  The Congress reassembled in the Auditorium, Saint Paul, at 2 oclock p.m., Thursday, September 8, President Baker in the chair. President Baker—Fellow Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen: It has been urged that a nominating committee should be appointed to name officers proposed to be elected by the Congress as President, Secretary, Executive Secretary, and Treasurer. The Vice-Presidents have been chosen by the State Delegations, and their names will be presented this afternoon. So, unless some other course be preferred, the Chair will proceed to form a nominating committee. [After a pause.] The nominating committee will consist of Professor George E. Condra, of Nebraska, as chairman; E. T. Allen, of Oregon; E. L. Worsham, of Georgia; Lynn B. Meekins, of Maryland; and William Holton Dye, of Indiana. Delegates are invited to offer suggestions or nominations to the committee, which will hold a meeting during the afternoon. I have the honor now of presenting as presiding officer, His Excellency A. O. Eberhart, Governor of Minnesota. (Applause) Governor Eberhart—Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am indeed sorry that I am to be engaged elsewhere a portion of this I do not know whether the President of this Congress has made a special effort to secure splendid speakers for this afternoon, but certainly no session of the Congress, either forenoon, afternoon, or evening, has had better, more sincere, and more earnest and efficient workers along the lines of Conservation interests than those for this afternoon; and for that reason I am indeed sorry that I shall not hear them all. I want to say to you that the State of Minnesota and the Twin Cities are proud of the Delegates and the guests and the speakers of this convention, realizing that perhaps never in the history of the Conservation movement will there ever be another meeting so important as this, and one that will redound so much to the progressive and effectual work of the movement. I take great pleasure in introducing to you as the first speaker of this afternoon a man interested in the Conservation movement from the standpoint of public health—Dr F. F. Wesbrook, Dean of the Medical Department of our State University—who will speak on "Life and Health as National Assets." I consider it one of the most important subjects of the Conservation movement. I take great pleasure in introducing Dean Wesbrook. (Applause) Dean Wesbrook—Mr President, Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen: Short-sighted humanity fails to appreciate nature's gifts until threatened with their loss. This is true of even the greatest of her gifts, life itself. Although belated in our realization of the threatened overdraft on nature's storehouse, a compensatory and irresistible enthusiasm has developed within the last two years which augurs well for the retention by our country of that international leadership so manifestly foreordained by nature's bountiful equipment. It is significant of our failure to value health, which above all other considerations makes life worth the living, that the first meeting of the Governors in the White House in 1908 failed to provide for the study of health problems. The omission was noted, and in the National Conservation Commission's Report of January 11, 1909, the general schedule gave special consideration to life and health. Only four sections, however, were created in the appointment of the National Conservation Commission. Health was not provided with a special section or with officers. In the North American Conservation Congress, in addition to the Conservation of other National resources, the protection of game received attention; but among the Commissioners representing the various countries, there was seemingly no one whose The inclusion in the program of a paper entitled "Life and Health as National Assets" must not be taken as evidence that there is any doubt as to the real and assessable value of life and health. Rather are we called upon at this time to realize that they constitute National or public resources furnished by nature and are not to be regarded as strictly personal or private possessions. The individual life has its economic and commercial value to the community and the Nation by virtue of the contribution it may be expected to make to society. This view may perhaps be novel to some. Our ideas concerning the conservation of other natural resources however, have undergone such rapid evolution in the recent past that we may easily orient ourselves to the viewpoint exhibited by the officers of this Congress, that the individual in matters of health, as of other resources, must respect the rights of other individuals and of his municipality, State, and Government. The health aspect of Conservation, which is its most important aspect, cannot and will not be neglected, although it has not been the first to which the attention of the Nation has been directed. Nor can we dissociate health conservation from the other aspects of the movement, even if we would. The history of man's progress in the knowledge of the natural sciences bears out this statement. Even though we ourselves have broken faith with nature, we are able today to make her fulfil her promises in forestry, agriculture, and other economic matters by the application of our knowledge of those very sciences which may be said to owe their birth to man's search for perpetual life and youth. One can easily imagine that the medieval conservation commission comprised two sections, one on health and the other on minerals. In the former, which undoubtedly was basic and dominated all other considerations, the papers presented dealt with "elixir vitÆ" and the "touchstone" whilst in the latter the chief interest was displayed in the "transmutation of metals." At this stage the studies of health and of the control of man's so-called material assets were carried on hand in hand; and, if we are logical, they always will be. In any event, man's health depends on the success of his efforts to adapt his environment to his needs, more than it does on the adaptation of himself to his environment. Health interests are fused with social and economic development, but should undoubtedly dominate rather than be dominated by them. Our lack of interest in matters of health is more apparent than real. It is characteristic of many of us that where our most vital interests are involved, we betray the least public concern. In nothing One of the greatest causes of lethargy in the conservation of personal and public health is the failure on the part of many to differentiate clearly and sharply between disease and death. The former is really a manifestation of life and vital force, and is capable of modification, prevention, or cure by human agency, since man has shown himself quite able to solve nature's other secrets for the benefit of his comfort or convenience. We conserve health by the application