THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION
When Governor of New York, as I have already described, I had been in
consultation with Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, and had shaped
my recommendations about forestry largely in accordance with their
suggestions. Like other men who had thought about the national future at
all, I had been growing more and more concerned over the destruction of
the forests.
While I had lived in the West I had come to realize the vital need of
irrigation to the country, and I had been both amused and irritated
by the attitude of Eastern men who obtained from Congress grants of
National money to develop harbors and yet fought the use of the Nation's
power to develop the irrigation work of the West. Major John Wesley
Powell, the explorer of the Grand Canyon, and Director of the Geological
Survey, was the first man who fought for irrigation, and he lived to see
the Reclamation Act passed and construction actually begun. Mr. F. H.
Newell, the present Director of the Reclamation Service, began his
work as an assistant hydraulic engineer under Major Powell; and, unlike
Powell, he appreciated the need of saving the forests and the soil
as well as the need of irrigation. Between Powell and Newell came, as
Director of the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, who, after
the Reclamation Act was passed, by his force, pertinacity, and tact,
succeeded in putting the act into effect in the best possible manner.
Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, fought hard for the cause of
reclamation in Congress. He attempted to get his State to act, and when
that proved hopeless to get the Nation to act; and was ably assisted
by Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep interest in
irrigation matters. Dr. W. J. McGee was one of the leaders in all the
later stages of the movement. But Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom
the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the
preservation of the natural resources of our country. He led, and indeed
during its most vital period embodied, the fight for the preservation
through use of our forests. He played one of the leading parts in
the effort to make the National Government the chief instrument in
developing the irrigation of the arid West. He was the foremost leader
in the great struggle to coordinate all our social and governmental
forces in the effort to secure the adoption of a rational and farseeing
policy for securing the conservation of all our national resources. He
was already in the Government service as head of the Forestry Bureau
when I became President; he continued throughout my term, not only as
head of the Forest service, but as the moving and directing spirit in
most of the conservation work, and as counsellor and assistant on most
of the other work connected with the internal affairs of the country.
Taking into account the varied nature of the work he did, its vital
importance to the nation and the fact that as regards much of it he
was practically breaking new ground, and taking into account also
his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete
disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests of the
plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I believe it is but
just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my
administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of
the United States, he, on the whole, stood first. A few months after I
left the Presidency he was removed from office by President Taft.
The first work I took up when I became President was the work of
reclamation. Immediately after I had come to Washington, after the
assassination of President McKinley, while staying at the house of
my sister, Mrs. Cowles, before going into the White House, Newell and
Pinchot called upon me and laid before me their plans for National
irrigation of the arid lands of the West, and for the consolidation of
the forest work of the Government in the Bureau of Forestry.
At that time a narrowly legalistic point of view toward natural
resources obtained in the Departments, and controlled the Governmental
administrative machinery. Through the General Land Office and other
Government bureaus, the public resources were being handled and
disposed of in accordance with the small considerations of petty
legal formalities, instead of for the large purposes of constructive
development, and the habit of deciding, whenever possible, in favor of
private interests against the public welfare was firmly fixed. It was
as little customary to favor the bona-fide settler and home builder, as
against the strict construction of the law, as it was to use the law in
thwarting the operations of the land grabbers. A technical compliance
with the letter of the law was all that was required.
The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained,
and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition.
The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems
of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the
public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still
a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system,
with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by
the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect
on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there--a theory
which, I regret to say, still obtains.
The place of the farmer in the National economy was still regarded
solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the
human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still
remained wholly outside the recognition of the Government.
All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and
administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government
employ were in another Department. Forests and foresters had nothing
whatever to do with each other. The National Forests in the West (then
called forest reserves) were wholly inadequate in area to meet the
purposes for which they were created, while the need for forest
protection in the East had not yet begun to enter the public mind.
Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me. I
was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry, and, after listening
to my two guests, I asked them to prepare material on the subject for
me to use in my first message to Congress, of December 3, 1901. This
message laid the foundation for the development of irrigation and
forestry during the next seven and one-half years. It set forth the
new attitude toward the natural resources in the words: "The Forest
and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the
United States."
On the day the message was read, a committee of Western Senators and
Congressmen was organized to prepare a Reclamation Bill in accordance
with the recommendations. By far the most effective of the Senators
in drafting and pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was
Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and others at
several conferences and revised in important particulars; my active
interference was necessary to prevent it from being made unworkable by
an undue insistence upon States Rights, in accordance with the efforts
of Mr. Mondell and other Congressmen, who consistently fought for local
and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole.
On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It set aside the
proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming
the waste areas of the arid West by irrigating lands otherwise
worthless, and thus creating new homes upon the land. The money so
appropriated was to be repaid to the Government by the settlers, and to
be used again as a revolving fund continuously available for the work.
The impatience of the Western people to see immediate results from the
Reclamation Act was so great that red tape was disregarded, and the work
was pushed forward at a rate previously unknown in Government affairs.
Later, as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of
alleged illegality and haste which are so easy to make after results
have been accomplished and the need for the measures without which
nothing could have been done has gone by. These criticisms were in
character precisely the same as that made about the acquisition of
Panama, the settlement of the anthracite coal strike, the suits against
the big trusts, the stopping of the panic of 1907 by the action of the
Executive concerning the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and, in short,
about most of the best work done during my administration.
