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.