of the same sciences which enable us to conserve our other better recognized but less material natural resources. Disease yields to man's mastery; death remains man's mystery. Even death, however, may be postponed, and Professor Irving Fisher has estimated that over 600,000 deaths occur each year in our country which could be postponed by the systematic application of the scientific knowledge already available. For those who think more easily in terms of dollars and cents, he has estimated this appalling annual National loss at over one billion dollars which can and should be prevented. We must not be lulled into any sense of well-being by such statistics. There is no royal road to such a goal. Our very success in the eradication of one disease or unsanitary condition may lead to undue optimism in regard to other problems, which later may be found to be dependent on altogether different causes and to require very different methods of prevention or cure. Failure to realize the complexities of modern social activity and economic development, in their relation to health, and, at the same time, to recognize the immense number of variable factors and agencies which are involved in health-protective measures, cannot but lead to disappointment. The individual whose enthusiasm is too easily aroused by the discovery of some hitherto unknown cause of disease, or some new method or theory of cure or prevention, is a source of danger to the commonwealth. The faddist, whether in the matter of such things as food, clothing, fresh air, baths, exercise or other therapeutic agents, as well as the individual who thinks that he has discovered the one cause of all diseases, is to be feared. Our chief difficulty lies in coordinating the various forces and agencies which are essential to success in the eradication of sickness. There is no blanket method of preventing all diseases. Quarantine and fumigation are now found to have but a limited application. Vaccination, which is practically an absolute and the only reliable These considerations should not discourage us. They show us, however, the need of further study, and the imperative demand for employing the services of trained physicians, biologists, chemists, engineers, statisticians, sociologists, educationists, and other experts and of coordinating all their efforts. We must steer a middle course, avoiding on the one hand the Scylla upon which those run who become discouraged in the face of what they believe to be the unknowable, and, on the other hand, the Charybdis of that fateful tendency to minimize the actual complexities of the present day health problem. Fatalist and faddist are equally dangerous. It is fair to count upon the same progress in the adaptation of physical, chemical, biological, social and other sciences to the diagnosis, cure and prevention of disease as in their application to man's comfort, convenience and economic development. It is clear that the efforts of all the various workers in the different fields must be coordinated; yet the difficulties of coordination are at once apparent. The forces and agencies may be roughly divided into international, National, State, county, municipal and institutional, as well as individual. Each one of these is capable of still further subdivision into two classes, one of which is official or governmental and the other is voluntary. Improvement in public health requires cooperation and coordination of all these. Successful public health administration consists largely in making individuals do what they do not wish to do—or that of which they do not appreciate the necessity—for the good of themselves and others. This brings us naturally to the consideration of another National weakness. We encounter some of the same difficulties in public health work that we meet in the exercise of our other public functions. Rampant individualism is of even greater danger in matters of health conservation than in other affairs of public concern, largely on account of the fact that health is too often regarded as a purely personal rather than a most important public asset. The individualist objects to authority in matters of health control. Consequently he resents dictation as to his personal action, and fails to recognize the need for special training in health administration as in other branches of public service. Public service of many kinds, and particularly that which relates to the conservation of health in our country, is all too often relegated to voluntary agencies, while in other countries it devolves upon official In Germany, the Government, through its public health service and universities, provides for medical and other research so that Nation has become a leader of the world in scientific health protection and scientific economic development. Having seen some of the difficulties which stand in the way of satisfactory conservation of the public health, we might perhaps ask ourselves what proof of the possibility of conserving this asset is available. If, at this day and time, the American public is unconvinced of the need and possibility of conserving public health, it is undeserving of the respect of other nations, or even of self-respect. The daily and weekly press, our magazines, and governmental and other publications, have overflowed with information. Our attention has been particularly called to the possibility of preserving the health of men in the field by Japan's experience in the recent war with Russia. Our life insurance companies have been quick to see the practical possibilities of prolonging the lives of their insured and of thus increasing the earnings of their stockholders. As illustrating our progress, the report on "National Vitality, Its Wastes and Conservation," which was issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is a masterpiece; it was prepared and presented by Professor Irving Fisher, of Yale University. The publications of the various committees of the American Medical Association, and the speech of Senator Owen in the Congressional Record of March 24, 1910, as well as Federal, State, municipal and other health reports, afford examples of what can be done. Those who may be skeptical in regard to the ability of our people to compete with older nations in the prevention of disease, should note what has actually been done by Americans under the greatest of difficulties. In Cuba, our Nation overturned the existing order of affairs, and scientific discoveries, made and applied to sanitation by Americans, afforded a lesson to the world. There has been no greater factor in winning the world-wide confidence of other nations than the production of the existing sanitary state of affairs in the Canal Zone by our own citizens. Our work in Cuba, Panama, and the Philippines has served to bring about hygienic conditions in supposedly pestilential regions which are vastly superior to those which obtain at home. What Americans have done