With the Reclamation work, as with much other work under me, the men
in charge were given to understand that they must get into the water if
they would learn to swim; and, furthermore, they learned to know that if
they acted honestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility,
I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other case, in
the end the boldness of the action fully justified itself.
Every item of the whole great plan of Reclamation now in effect was
undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the spring of 1909 the work was an
assured success, and the Government had become fully committed to its
continuance. The work of Reclamation was at first under the United
States Geological Survey, of which Charles D. Walcott was at that time
Director. In the spring of 1908 the United States Reclamation Service
was established to carry it on, under the direction of Frederick
Hayes Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Newell's
single-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive imagination
which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and high
character through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built
up a model service--all these have made him a model servant. The final
proof of his merit is supplied by the character and records of the men
who later assailed him.
Although the gross expenditure under the Reclamation Act is not yet
as large as that for the Panama Canal, the engineering obstacles to be
overcome have been almost as great, and the political impediments many
times greater. The Reclamation work had to be carried on at widely
separated points, remote from railroads, under the most difficult
pioneer conditions. The twenty-eight projects begun in the years 1902
to 1906 contemplated the irrigation of more than three million acres
and the watering of more than thirty thousand farms. Many of the
dams required for this huge task are higher than any previously built
anywhere in the world. They feed main-line canals over seven thousand
miles in total length, and involve minor constructions, such as culverts
and bridges, tens of thousands in number.
What the Reclamation Act has done for the country is by no means limited
to its material accomplishment. This Act and the results flowing from it
have helped powerfully to prove to the Nation that it can handle its own
resources and exercise direct and business-like control over them. The
population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the arid West,
while comparatively small when compared with that in the more closely
inhabited East, has been a most effective contribution to the National
life, for it has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West,
making for the stability of the institutions upon which the welfare of
the whole country rests: it has substituted actual homemakers, who have
settled on the land with their families, for huge, migratory bands of
sheep herded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners.
The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service, and on Mr. Newell, arise
in large part, if not altogether, from an organized effort to repudiate
the obligation of the settlers to repay the Government for what it has
expended to reclaim the land. The repudiation of any debt can always
find supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support not only
of certain men among the settlers who hope to be relieved of paying what
they owe, but also of a variety of unscrupulous politicians, some highly
placed. It is unlikely that their efforts to deprive the West of
the revolving Irrigation fund will succeed in doing anything but
discrediting these politicians in the sight of all honest men.
When in the spring of 1911 I visited the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, and
opened the reservoir, I made a short speech to the assembled people.
Among other things, I said to the engineers present that in the name of
all good citizens I thanked them for their admirable work, as efficient
as it was honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of
public service. As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces of those
of the force who were present, and thought of the similar men in the
service, in the higher positions, who were absent, and who were no less
responsible for the work done, I felt a foreboding that they would
never receive any real recognition for their achievement; and, only half
humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satisfaction,
except their own knowledge that they had done well a first-class job,
for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would
be to investigate them. Well, a year later a Congressional Committee
actually did investigate them. The investigation was instigated by some
unscrupulous local politicians and by some settlers who wished to be
relieved from paying their just obligations; and the members of the
Committee joined in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public
servants as the Government has ever had; an attack made on them solely
because they were honorable and efficient and loyal to the interests
both of the Government and the settlers.
When I became President, the Bureau of Forestry (since 1905 the United
States Forest Service) was a small but growing organization, under
Gifford Pinchot, occupied mainly with laying the foundation of American
forestry by scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of
forestry on private lands. It contained all the trained foresters in the
Government service, but had charge of no public timberland whatsoever.
The Government forest reserves of that day were in the care of a
Division in the General Land Office, under the management of clerks
wholly without knowledge of forestry, few if any of whom had ever seen
a foot of the timberlands for which they were responsible. Thus the
reserves were neither well protected nor well used. There were no
foresters among the men who had charge of the National Forests, and no
Government forests in charge of the Government foresters.
In my first message to Congress I strongly recommended the consolidation
of the forest work in the hands of the trained men of the Bureau of
Forestry. This recommendation was repeated in other messages, but
Congress did not give effect to it until three years later. In the
meantime, by thorough study of the Western public timberlands, the
groundwork was laid for the responsibilities which were to fall upon
the Bureau of Forestry when the care of the National Forests came to be
transferred to it. It was evident that trained American Foresters would
be needed in considerable numbers, and a forest school was established
at Yale to supply them.
In 1901, at my suggestion as President, the Secretary of the Interior,
Mr. Hitchcock, made a formal request for technical advice from the
Bureau of Forestry in handling the National Forests, and an extensive
examination of their condition and needs was accordingly taken up. The
same year a study was begun of the proposed Appalachian National Forest,
the plan of which, already formulated at that time, has since been
carried out. A year later experimental planting on the National Forests
was also begun, and studies preparatory to the application of practical
forestry to the Indian Reservations were undertaken. In 1903, so
rapidly did the public work of the Bureau of Forestry increase, that the
examination of land for new forest reserves was added to the study
of those already created, the forest lands of the various States were
studied, and cooperation with several of them in the examination and
handling of their forest lands was undertaken. While these practical
tasks were pushed forward, a technical knowledge of American Forests
was rapidly accumulated. The special knowledge gained was made public
in printed bulletins; and at the same time the Bureau undertook, through
the newspaper and periodical press, to make all the people of the United
States acquainted with the needs and the purposes of practical
forestry. It is doubtful whether there has ever been elsewhere under the
Government such effective publicity--publicity purely in the interest of
the people--at so low a cost. Before the educational work of the Forest
Service was stopped by the Taft Administration, it was securing
the publication of facts about forestry in fifty million copies of
newspapers a month at a total expense of $6000 a year. Not one cent has
ever been paid by the Forest Service to any publication of any kind for
the printing of this material. It was given out freely, and published
without cost because it was news. Without this publicity the Forest
Service could not have survived the attacks made upon it by the
representatives of the great special interests in Congress; nor could
forestry in America have made the rapid progress it has.
