of forest fires. The expense of such fire-patrol
service should be assessed upon the forest lands protected
thereby. Lumbermen should be required, under adequate
inspection, to burn or otherwise dispose of all inflammable
debris, at times and under conditions to be prescribed by
the State Forestry Reservation Commission. The use of fire
in or near woodlands in dry and dangerous seasons should be
prohibited, except under stringent regulation and upon written
permit from a responsible officer of the forest service or fire
patrol; and the governor should have power to designate, upon
suggestion to that effect from the Commissioner of Forestry,
periods of peculiar danger within which the carrying of
firearms, the carrying and use of matches, and the setting of
fires for any purpose in public or private woodlands, should be
forbidden by law.
“3. _Just Taxation of Forest Lands._ To encourage reforestation
and the growth of timber on land chiefly valuable for that
purpose, timber land which the owners are willing to treat
upon modern reproductive forest methods should be classified
separately from other real property, with the levy of a nominal
annual tax until the trees are cut at the proper stage,
under regulation or with knowledge of the State Forestry
Commissioner, when a higher rate of tax should be imposed
either per acre or per thousand feet.
“4. _Watercourses as a Public Resource._ The waters of the
state are one of its most important assets. They should be
systematically mapped and considered, and eventually developed
and utilized for the equal benefit of all citizens. In such
development every stream should be considered as a unit, from
its source to its mouth. Domestic and municipal water-supply
should be recognized as the highest use, and consideration of
the value of the stream as a potential source of attracting
revenue by reason of its scenic beauty and for its educational
worth should rank as equal in importance with its potential
value in respect to navigation and the production of power; and
preference rights should be recognized and granted in order of
the above uses in all cases where projects for two or more of
these uses conflict. There should be every endeavor to combine
these various uses in so far as such combination may be found
practicable. For these ends the coöperation of the Federal
Government may require to be sought. Existing private rights in
waters and riparian lands should not be enlarged, except upon
conditions adequate to insure full public control.
“5. _Supervision of Use of Water by Corporations._ Private
projects for water-power development seeking state aid in the
form of a corporate franchise carrying the right to condemn
property, to use land or water rights belonging to the public,
to obstruct navigable rivers, or otherwise, should be subjected
to careful consideration and to strict regulation, in order
to secure prompt, complete and orderly development; efficient
service at fair prices and on equal terms to all consumers
in like conditions; full public information as to costs and
profits; honest capitalization on the basis of cost; and fair
rentals for public property used within the franchises granted.
No water-power franchises or privileges should be granted for a
longer period than from thirty to fifty years, with a provision
for a readjustment of the compensation or terms at least each
ten years, and any assignment of the right or privilege should
require the approval of the proper state authorities to be
legal.
“6. _Wild Life in the Forest and Stream._ A prompt recognition
of the remaining wild life in the forest and in the stream as
a valuable natural resource is desirable, through uniform game
laws for its effective protection, and the present game laws
of Pennsylvania should be revised and extended as required to
properly protect such wild life for its beneficient value to
the state.
“7. _Economy of Mineral Resources._ Mining is the most
important industry of Pennsylvania. It is now accompanied by a
culpable waste of human life and of minerals, especially coal.
There should be promptly applied preventive measures reducing
materially the loss of life through mine accidents, and
requiring careful economy in the exploitation of our remaining
mineral wealth. The state should take the position that, in
respect to these unreplaceable natural resources, the temporary
owner of the land has no right so to treat his property as to
work injury to all.
“8. _Agricultural Resources._ Since cultivated land is the
foundation of the Nation’s prosperity, the proper use and
continued improvement of the soil should everywhere receive
especial care; and in order that agricultural and horticultural
products may reach the best markets with the least loss of time
and at the least expense, we most heartily favor the present
policy of Pennsylvania in the development of improved highways,
and urge their rapid and efficient extension, with due economy
and under capable and expert engineering supervision.
“9. _The Value of Natural Scenery._ We hold that the beauty of
the land is one of the main sources of that love of country
which is at the very basis of patriotism, and that natural
scenery is an economic asset of great value yet unconsidered
and undeveloped. With the rapid disappearance of the great
primeval forest which once covered two-thirds of the area of
the state; with the mutilation of wide areas in the careless
abstraction of mineral wealth; with the pollution and
restriction of streams for private benefit, and the laying
waste of areas of arable lands through preventable floods, this
great and potentially valuable resource is being constantly and
ruthlessly destroyed. We insist that it should be considered
as of great economic importance, and we point, in support of
this attitude, to the scenic travel income of many millions of
dollars contributed each year to Europe by Americans, who leave
at home, unnoted and in process of destruction, many natural
scenic advantages of at least equal merit.
“We further assert that it is not only in the interest of
the state to foster and encourage the provision of adequate
breathing places and playgrounds for the relief of our
congested population, but that it is equally important that the
state shall open and adequately maintain in suitable forest
reserves public camping-grounds, available especially to those
of our population who cannot otherwise obtain access to the
restorative and uplifting influences of an intimate association
with Nature. We insist that it is the part of wisdom for the
state to intelligently promote public parks in all their
forms—municipal, county and state—in order that every citizen
may have easy opportunity to receive the material and definite
benefits attendant upon their proper use.
“10. _Education in Conservation._ In order that the rising
generation may know of the actual basis of the prosperity of
the state which makes life here possible, and of its rapid and
serious depletion through senseless and unconsidered waste,
we urge that an accurate statement of the remaining natural
resources of the state be prepared in such form as to make it
available for public school instruction. We favor all proper
methods of inculcating in the youth of the state that care for
its prosperity which alone can prevent the state from becoming
a barren waste, resembling like areas in foreign lands in which
selfishness, neglect and ignorance have accomplished their
destructive work.”