for others they have failed to do for themselves, owing largely to the lack of provision of adequate official and governmental agencies and to the failure to coordinate those which exist. Two Americans in Porto Rico showed the possibility of stamping out hookworm disease. The brains were furnished by the United States, and the money by the Island. We have the brains at home, but we refuse to pay the bills. It is manifest that a full and complete discussion of life and health as National assets is impossible within the limits of a single paper. No attempt need be made to present a complete basis either of comparison or differentiation of health conservation from the other aspects of the National movement. It must be clear to all that in the conservation of lands, minerals, waters, and forests, effort is made to prevent the individual from taking that which belongs to the public. In the conservation of public health, our effort must be directed to preventing the individual from giving to the public something which neither he nor it desires. This is particularly true of infectious diseases. There are many other phases of public health than those which relate to infectious disease, but they cannot be discussed at this time. I have the honor to be a Delegate to this Congress from both the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, which represent factors in the conservation of human life and health concerning which the public needs more information than it possesses; and with your permission, I shall briefly mention a few important matters: In the past, individual physicians and local medical associations and societies have brought a scattering fire to bear upon the inactivity and ignorance of the general public in matters which pertain to public health. The public fails to believe in the urgency of health needs, when presented by individuals or groups of physicians, because of its inability to appreciate the motive which leads the physician to urge the establishment of machinery and the special education of officials, as also the provision of funds to carry on work which to the casual observer would mean a diminution of the individual physician's work and income. Physicians who have qualified by postgraduate training in bacteriology, pathology, epidemiology, and in public health, hospital, The average individual seems willing to pay, and pay well, for a cure when he is sick. Communities pay the cost of epidemics, and will even pay for engineering services in relation to public utilities, such as water supply and sewage disposal; but this is usually done only under the stimulus of some recent or threatened disaster. They, like the individual, want a cure, not a protection. Clinical experts, life insurance examiners, and consulting and commercial engineers, are all sure of a good livelihood because they can help the individual or community out of difficulties. Sanitarians and municipal engineers are usually left to semi-starvation, because their function is to prevent those same difficulties, without, however, having either available public sentiment or funds to enable them to do it. Physicians are naturally skeptical of the scientific training and possession of proper ideals on the part of those who have not been especially trained in medicine, and who may have failed to develop the "disease point of view." That they are, however, of a receptive frame of mind can be shown in many ways. The American Medical Association has a number of standing committees, including a Council on Medical Education. This Council, in the endeavor to raise the standard of medical teaching throughout the United States, prepared a standard schedule of minimal requirements, through the agency of ten committees, each of which consisted of ten representative men. One of these ten committees (which had to deal with hygiene, medical jurisprudence, and medical economics) contained in its membership university and college professors of chemistry, physiological chemistry, political economy, pathology, bacteriology and hygiene. There were also executive officers of State and municipal boards of health, and representatives of the Federal Health Service; whilst among the collaborators were engineers and many university professors. Bear in mind that this was a committee of the so-called "medical trust"—the American Medical Association. Through oversight for which no one is responsible, this Second National Conservation Congress and the American Public Health Association are meeting on exactly the same dates, September 5-9, we in Saint Paul and the Association in Milwaukee—I was just able We in this country are compelled to admit that our neighbors upon the north and south have much in the way of advantage which is denied to our own workers in the United States. In our sister countries, the tenure of office depends on the fitness and training of the incumbent. As a rule the compensation for public service is relatively higher, and the official organizations are better provided with an authority which is commensurate with their responsibility than is the case in our own country. Time will not permit extended discussion of these conditions, but the annual opportunity to compare notes; to tell each other of our successes, as also of our failures; and to help in the formulation of new methods and in an effort toward a higher standard of efficiency, is of untold value. This is, however, a purely voluntary organization maintained for over thirty years at the personal expense of its members in the face of public apathy. This will be realized if I ask, "How many of you knew that we have such an association," and "Did you know that it is now in session"? There yet remain a few matters of which a general understanding would bring about yet greater cooperation between the doctor and the general public. The medical profession has realized for a number of years that its members must become teachers of personal hygiene to their patients and families, as also to schools and the general public. It is a new viewpoint, and involves the assumption of new responsibilities. The doctor has guarded himself against publicity except through his professional societies and journals and to his students, though ever eager to furnish details of his own discoveries and to recount his failures and his successes to those who could understand and sympathize. This kind of publicity has been regarded, however, by the lay public as a sort of soliloquy carried on in an unknown tongue, and intended for the mystification of that same poor public. Why there should be any failure of the medical profession, as a whole, to be understood by the general public, it is difficult to see. The general public is composed of individuals, each of whom has a feeling of trust, affection, and possibly of veneration for one or more members of the medical profession. Why then does the public, as an aggregation of individuals, allow itself