The result of all the work outlined above was to bring together in the
Bureau of Forestry, by the end of 1904, the only body of forest experts
under the Government, and practically all of the first-hand information
about the public forests which was then in existence. In 1905, the
obvious foolishness of continuing to separate the foresters and the
forests, reenforced by the action of the First National Forest Congress,
held in Washington, brought about the Act of February 1, 1905,
which transferred the National Forests from the care of the Interior
Department to the Department of Agriculture, and resulted in the
creation of the present United States Forest Service.
The men upon whom the responsibility of handling some sixty million
acres of National Forest lands was thus thrown were ready for the work,
both in the office and in the field, because they had been preparing
for it for more than five years. Without delay they proceeded, under the
leadership of Pinchot, to apply to the new work the principles they had
already formulated. One of these was to open all the resources of the
National Forests to regulated use. Another was that of putting every
part of the land to that use in which it would best serve the public.
Following this principle, the Act of June 11, 1906, was drawn, and its
passage was secured from Congress. This law throws open to settlement
all land in the National Forests that is found, on examination, to be
chiefly valuable for agriculture. Hitherto all such land had been closed
to the settler.
The principles thus formulated and applied may be summed up in the
statement that the rights of the public to the natural resources
outweigh private rights, and must be given its first consideration.
Until that time, in dealing with the National Forests, and the public
lands generally, private rights had almost uniformly been allowed to
overbalance public rights. The change we made was right, and was vitally
necessary; but, of course, it created bitter opposition from private
interests.
One of the principles whose application was the source of much hostility
was this: It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a
living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his
company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the
kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in
words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that
this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred
to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault
us--getting most aid from certain demagogues, who were equally glad
improperly to denounce rich men in public and improperly to serve them
in private. The Forest Service established and enforced regulations
which favored the settler as against the large stock owner; required
that necessary reductions in the stock grazed on any National Forest
should bear first on the big man, before the few head of the small man,
upon which the living of his family depended, were reduced; and made
grazing in the National Forests a help, instead of a hindrance, to
permanent settlement. As a result, the small settlers and their families
became, on the whole, the best friends the Forest Service has; although
in places their ignorance was played on by demagogues to influence them
against the policy that was primarily for their own interest.
Another principle which led to the bitterest antagonism of all was
this--whoever (except a bona-fide settler) takes public property for
private profit should pay for what he gets. In the effort to apply
this principle, the Forest Service obtained a decision from the
Attorney-General that it was legal to make the men who grazed sheep and
cattle on the National Forests pay for what they got. Accordingly, in
the summer of 1906, for the first time, such a charge was made; and, in
the face of the bitterest opposition, it was collected.
Up to the time the National Forests were put under the charge of the
Forest Service, the Interior Department had made no effort to establish
public regulation and control of water powers. Upon the transfer, the
Service immediately began its fight to handle the power resources of the
National Forests so as to prevent speculation and monopoly and to yield
a fair return to the Government. On May 1, 1906, an Act was passed
granting the use of certain power sites in Southern California to the
Edison Electric Power Company, which Act, at the suggestion of the
Service, limited the period of the permit to forty years, and required
the payment of an annual rental by the company, the same conditions
which were thereafter adopted by the Service as the basis for all
permits for power development. Then began a vigorous fight against
the position of the Service by the water-power interests. The right
to charge for water-power development was, however, sustained by the
Attorney-General.
In 1907, the area of the National Forests was increased by Presidential
proclamation more than forty-three million acres; the plant necessary
for the full use of the Forests, such as roads, trails, and telephone
lines, began to be provided on a large scale; the interchange of field
and office men, so as to prevent the antagonism between them, which is
so destructive of efficiency in most great businesses, was established
as a permanent policy; and the really effective management of the
enormous area of the National Forests began to be secured.
With all this activity in the field, the progress of technical forestry
and popular education was not neglected. In 1907, for example, sixty-one
publications on various phases of forestry, with a total of more than a
million copies, were issued, as against three publications, with a
total of eighty-two thousand copies, in 1901. By this time, also, the
opposition of the servants of the special interests in Congress to the
Forest Service had become strongly developed, and more time appeared
to be spent in the yearly attacks upon it during the passage of the
appropriation bills than on all other Government Bureaus put together.
Every year the Forest Service had to fight for its life.
One incident in these attacks is worth recording. While the Agricultural
Appropriation Bill was passing through the Senate, in 1907, Senator
Fulton, of Oregon, secured an amendment providing that the President
could not set aside any additional National Forests in the six
Northwestern States. This meant retaining some sixteen million of acres
to be exploited by land grabbers and by the representatives of the great
special interests, at the expense of the public interest. But for four
years the Forest Service had been gathering field notes as to what
forests ought to be set aside in these States, and so was prepared to
act. It was equally undesirable to veto the whole agricultural bill, and
to sign it with this amendment effective. Accordingly, a plan to create
the necessary National Forest in these States before the Agricultural
Bill could be passed and signed was laid before me by Mr. Pinchot. I
approved it. The necessary papers were immediately prepared. I signed
the last proclamation a couple of days before, by my signature, the bill
became law; and, when the friends of the special interests in the Senate
got their amendment through and woke up, they discovered that sixteen
million acres of timberland had been saved for the people by putting
them in the National Forests before the land grabbers could get at them.