It is not claimed that our “ten commandments” cover the whole of the
moral law, on our subject, although the endeavor was to include in them
the points that most urgently needed attention in the campaign for
conservation in Pennsylvania. The principles as stated in the development
of a “commandment” are often of a wider generality than as set forth in
the heading; in the opening sentence, for example, to which attention
will be called further on, and in the third paragraph also, where the
principle of encouraging the care of forests appears in the text, while
the heading alludes only to forest taxation. Care for the forests is
itself but a special application of the still broader principle of saving
where we are now wasting, of which this national association is the great
exponent.
The civilized man, as President Roosevelt reminded us, looks beyond
present needs and provides for those to come. He seeks to leave his
children, who will be in a few years all that is left to represent him,
as good a patrimony as he received from his forefathers. He would provide
for the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. He
therefore necessarily interests himself in the conservation of natural
resources. For conservation does not mean, as has been too hastily
inferred, locking up something valuable so that it will be of no service
to anybody; it means using and safeguarding the resources of ourselves
and posterity in the way that will best serve both. It means use without
waste.
That there has been waste, and shameful waste, of natural resources no
rational man will deny. It is an abuse of many centuries standing, as
witness Persia, The Euphrates valley, Syria, and much of Asia Minor,
and the once fertile valleys of China, where the sites of a teeming
population are now deserts. When the forests disappear, the water no
longer remains in the soil; there is alternation of dry stream-bed,
and flood-torrent carrying away the soil itself. Vegetation, requiring
a steady water supply, can no longer exist; and man cannot outlive
vegetation. This may be the history of the destroyed woodlands of
Pennsylvania. The disappearance of trout streams has been but a symptom;
the real evil is the sacrifice of our woodland, of which all belonging
to our state were until a generation ago sold without discrimination at
twenty-seven cents an acre. The same land, denuded of timber, the state
is now buying back, though at a much higher price, and endeavoring to
reforest it. A million acres have already been so purchased, and it is
hoped that the replanting will proceed rapidly and uninterruptedly so
that our children’s heritage may yet be saved for them.
The preservation of our woodlands, it has already been admitted, is
only one way of stopping waste. There is the waste of war, of recovery
from war as counted in our annual pension roll, and of preparation for
war for which we are now paying, in these years of profound peace, more
than three hundred millions annually. The most terrible of all wastes,
doubtless, is that of disease, especially when we include with it the
Nation’s drink bill, of which the first cost of the liquor, huge though
that is the country over, is the smaller part; the greater, all a dead
waste, being the impairment of physical, mental and moral vigor and of
productive capacity to which that baleful appetite leads, and the cost of
the crimes of which it is the constant cause. We should no less include
the costs in money and in deterioration of body, mind and soul, that are
incurred by disregard or defiance of sex-hygiene. To these two points,
particularly the last, the tenth of our Pennsylvania Conservation
Commandments, on “Education in Conservation,” particularly applies. On
nothing, not even “the remaining natural resources” of our commonwealth,
is it more vitally necessary that education should lay stress than the
conditions of bodily and moral health. Conservation of human life is
the most important element in the conservation problem, for without man
everything else would be valueless.
The public health is most evidently a public concern, and its furtherance
has now become, by general consent, a recognized part of the duties of
government. For a generation and more, a board of health has been one
of the most important branches of our city government; county health
boards are now found to be requisite for similar reasons; the services of
state boards, bureaus or departments of health, are coming more and more
in demand; and there is by this time an imperative call for a national
bureau or department with similar functions and wider authority. That
is a call that cannot long be resisted. The several agencies now under
federal control, among which its care for health has heretofore been
scattered—those pertaining to the army, the navy, the revenue marine
service, and the “pure food” office of the Agricultural Department—have
severally done some very good work, despite their limited separate
responsibility; and their work could not but be more effective for
good if brought all under one direction, and granted appropriations
correspondingly ample. There would be the same increase in efficiency
through combination, that has so often been noted in consolidations of
railways, combinations of industries, forming a federal army out of
promiscuous state militias, and welding a bunch of geological “surveys”
into a well-disciplined, compact bureau. It is a reform demanded by the
interests of sound government, and by the people’s needs: and it must
come.
Testimony to the good work that can be done in a few years by the Health
Department of our state, I am enabled to give by the favor of a highly
capable member of that department in Harrisburg, Chief Medical Inspector
Royer, as follows:
In the creation of the Department of Health of this commonwealth and in
the very liberal provision of funds for its organization and maintenance,
Pennsylvania took her first great step forward in the conservation of
human life.
The bill which when enacted created the Department of Health of
Pennsylvania was drawn by Dr. Charles B. Penrose of the University of
Pennsylvania, and carried with it an appropriation of $400,000 for its
organization and maintenance and $50,000 for emergency work. The governor
was slow to make his selection of the commissioner, Dr. Dixon, who was
appointed in June, 1904, during an epidemic of smallpox. The emergency
work was carried on with the organization which was completed January 1,
1906, when the work assumed its great systematic battle against disease.
This police department had to be handled with exceeding care, as the
people in our representative form of government had not been used to the
observation of health laws.
So rapidly did the work grow that the 1907 legislature appropriated
$1,000,000 for general health work and $1,000,000 for the purpose of
organizing a campaign against tuberculosis, $600,000 of which was
specifically set aside for state sanatoria and $400,000 for dispensaries
and additional work.
The commissioner was permitted to take over the small tuberculosis camp
already organized by the Forestry Department, and he almost immediately
enlarged it by the addition of tents to accommodate more than one hundred
additional patients and at once planned a great sanatorium to be built on
the site near Mont Alto.