to become suspicious of the medical profession, an aggregation of physicians? Why does the public abhor and obstruct the physician in his study of anatomy, dissection, and autopsy on the human body? Why is there so much suspicion of the motives and work, as well as denial of the benefits which accrue to humanity from animal experimentation, when it must be apparent to any right-thinking individual that the extension of a physician's knowledge is possible only by such means? Why must doctors from time to time be themselves forced to urge the necessity of making every hospital a teaching and research institution? A moment's thought would convince anyone that if this be not done, and if medical knowledge be allowed to die out with this generation, there will be no skilled men available for the hospitals and patients of the future. It must also be patent to all that the patients themselves cannot possibly receive such effective care in a hospital in which medical research and teaching are not fostered. Why should the burden of maintaining a high standard of entrance to the profession and of preventing incompetent and untrained persons from assuming the responsibility of physicians rest solely on the medical profession, when the object is the protection of private citizens and public health? The physicians of the United States are now thoroughly organized. The public should rejoice in this, since it is an attempt to neutralize the narrowing effect of isolation and to foster an exchange of information which physicians offer freely to each other and publish broadcast to the world (applause). County and State associations are affiliated with the American Medical Association, which numbers in its membership over seventy thousand doctors. Just as the individual physician's concern is the care of his patient, so that of the organized medical profession is public health and welfare. The medical profession is, as a rule, underpaid, but members spend their hard-earned-money and a large portion of their time in efforts to benefit humanity, individually and en masse. It is the people's concern to demand a broad education and a thorough scientific training of all students and practitioners of medicine, public and private. It is to their interest to see that every possible facility is afforded for teaching and that a rigid standard of teaching, examination, degree conference, and licensure is maintained. Nothing is more exasperating to the physician of high ideals, whose length and breadth of sacrifice is known to none, than to hear the sneer directed at his profession for its effort to protect the public. The time has come when the medical profession is in a position to demand that the people exercise discrimination and protect themselves. One of the first steps toward the betterment of our public health conditions is the coordination of the existing Federal agencies in Washington, of which we are all so proud. When no logical reason can be advanced in explanation of further delay, it is very discouraging to realize that this important matter has been postponed. At the 61st Congress, various bills were introduced, including that of Senator Owen. In support of these bills appeared those who by special training and long experience are recognized at home and abroad as the highest authorities on public health. The whole country is waiting to see what action her representatives will take to protect her most precious asset. With your permission, I should like to cite some sixteen reasons why the people of the United States should have a department of health at Washington, which were published by the Committee of One Hundred of the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
In 1912 there will meet in Washington, on the invitation of the President and Congress of the United States, the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. This Congress meets triennially in the capitals of the world, and brings together the leaders in health conservation who are officially delegated by the governments of all civilized countries. We have many things to show them of which we can be justly proud. Our Federal, State, municipal and other official health organizations, however, leave much to be desired: and it behooves us, in the few months still at our disposal, to prepare to show the visiting nations our methods and successes. We need many other things, but due recognition and coordination of our Federal health Nature has been prodigal in her gifts to our Nation. In no respect has she been kinder than in opportunities for health and efficiency. Her very prodigality has rendered us careless and extravagant. It is high time that Americans do as well for themselves in health protection at home as they have done for themselves and others in Cuba, the Canal Zone, Porto Rico, and the Philippines (applause). This demands the creation and maintenance of official organizations to amplify, extend, and ultimately replace the work of our voluntary organizations whose lack of authority prevents their complete success, and whose continuance is an admission of popular inertia and official incompetence. (Applause) [During the foregoing, Governor Eberhart withdrew, and professor Condra took the chair.] Professor Condra—Ladies and Gentlemen: In the temporary absence of Governor Eberhart I have the pleasure of introducing Mr Wallace D. Simmons, of Saint Louis, who will address you on "Our Resources as the Basis for Business." (Applause) Mr Simmons—Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The President of the United States in opening this Congress called upon the speakers to make definite practical suggestions. The ex-President of the United States the next day emphasized the need of further enlightenment of the people regarding Conservation. It has frequently been my privilege to cooperate with both of them, and I will endeavor to do so now by suggesting a definite plan for spreading enlightenment in a practical manner. We of this generation have developed a distinctly new type in our American citizenship, one which has no counterpart in the history of any other people, one which has become a most potent and influential factor in our daily affairs: our modern high-class commercial traveler. In any campaign of education, such as I am going to suggest, you can have no more efficient allies than the 600,000 commercial travelers covering this country—not the old-time drummers of questionable methods, but the gentlemen of high character who have won the confidence, the respect and friendship of the merchants and the people generally in every part of this country; and I may add, as a requisite to their success that they are resourceful. To this development I attribute my having the honor of addressing you today regarding our resources as the basis of our business, because the organization of which I am president employs probably the largest corps of such representatives in the