The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath;
and dire were their threats against the Executive; but the threats could
not be carried out, and were really only a tribute to the efficiency of
our action.
By 1908, the fire prevention work of the Forest Service had become so
successful that eighty-six per cent of the fires that did occur were
held down to an area of five acres or less, and the timber sales, which
yielded $60,000 in 1905, in 1908 produced $850,000. In the same year, in
addition to the work of the National Forests, the responsibility for the
proper handling of Indian timberlands was laid upon the Forest Service,
where it remained with great benefit to the Indians until it was
withdrawn, as a part of the attack on the Conservation policy made after
I left office.
By March 4, 1909, nearly half a million acres of agricultural land in
the National Forests had been opened to settlement under the Act of
June 11, 1906. The business management of the Forest Service became so
excellent, thanks to the remarkable executive capacity of the Associate
Forester, Overton W. Price (removed after I left office), that it
was declared by a well-known firm of business organizers to compare
favorably with the best managed of the great private corporations,
an opinion which was confirmed by the report of a Congressional
investigation, and by the report of the Presidential Committee on
Department method. The area of the National Forests had increased from
43 to 194 million acres; the force from about 500 to more than 3000.
There was saved for public use in the National Forests more Government
timberland during the seven and a half years prior to March 4, 1909,
than during all previous and succeeding years put together.
The idea that the Executive is the steward of the public welfare was
first formulated and given practical effect in the Forest Service by its
law officer, George Woodruff. The laws were often insufficient, and it
became well-nigh impossible to get them amended in the public interest
when once the representatives of privilege in Congress grasped the fact
that I would sign no amendment that contained anything not in the public
interest. It was necessary to use what law was already in existence,
and then further to supplement it by Executive action. The practice
of examining every claim to public land before passing it into private
ownership offers a good example of the policy in question. This
practice, which has since become general, was first applied in the
National Forests. Enormous areas of valuable public timberland were
thereby saved from fraudulent acquisition; more than 250,000 acres were
thus saved in a single case.
This theory of stewardship in the interest of the public was well
illustrated by the establishment of a water-power policy. Until the
Forest Service changed the plan, water-powers on the navigable streams,
on the public domain, and in the National Forests were given away for
nothing, and substantially without question, to whoever asked for them.
At last, under the principle that public property should be paid for
and should not be permanently granted away when such permanent grant is
avoidable, the Forest Service established the policy of regulating the
use of power in the National Forests in the public interest and making
a charge for value received. This was the beginning of the water-power
policy now substantially accepted by the public, and doubtless soon to
be enacted into law. But there was at the outset violent opposition to
it on the part of the water-power companies, and such representatives of
their views in Congress as Messrs. Tawney and Bede.
Many bills were introduced in Congress aimed, in one way or another, at
relieving the power companies of control and payment. When these bills
reached me I refused to sign them; and the injury to the public interest
which would follow their passage was brought sharply to public attention
in my message of February 26, 1908. The bills made no further progress.
Under the same principle of stewardship, railroads and other
corporations, which applied for and were given rights in the National
Forests, were regulated in the use of those rights. In short, the public
resources in charge of the Forest Service were handled frankly and
openly for the public welfare under the clear-cut and clearly set forth
principle that the public rights come first and private interest second.
The natural result of this new attitude was the assertion in every form
by the representatives of special interests that the Forest Service
was exceeding its legal powers and thwarting the intention of Congress.
Suits were begun wherever the chance arose. It is worth recording that,
in spite of the novelty and complexity of the legal questions it had
to face, no court of last resort has ever decided against the Forest
Service. This statement includes two unanimous decisions by the Supreme
Court of the United States (U. S. vs. Grimaud, 220 U. S., 506, and Light
vs. U. S., 220 U. S., 523).
In its administration of the National Forests, the Forest Service
found that valuable coal lands were in danger of passing into private
ownership without adequate money return to the Government and
without safeguard against monopoly; and that existing legislation was
insufficient to prevent this. When this condition was brought to my
attention I withdrew from all forms of entry about sixty-eight million
acres of coal land in the United States, including Alaska. The refusal
of Congress to act in the public interest was solely responsible for
keeping these lands from entry.
The Conservation movement was a direct outgrowth of the forest movement.
It was nothing more than the application to our other natural resources
of the principles which had been worked out in connection with the
forests. Without the basis of public sentiment which had been built up
for the protection of the forests, and without the example of public
foresight in the protection of this, one of the great natural resources,
the Conservation movement would have been impossible. The first formal
step was the creation of the Inland Waterways Commission, appointed
on March 14, 1907. In my letter appointing the Commission, I called
attention to the value of our streams as great natural resources, and to
the need for a progressive plan for their development and control, and
said: "It is not possible to properly frame so large a plan as this
for the control of our rivers without taking account of the orderly
development of other natural resources. Therefore I ask that the Inland
Waterways Commission shall consider the relations of the streams to the
use of all the great permanent natural resources and their conservation
for the making and maintenance of prosperous homes."