country, and has through them the best system of keeping accurately informed regarding all matters that affect business. From conclusions based largely upon the observations of the commercial travelers of this country, I will endeavor to outline to you what I believe to be the relationship between our business interests and the question of natural resources; and I believe this phase of the question is most vitally important to the people in whose interest you have gathered here from every State in the Union. The primary reason for that belief—and the one on which all others hinge—is that we are a Nation in trade; a whole people engaged in business. Eighty-odd percent of our people are directly or indirectly dependent for their living on business conditions. The business interest therefore is the greatest interest, collectively, in the country. Anything which directly affects the living of the majority of our people is not only worthy of our most earnest attention, but should be approached with due consideration. We should be especially cautious about experimenting with legislation that may interfere with the natural laws of trade. When this is more generally recognized, and the people begin to understand that their individual daily incomes are at stake, they will put a stop to using the business interests of the country as a football for politics. Not only does there appear to me to be a direct relation between our natural resources and our business, but as I view it our resources are the foundation of our business, or as Mr Hill so aptly put it yesterday, they constitute the capital on which our business is done. In business we endeavor, by industrious and intelligent use of our capital, to produce as the fruit of our efforts an annual return without impairing the capital—without touching the principle or jeopardizing it in any manner. In private enterprises, the man who assumes the headship of a business organization in which the funds of others are invested as capital, and who then makes a show of prosperity by drawing on that capital to pay what he represents as dividends, is charged with running a "get-rich quick" scheme, and in most States is, by law, held personally liable. I commend to your consideration the consistency of applying that principle where there is involved the capital of all the people—the Nation's resources. (Applause) If we are a people in trade and mean to continue to be, and if our resources are our capital, can there be any doubt about the wisdom of handling that capital according to the rules of good business? Can there be any doubt where we as a Nation will land if we make annual inroads upon that capital; if we, in the management of the people's business, follow methods which in private affairs bring those responsible before the bar of justice? We as a Nation take just pride in our business successes; we attribute them to the brains we put into our work, to the thoroughness with which we study what we do and what others have done that we may profit by experience. Is it not well for us thoughtfully to inquire whether the histories of any other nations record the handling of their resources on the "get-rich quick" plan, that we may see what has been the outcome? History is full of such instances; many of them If we look to history for the other side of the picture—for instances where business prosperity has gone on without interruption as long as natural resources have been conserved and intelligently maintained—we find them so well defined as to lead to but one conclusion. This is illustrated in Germany where they have maintained the fertility of their soil for centuries. It produces more per acre today than it did many generations ago. Their great forest estates have remained intact; they have cut a crop of timber from them regularly every year, producing an annual income, but the capital—the forest estate—is greater and more valuable today than it was before our country was discovered. Fires have not destroyed their forests. They have long since learned the wisdom of applying, "an ounce of prevention," and fortunately have no "pork-barrel" to stand in the way. (Applause) And we find in our own history many instances where great business enterprises have sprung promptly from efforts to intelligently develop the resources around us. The State of Illinois was passed over by the first settlers as a land of no opportunities. It is today, in productiveness and volume of business, one of the greatest States in the Union. In the States of Utah and Colorado vast areas formerly looked upon as barren and useless wastes, have been, by the intelligent handling of natural resources, made to produce annually wonderful crops of fruit and vegetables, the traffic in which has become a great commercial industry. The development of the Southwest, dependent very largely on one resource—the fertility of its soil—has called into being such lusty young giants as Wichita, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and other cities of that type. In the vicinity of Birmingham, a section which before the War was occupied mainly by cotton plantations—wherein there was nothing that could be properly called business—where generations came and passed to the Great Beyond and never saw the smoke of a factory or heard the hum of a busy mart of trade, today, with but one generation intervening, we find a live and prosperous modern city, the heart of a great industrial region. The change has come from developing three great natural resources, which up to the close of the War had been allowed to lie idle and unproductive—the forests, the coal and the iron. Here again we find an example of the business dependence of natural resources one upon the other. The timber from the forests was needed for the mining of the coal, and the coal was needed in the manufactures from the iron ore; and again the forests in the development of means of transportation to the markets of the world. So there is ample evidence that business activity follows promptly upon the intelligent development of natural resources, and decay with equal certainty follows the neglect or wasteful use of the capital which nature tenders us, and for the intelligent use of which she holds us strictly accountable. I have frequently been asked by those who know our system of getting reliable information, "How do people over the country feel in regard to Conservation; are they in favor of it in all its aspects, or do they seem to be interested only in certain features?" As that is a question that has direct bearing on the business of the country, we naturally had made careful inquiry regarding it from Maine to California, and we had learned that the majority of the people do not understand enough about it to hold any real opinion. They have no adequate idea what Conservation means as applied, for instance, by this organization to our natural resources. In spite of exhaustive reports issued by the Government, in spite of scholarly and illuminative articles on the subject, the people generally do not yet understand the real object of Conservation. A busy people in trade do not have time to read Government reports or long speeches on any subject, and of course no one can do justice to even one element of this great subject in a short article. The net result is therefore that there is no general understanding of even the ABC of Conservation such as should be given to the people, such as they would be glad to have, and such as they must have before there is warrant for feeling that the foundation stones of Conservation are so firmly grounded that no transitory wave of agitation on unimportant details can be successfully used to dislodge them. The majority have not yet grasped the idea that one of the prime objects of this Conservation movement is to preserve the fertility and productiveness of the soil, on which we all depend for our food supply. They are not aware that already in many parts of this country, where formerly any man who rented farm lands was entirely free to use them with indifference to their future, he is now required by the owners to enter into a written contract which provides just how the land is to be cultivated—how the crops are to be rotated and fertilizers used. The owners of these lands today require their tenants to practice Conservation. (Applause) The people do not generally understand that when a territory which has been used as a range for cattle is by proclamation withdrawn, as we express it, that does not mean it is no longer to be used for pasturage. Conservation does not aim to suspend use—its object is to perpetuate usefulness in full measure this year, and every year to come. (Applause) A farmer who owns a pasture—large or small—and rents it for stock grazing, takes due care to cover in his agreement the number of head and the length of time they are to be kept on his land. He makes sure that his pasture is not to be so abused in any one season as to ruin it for the future. He cares for his own land as it is the province of the Forest Service to care for the public land entrusted to their supervision. He practices Conservation because he cannot afford to do otherwise. It is not widely known that instead of wishing to keep settlers out of the National Forests, inducements are given to get people to settle within their boundaries; homesteaders are free to pasture their domestic stock within the reservation and to cut from the forests the timber they require for building houses, barns and fences. It is not generally understood that making a forest reservation does not mean that no more timber is to be cut there for market; on the contrary, its prime object is to insure continued cutting and selling of it for all time. It is not widely known that the revenue from timber cutting on the public forest lands amounts already to a million dollars a year, and the annual revenue from the pastures puts another million into the public treasury—and that this is only a beginning; or that meanwhile this kind of revenue-making regulation also affects the regularity of water supply through our rivers and streams—a most vital question as has been shown by many able exponents of Conservation. When this Nation of business people understands that Conservation is simply another term for business management of the people's capital, the pressure of public opinion will be so strong behind this movement as to brook no interference or delay in the passage and enforcement of the laws needed to begin at once a business administration. How to spread more widely a correct understanding of such facts is today a most important problem. How shall we reach the people who have not yet been reached, and who in all probability will not be reached by anything published in the usual way? I have a suggestion to make which I ask you Delegates to take to the Governors who appointed you to attend this Congress; that is, that each Governor summon to his Capitol for consultation, say six of the leading business men of the State, selecting those who in their own business have, by successful use of modern advertising, demonstrated that they have learned from experience how to reach the individual and tell him something they want him to know. Knowing how to do that is just as much a matter of education and experience as are the methods of the Forester or of the politician who is a "past master" at the game. Give the people of your State the benefit of this experience. It can be had for the asking. The business men can be depended on to help whenever called upon. They will be particularly ready in this matter which, in proportion as it is successful, will make for good trade and stable business conditions; and the Conservation Ask such a group of successful advertisers to formulate a scheme of reaching the public generally with the kind of information they want and should have about Conservation. Enlist the cooperation of the army of commercial travelers within the State—there are no more loyal American citizens anywhere, none who can do more in such a campaign, none who will more gladly lend a hand when once they are advised along proper lines, and know how great a factor the Conservation of our natural resources can be in the upbuilding of business and, through it, the general prosperity of our people. Ask this business council to formulate ways of making known not only the facts about forests and water supply, and the importance of these facts to every individual man, woman and child in the Nation, but why we in the United States average 131/2 bushels of wheat per acre, instead of 231/2 bushels, as they do in Germany, and 309/10 bushels in Great Britain; how this is making homestead lands scarce, and prices high, because we only get half the amount of crops we should get from the land we have under cultivation. When we find our production less to the acre each succeeding year and more mouths to feed, it is time everybody knew why. Tell them in the simplest and most direct manner possible what is meant by the "pork barrel" in politics—how it is being used to retard the proper development of our natural resources, and why therefore it stands in the way of the Nation's progress. Let them know why we all have reason to thank God that we have in the White House a President who does not let politics silence his tongue on that subject or swerve him from his determination to stop this waste of the Nation's funds. (Applause) Write up a short story of what Reclamation has done and can do in relieving the situation by opening up to us millions of acres of land which can and will add greatly to our food and meat supply; tell them what has already been accomplished and the progress that is still being made by reclamation work, to the great benefit of the people. Explain in a simple manner that hand in hand with the profitable development of our natural resources must go