Over a year later, writing on the report of the Commission, I said:
"The preliminary Report of the Inland Waterways Commission was excellent
in every way. It outlines a general plan of waterway improvement which
when adopted will give assurance that the improvements will yield
practical results in the way of increased navigation and water
transportation. In every essential feature the plan recommended by the
Commission is new. In the principle of coordinating all uses of the
waters and treating each waterway system as a unit; in the principle
of correlating water traffic with rail and other land traffic; in the
principle of expert initiation of projects in accordance with commercial
foresight and the needs of a growing country; and in the principle
of cooperation between the States and the Federal Government in the
administration and use of waterways, etc.; the general plan proposed by
the Commission is new, and at the same time sane and simple. The plan
deserves unqualified support. I regret that it has not yet been adopted
by Congress, but I am confident that ultimately it will be adopted."
The most striking incident in the history of the Commission was the trip
down the Mississippi River in October, 1907, when, as President of the
United States, I was the chief guest. This excursion, with the meetings
which were held and the wide public attention it attracted, gave the
development of our inland waterways a new standing in public estimation.
During the trip a letter was prepared and presented to me asking me
to summon a conference on the conservation of natural resources. My
intention to call such a conference was publicly announced at a great
meeting at Memphis, Tenn.
In the November following I wrote to each of the Governors of the
several States and to the Presidents of various important National
Societies concerned with natural resources, inviting them to attend the
conference, which took place May 13 to 15, 1908, in the East Room of the
White House. It is doubtful whether, except in time of war, any new idea
of like importance has ever been presented to a Nation and accepted
by it with such effectiveness and rapidity, as was the case with this
Conservation movement when it was introduced to the American people
by the Conference of Governors. The first result was the unanimous
declaration of the Governors of all the States and Territories upon
the subject of Conservation, a document which ought to be hung in every
schoolhouse throughout the land. A further result was the appointment of
thirty-six State Conservation Commissions and, on June 8, 1908, of the
National Conservation Commission. The task of this Commission was to
prepare an inventory, the first ever made for any nation, of all the
natural resources which underlay its property. The making of this
inventory was made possible by an Executive order which placed
the resources of the Government Departments at the command of the
Commission, and made possible the organization of subsidiary committees
by which the actual facts for the inventory were prepared and digested.
Gifford Pinchot was made chairman of the Commission.
The report of the National Conservation Commission was not only the
first inventory of our resources, but was unique in the history of
Government in the amount and variety of information brought together. It
was completed in six months. It laid squarely before the American people
the essential facts regarding our natural resources, when facts were
greatly needed as the basis for constructive action. This report was
presented to the Joint Conservation Congress in December, at which there
were present Governors of twenty States, representatives of twenty-two
State Conservation Commissions, and representatives of sixty National
organizations previously represented at the White House conference.
The report was unanimously approved, and transmitted to me, January
11, 1909. On January 22, 1909, I transmitted the report of the National
Conservation Commission to Congress with a Special Message, in which
it was accurately described as "one of the most fundamentally important
documents ever laid before the American people."
The Joint Conservation Conference of December, 1908, suggested to me the
practicability of holding a North American Conservation Conference. I
selected Gifford Pinchot to convey this invitation in person to Lord
Grey, Governor General of Canada; to Sir Wilfrid Laurier; and to
President Diaz of Mexico; giving as reason for my action, in the letter
in which this invitation was conveyed, the fact that: "It is evident
that natural resources are not limited by the boundary lines which
separate nations, and that the need for conserving them upon this
continent is as wide as the area upon which they exist."
In response to this invitation, which included the colony of
Newfoundland, the Commissioners assembled in the White House on February
18, 1909. The American Commissioners were Gifford Pinchot, Robert Bacon,
and James R. Garfield. After a session continuing through five days, the
Conference united in a declaration of principles, and suggested to the
President of the United States "that all nations should be invited to
join together in conference on the subject of world resources, and their
inventory, conservation, and wise utilization." Accordingly, on February
19, 1909, Robert Bacon, Secretary of State, addressed to forty-five
nations a letter of invitation "to send delegates to a conference to be
held at The Hague at such date to be found convenient, there to meet
and consult the like delegates of the other countries, with a view of
considering a general plan for an inventory of the natural resources
of the world and to devising a uniform scheme for the expression of
the results of such inventory, to the end that there may be a general
understanding and appreciation of the world's supply of the material
elements which underlie the development of civilization and the welfare
of the peoples of the earth." After I left the White House the project
lapsed.
Throughout the early part of my Administration the public land policy
was chiefly directed to the defense of the public lands against fraud
and theft. Secretary Hitchcock's efforts along this line resulted in
the Oregon land fraud cases, which led to the conviction of Senator
Mitchell, and which made Francis J. Heney known to the American people
as one of their best and most effective servants. These land fraud
prosecutions under Mr. Heney, together with the study of the public
lands which preceded the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902, and
the investigation of land titles in the National Forests by the Forest
Service, all combined to create a clearer understanding of the need of
land law reform, and thus led to the appointment of the Public Lands
Commission. This Commission, appointed by me on October 22, 1903, was
directed to report to the President: "Upon the condition, operation, and
effect of the present land laws, and to recommend such changes as are
needed to effect the largest practicable disposition of the public lands
to actual settlers who will build permanent homes upon them, and to
secure in permanence the fullest and most effective use of the resources
of the public lands." It proceeded without loss of time to make a
personal study on the ground of public land problems throughout the
West, to confer with the Governors and other public men most concerned,
and to assemble the information concerning the public lands, the laws
and decisions which governed them, and the methods of defeating or
evading those laws, which was already in existence, but which remained
unformulated in the records of the General Land Office and in the mind
of its employees. The Public Lands Commission made its first preliminary
report on March 7, 1904. It found "that the present land laws do not fit
the conditions of the remaining public lands," and recommended specific
changes to meet the public needs. A year later the second report of the
Commission recommended still further changes, and said "The fundamental
fact that characterizes the situation under the present land laws
is this, that the number of patents issued is increasing out of all
proportion to the number of new homes." This report laid the foundation
of the movement for Government control of the open range, and included
by far the most complete statement ever made of the disposition of the
public domain.