the development of our great waterways and railroads—that there can be no general prosperity without railroad prosperity; that our railroads and waterways are the connecting links which make our natural resources available, and that the practical value of our natural resources depends largely on the efficiency of our transportation service. (Applause) Point out to them the lessons which we should get from cases of individual effort along the lines of modern methods in farming; how, for instance, Mr Claude Hollingsworth, near Colfax, Washington, raised this year 45 bushels of wheat to the acre, averaging 62 pounds to the bushel, and of barley 721/3 bushels to the acre, when his neighbors, The conservation of the National health deserves to be emphasized even when we have under consideration this general subject from purely a business standpoint. When we consider that tuberculosis alone costs the people of the State of New York over $200,000,000 per year, and that it is a preventable disease, and that that $200,000,000 might be used as capital to give to millions of people profitable and wholesome occupation, the relation of the health movement to the business interests of the country is self-evident. Of course, this suggestion is based upon entire confidence in the cooperation of the daily press—I have no doubt about that whatever. The newspapers and magazines are not only most potent factors in spreading enlightenment, but they can always be depended on to take enthusiastic hold of any movement that is honestly and disinterestedly for the general good. (Applause) This whole subject of Conservation is fundamentally a business proposition—a question of managing the people's business with the same care and foresight that we put into private business—a question of using the Nation's capital in a way that will produce a regular, steady and proper income year after year, and at the same time so safeguard the principal that the people of these United States may go on in business indefinitely. History tells of many peoples who have spent their capital and disappeared from the face of the earth. Let us so organize this Nation's business that it may go on down the centuries as history's exception to the general rule of rise and fall (applause). As we point with pride, honor and gratitude to the signers of our Declaration of Independence and the makers of our Constitution, so may the coming generations of Americans, having in mind the fates of other peoples, look back with gratitude to us and have occasion to exclaim "See what would also have been our lot had it not been for the foresight and business judgment of our ancestors of the Twentieth Century—worthy successors of the great men who founded this Government of the people by the people and for the people, not only for their own time, but for all time." (Applause) President Baker—Ladies and Gentlemen: Nothing is more important to Conservation than education; and I have the honor now to introduce the Commissioner of Education, Dr Elmer Ellsworth Brown, who will address you on "Education and Conservation." Commissioner Brown—Mr President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Every uplift and reform comes back to education. It is uplift carried to the sticking point. It is reform continually going on. In speaking of the educational aspect of Conservation, I am not concerned with anything merely incidental or subordinate, but have to do with a matter as large and vital as any upon which the success of the Conservation movement depends. It must be admitted on the other hand that education has much to get from the Conservation movement as well as much to give. The schools are learners as well as teachers. To support and further Conservation they will need to learn Conservation facts and doctrines. This Congress and American education are aiming at the same thing in the end—the betterment of American life. What shall it profit to conserve everything else on earth if we fail to conserve the spirit and fiber of our citizens, young and old? That is a view in which Conservationists and educators are fully agreed. Now, what is our educational establishment, as it stands over against the body of our material resources? It is a group of State school systems, having in the aggregate a certain National character. We cannot insist too strongly that education is primarily a concern of the States. This group of State school systems represents a combination of public and private agencies, for our State institutions are supplemented by many institutions privately supported and controlled. It represents an extraordinary unity as between elementary education and the higher education, as between the democracy of the lower schools and the science of the universities. It represents, moreover, in all of its grades, an everlasting devotion to intellectual and moral values, as having to do with enlightened citizenship. This is the educational establishment that faces the needs and aspirations with which the Conservation Congress is concerned. There are three or four ways in which I should like to speak of the great work of that establishment as related to your own great work: 1. In the first place, there is the fact that our scholastic education is facing about and turning its attention toward industry and industrial life. This is a new movement in which all States and sections are taking part. It is a change which is attended with the gravest difficulty. No one who is not familiar with the actual administration of schools and colleges can guess how hard a thing it is to introduce a new practice of teaching and make it successful at the hands of many teachers in widely different communities. Yet our educational leaders have addressed themselves to this task with courage and enthusiasm. In 25 States provision is now made for teaching agriculture in public schools. Such provision takes the form of agricultural high schools in Alabama, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia, and in several other widely scattered States. In the best of these schools, there is arising a new interest in all that relates to the soil and the life on the farm. It is no uncommon thing to have class But there is still a good deal more. Much might be said about the new trade schools in the cities, and the new instruction in household arts for girls; but I pass these matters by and go back to the farm. What is especially interesting is the freedom with which new modes of teaching have been adopted. Corn contests, potato trains, demonstration farms—our old manuals of teaching knew nothing of these things. Then there is all manner of summer schools, short winter courses, farmers' institutes, and an assortment of other teaching devices. The University of Idaho is employing three field men, a horticulturist, a dairyman, and an irrigation and potato specialist, and is sending regular schools of agriculture about the State on wheels. In Virginia