Among the most difficult topics considered by the Public Lands
Commission was that of the mineral land laws. This subject was referred
by the Commission to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, which
reported upon it through a Committee. This Committee made the very
important recommendation, among others, "that the Government of the
United States should retain title to all minerals, including coal
and oil, in the lands of unceded territory, and lease the same to
individuals or corporations at a fixed rental." The necessity for
this action has since come to be very generally recognized. Another
recommendation, since partly carried into effect, was for the separation
of the surface and the minerals in lands containing coal and oil.
Our land laws have of recent years proved inefficient; yet the land laws
themselves have not been so much to blame as the lax, unintelligent, and
often corrupt administration of these laws. The appointment on March 4,
1907, of James R. Garfield as Secretary of the Interior led to a new era
in the interpretation and enforcement of the laws governing the
public lands. His administration of the Interior Department was beyond
comparison the best we have ever had. It was based primarily on the
conception that it is as much the duty of public land officials to
help the honest settler get title to his claim as it is to prevent the
looting of the public lands. The essential fact about public land frauds
is not merely that public property is stolen, but that every claim
fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making of a home or a
livelihood by an honest man.
As the study of the public land laws proceeded and their administration
improved, a public land policy was formulated in which the saving of
the resources on the public domain for public use became the leading
principle. There followed the withdrawal of coal lands as already
described, of oil lands and phosphate lands, and finally, just at the
end of the Administration, of water-power sites on the public domain.
These withdrawals were made by the Executive in order to afford to
Congress the necessary opportunity to pass wise laws dealing with their
use and disposal; and the great crooked special interests fought them
with incredible bitterness.
Among the men of this Nation interested in the vital problems affecting
the welfare of the ordinary hard-working men and women of the Nation,
there is none whose interest has been more intense, and more wholly free
from taint of thought of self, than that of Thomas Watson, of Georgia.
While President I often discussed with him the condition of women on
the small farms, and on the frontier, the hardship of their lives as
compared with those of the men, and the need for taking their welfare
into consideration in whatever was done for the improvement of life on
the land. I also went over the matter with C. S. Barrett, of Georgia,
a leader in the Southern farmers' movement, and with other men, such as
Henry Wallace, Dean L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and Kenyon Butterfield.
One man from whose advice I especially profited was not an American, but
an Irishman, Sir Horace Plunkett. In various conversations he described
to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm life which had
been accomplished by the Agricultural Organization Society of Ireland,
of which he was the founder and the controlling force; and he discussed
the application of similar methods to the improvements of farm life
in the United States. In the spring of 1908, at my request, Plunkett
conferred on the subject with Garfield and Pinchot, and the latter
suggested to him the appointment of a Commission on Country Life as a
means for directing the attention of the Nation to the problems of the
farm, and for securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions
of life in the open country. After long discussion a plan for a Country
Life Commission was laid before me and approved. The appointment of the
Commission followed in August, 1908. In the letter of appointment the
reasons for creating the Commission were set forth as follows: "I doubt
if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount
of attention given by the Government, both Federal and State, to
agricultural matters. But practically the whole of this effort has
hitherto been directed toward increasing the production of crops. Our
attention has been concentrated almost exclusively on getting better
farming. In the beginning this was unquestionably the right thing to do.
The farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to support himself
and his family. But when this has been secured, the effort for better
farming should cease to stand alone, and should be accompanied by the
effort for better business and better living on the farm. It is at least
as important that the farmer should get the largest possible return in
money, comfort, and social advantages from the crops he grows, as that
he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he
farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country life. The great rural
interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the
farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm."
The Commission on Country Life did work of capital importance. By means
of a widely circulated set of questions the Commission informed itself
upon the status of country life throughout the Nation. Its trip through
the East, South, and West brought it into contact with large numbers of
practical farmers and their wives, secured for the Commissioners a most
valuable body of first-hand information, and laid the foundation for the
remarkable awakening of interest in country life which has since taken
place throughout the Nation.
One of the most illuminating--and incidentally one of the most
interesting and amusing--series of answers sent to the Commission was
from a farmer in Missouri. He stated that he had a wife and 11 living
children, he and his wife being each 52 years old; and that they owned
520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had
himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had
done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed
in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He
states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they
should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the
schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the farm,
because they allow them to get an idea in their heads that city life is
better, and that to remedy this practical farming should be taught. To
the question whether the farmers and their wives in his neighborhood are
satisfactorily organized, he answers: "Oh, there is a little one-horse
grange gang in our locality, and every darned one thinks they ought
to be a king." To the question, "Are the renters of farms in your
neighborhood making a satisfactory living?" he answers: "No; because
they move about so much hunting a better job." To the question, "Is the
supply of farm labor in your neighborhood satisfactory?" the answer is:
"No; because the people have gone out of the baby business"; and when
asked as to the remedy, he answers, "Give a pension to every mother who
gives birth to seven living boys on American soil." To the question,
"Are the conditions surrounding hired labor on the farm in your
neighborhood satisfactory to the hired men?" he answers: "Yes, unless he
is a drunken cuss," adding that he would like to blow up the stillhouses
and root out whiskey and beer. To the question, "Are the sanitary
conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory?" he answers:
"No; too careless about chicken yards, and the like, and poorly covered
wells. In one well on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall
of the well, and they used the water daily: his wife dead now and he is
looking for another." He ends by stating that the most important single
thing to be done for the betterment of country life is "good roads"; but
in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the
individual equation of the man or woman.
Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, the Country
Life Commission cost the Government not one cent, but laid before the
President and the country a mass of information so accurate and so
vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things
as they are; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the
reactionaries. The report of the Country Life Commission was transmitted
to Congress by me on February 9, 1909. In the accompanying message I
asked for $25,000 to print and circulate the report and to prepare for
publication the immense amount of valuable material collected by the
Commission but still unpublished. The reply made by Congress was not
only a refusal to appropriate the money, but a positive prohibition
against continuing the work. The Tawney amendment to the Sundry Civil
bill forbade the President to appoint any further Commissions unless
specifically authorized by Congress to do so. Had this prohibition
been enacted earlier _and complied with_, it would have prevented the
appointment of the six Roosevelt commissions. But I would not have
complied with it. Mr. Tawney, one of the most efficient representatives
of the cause of special privilege as against public interest to be found
in the House, was later, in conjunction with Senator Hale and others,
able to induce my successor to accept their view. As what was almost my
last official act, I replied to Congress that if I did not believe the
Tawney amendment to be unconstitutional I would veto the Sundry Civil
bill which contained it, and that if I were remaining in office I would
refuse to obey it. The memorandum ran in part:
"The chief object of this provision, however, is to prevent the
Executive repeating what it has done within the last year in connection
with the Conservation Commission and the Country Life Commission. It is
for the people of the country to decide whether or not they believe in
the work done by the Conservation Commission and by the Country Life
Commission. . . .
"If they believe in improving our waterways, in preventing the waste of
soil, in preserving the forests, in thrifty use of the mineral resources
of the country for the nation as a whole rather than merely for private
monopolies, in working for the betterment of the condition of the men
and women who live on the farms, then they will unstintedly condemn the
action of every man who is in any way responsible for inserting this
provision, and will support those members of the legislative branch who
opposed its adoption. I would not sign the bill at all if I thought
the provision entirely effective. But the Congress cannot prevent the
President from seeking advice. Any future President can do as I have
done, and ask disinterested men who desire to serve the people to give
this service free to the people through these commissions. . . .
"My successor, the President-elect, in a letter to the Senate Committee
on Appropriations, asked for the continuance and support of the
Conservation Commission. The Conservation Commission was appointed at
the request of the Governors of over forty States, and almost all of
these States have since appointed commissions to cooperate with the
National Commission. Nearly all the great national organizations
concerned with natural resources have been heartily cooperating with the
commission.
"With all these facts before it, the Congress has refused to pass a law
to continue and provide for the commission; and it now passes a law with
the purpose of preventing the Executive from continuing the commission
at all. The Executive, therefore, must now either abandon the work and
reject the cooperation of the States, or else must continue the work
personally and through executive officers whom he may select for that
purpose."
The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane, Washington, a singularly energetic
and far-seeing organization, itself published the report which Congress
had thus discreditably refused to publish.
The work of the Bureau of Corporations, under Herbert Knox Smith,
formed an important part of the Conservation movement almost from the
beginning. Mr. Smith was a member of the Inland Waterways Commission and
of the National Conservation Commission and his Bureau prepared material
of importance for the reports of both. The investigation of standing
timber in the United States by the Bureau of Corporations furnished
for the first time a positive knowledge of the facts. Over nine hundred
counties in timbered regions were covered by the Bureau, and the work
took five years. The most important facts ascertained were that forty
years ago three-fourths of the standing timber in the United States
was publicly owned, while at the date of the report four-fifths of the
timber in the country was in private hands. The concentration of private
ownership had developed to such an amazing extent that about two hundred
holders owned nearly one-half of all privately owned timber in the
United States; and of this the three greatest holders, the Southern
Pacific Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Weyerhaeuser
Timber Company, held over ten per cent. Of this work, Mr. Smith says:
"It was important, indeed, to know the facts so that we could take
proper action toward saving the timber still left to the public. But of
far more importance was the light that this history (and the history
of our other resources) throws on the basic attitude, tradition and
governmental beliefs of the American people. The whole standpoint of
the people toward the proper aim of government, toward the relation of
property to the citizen, and the relation of property to the government,
were brought out first by this Conservation work."
The work of the Bureau of Corporations as to water power was equally
striking. In addition to bringing the concentration of water-power
control first prominently to public attention, through material
furnished for my message in my veto of the James River Dam Bill, the
work of the Bureau showed that ten great interests and their allies held
nearly sixty per cent of the developed water power of the United States.
Says Commissioner Smith: "Perhaps the most important thing in the whole
work was its clear demonstration of the fact that the only effective
place to control water power in the public interest is at the power
sites; that as to powers now owned by the public it is absolutely
essential that the public shall retain title. . . . The only way in
which the public can get back to itself the margin of natural advantage
in the water-power site is to rent that site at a rental which, added
to the cost of power production there, will make the total cost of water
power about the same as fuel power, and then let the two sell at the
same price, i. e., the price of fuel power."
Of the fight of the water-power men for States Rights at the St. Paul
Conservation Congress in September, 1909, Commissioner Smith says:
"It was the first open sign of the shift of the special interests to the
Democratic party for a logical political reason, namely, because of the
availability of the States Rights idea for the purposes of the large
corporations. It marked openly the turn of the tide."
Mr. Smith brought to the attention of the Inland Waterways Commission
the overshadowing importance to waterways of their relation with
railroad lines, the fact that the bulk of the traffic is long distance
traffic, that it cannot pass over the whole distance by water, while it
can go anywhere by rail, and that therefore the power of the rail lines
to pro-rate or not to pro-rate, with water lines really determines the
practical value of a river channel. The controlling value of terminals
and the fact that out of fifty of our leading ports, over half the
active water frontage in twenty-one ports was controlled by the
railroads, was also brought to the Commission's attention, and reports
of great value were prepared both for the Inland Waterways Commission
and for the National Conservation Commission. In addition to developing
the basic facts about the available timber supply, about waterways,
water power, and iron ore, Mr. Smith helped to develop and drive into
the public conscience the idea that the people ought to retain title to
our natural resources and handle them by the leasing system.
The things accomplished that have been enumerated above were of
immediate consequence to the economic well-being of our people. In
addition certain things were done of which the economic bearing was more
remote, but which bore directly upon our welfare, because they add to
the beauty of living and therefore to the joy of life. Securing a great
artist, Saint-Gaudens, to give us the most beautiful coinage since the
decay of Hellenistic Greece was one such act. In this case I had power
myself to direct the Mint to employ Saint-Gaudens. The first, and
most beautiful, of his coins were issued in thousands before Congress
assembled or could intervene; and a great and permanent improvement was
made in the beauty of the coinage. In the same way, on the advice
and suggestion of Frank Millet, we got some really capital medals by
sculptors of the first rank. Similarly, the new buildings in Washington
were erected and placed in proper relation to one another, on plans
provided by the best architects and landscape architects. I also
appointed a Fine Arts Council, an unpaid body of the best architects,
painters, and sculptors in the country, to advise the Government as
to the erection and decoration of all new buildings. The "pork-barrel"
Senators and Congressmen felt for this body an instinctive, and perhaps
from their standpoint a natural, hostility; and my successor a couple
of months after taking office revoked the appointment and disbanded the
Council.
Even more important was the taking of steps to preserve from destruction
beautiful and wonderful wild creatures whose existence was threatened by
greed and wantonness. During the seven and a half years closing on March
4, 1909, more was accomplished for the protection of wild life in the
United States than during all the previous years, excepting only the
creation of the Yellowstone National Park. The record includes the
creation of five National Parks--Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South
Dakota; Platt, Oklahoma; Sully Hill, North Dakota, and Mesa Verde,
Colorado; four big game refuges in Oklahoma, Arizona, Montana, and
Washington; fifty-one bird reservations; and the enactment of laws for
the protection of wild life in Alaska, the District of Columbia, and
on National bird reserves. These measures may be briefly enumerated as
follows:
The enactment of the first game laws for the Territory of Alaska in
1902 and 1908, resulting in the regulation of the export of heads and
trophies of big game and putting an end to the slaughter of deer for
hides along the southern coast of the Territory.
The securing in 1902 of the first appropriation for the preservation of
buffalo and the establishment in the Yellowstone National Park of the
first and now the largest herd of buffalo belonging to the Government.
The passage of the Act of January 24, 1905, creating the Wichita Game
Preserves, the first of the National game preserves. In 1907, 12,000
acres of this preserve were inclosed with a woven wire fence for
the reception of the herd of fifteen buffalo donated by the New York
Zoological Society.
The passage of the Act of June 29, 1906, providing for the establishment
of the Grand Canyon Game Preserve of Arizona, now comprising 1,492,928
acres.
The passage of the National Monuments Act of June 8, 1906, under which
a number of objects of scientific interest have been preserved for all
time. Among the Monuments created are Muir Woods, Pinnacles National
Monument in California, and the Mount Olympus National Monument,
Washington, which form important refuges for game.
The passage of the Act of June 30, 1906, regulating shooting in the
District of Columbia and making three-fourths of the environs of the
National Capital within the District in effect a National Refuge.
The passage of the Act of May 23, 1908, providing for the establishment
of the National Bison Range in Montana. This range comprises about
18,000 acres of land formerly in the Flathead Indian Reservation, on
which is now established a herd of eighty buffalo, a nucleus of which
was donated to the Government by the American Bison Society.
The issue of the Order protecting birds on the Niobrara Military
Reservation, Nebraska, in 1908, making this entire reservation in effect
a bird reservation.
The establishment by Executive Order between March 14, 1903, and
March 4, 1909, of fifty-one National Bird Reservations distributed in
seventeen States and Territories from Porto Rico to Hawaii and Alaska.
The creation of these reservations at once placed the United States
in the front rank in the world work of bird protection. Among these
reservations are the celebrated Pelican Island rookery in Indian River,
Florida; the Mosquito Inlet Reservation, Florida, the northernmost home
of the manatee; the extensive marshes bordering Klamath and Malhuer
Lakes in Oregon, formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market
and ruthless destruction of plume birds for the millinery trade; the
Tortugas Key, Florida, where, in connection with the Carnegie Institute,
experiments have been made on the homing instinct of birds; and the
great bird colonies on Laysan and sister islets in Hawaii, some of the
greatest colonies of sea birds in the world.