and three or four other States supervisors of rural schools have been appointed. They are making a close study of the resources, industries, and social needs of typical sections of their States, and are lending new life to the effort to make the schools more directly serviceable. One of the earlier developments of this movement, and one that comes into peculiarly close relations with the Conservation campaign, is the setting apart of a day in each year for planting trees. Nebraska is looked upon as the original center of this movement. A recent report shows the planting of 20,000 trees in a single year in Minnesota, in connection with the Arbor Day celebration in this State (applause). The observance has received a fresh impetus in more than twenty of the States from the publication by the State education offices of attractive manuals offering suggestions regarding the celebration. The leaders of the new movement in our schools have called for a redirection of rural education. Such a redirection is actually taking place. So much has been begun that it would be easy to believe that the work is done. There are many who suppose that this new education is already in the saddle and is moving triumphantly forward. But that is a mistake. Great changes in education are not brought The lack of well-prepared teachers of these subjects is one of the most serious difficulties the new movement has encountered. A recent report shows about seventy State normal schools offering regular instruction in agriculture. The Nelson Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriation Act of 1907 provided Federal funds for the training of teachers in the land-grant colleges. At least thirty of these colleges are now offering such instruction. But this work, too, is only begun. 2. And this suggests the second thing that I wish to say. The new movement is making a new demand for men in the business of teaching—strong men, technically trained for their work. If education is to help Conservation, the teaching profession must be enabled to compete with the industries in attracting and holding such men. We are considering both ends of our educational system, the scientific end in the universities and the popular end in the schools. A man who has enough knowledge and skill to train others for an industrial occupation has enough to give him a place in the industry itself. And the industry pays a great deal better than the teaching. It is not necessary that the income of teachers and that of industrial leaders should be equalized. Many men will continue to teach because they prefer to teach. But when the disparity becomes too great, many good teachers, in fairness to themselves and to their families, must give up the struggle and go over into the more lucrative employments. This is what has been going on in recent years. With a rapidly growing population and an increasing body of teachers, we have fewer men engaged in teaching than we had five years ago. We need opportunities in the teaching profession that will attract strong men to face the work before us (applause). I have the highest regard for the work of our women teachers; but both men and women are needed to give us a well balanced public education, and I welcome the alliance of the schools with the Conservation movement, because of the new demand it makes for competent men in the schools. Let me point out some of the places in our scholastic organization where strong men are needed, for Conservation purposes as well as for educational purposes. It is generally understood that men of the largest caliber are in demand as presidents of technical colleges and universities. It should be equally obvious that such men are needed as State superintendents of public instruction. We have I was in Vermont not many days ago, and there I saw one result of a new law, which provides for the employment of union district superintendents of schools, at a respectable minimum salary. The State superintendent had called together these local superintendents in their annual conference. There were nearly forty of them, where three years before there was not one. Rather young men they were for the most part, though well-seasoned in the responsibilities of teaching. College graduates, alert and ambitious, they gave themselves over to the business which had brought them together, with a heartiness that was vastly encouraging. Other States have made provisions for a similar staff of supervisory officers. New York is one of the latest to take such action. The great States of the West, in which the county is a common unit of school supervision, need in their counties traveling supervisors of special subjects, particularly those relating to the practical business of life on the farm. Such supervisors can become veritable evangelists, bringers of good news concerning the things which make our National resources interesting and full of hope. 3. I have spoken of the new movement toward industrial education in our several States. I have tried to show that this movement is making only gradual headway against great difficulties, but that it can become a strong reinforcement of Conservation and of other public interests if given a fair chance. Now, in the third place it should be said that the Federal Government is concerned with giving it a fair chance. We have no National system of school administration. We do not want such a system. No one seriously proposes to relieve the States of their powers and responsibilities in this matter. But how can the Nation be indifferent to the very stuff out of which it is made? While we have no National system of schools, we have and we are bound to have a National program of education. It is no new thing that I am proposing. I would simply propose that the program blocked out and entered upon many years ago should be carried out and made as useful as possible. This National program is a simple one. In the earlier days it consisted in the granting of lands for educational purposes. Within the past half-century two additions to this earlier plan have been made. The first of these Stated now in other words, our whole American scheme of public educational management consists of these four parts: First, the independent school and university systems of the several States, aided by grants of public lands and supplemented by privately managed institutions; second, the free cooperation of the States in educational matters of common interest; third, a Federal education office, aiding the States by its information service and furthering their cooperation; and finally, the distribution of Federal funds, under the supervision of the Bureau of Education. Let me say a few words concerning that part of this plan with which I have personally the most to do. It is the business of the Federal Bureau to survey the whole field of American education, and make the best things contagious throughout that field. In such a subject as industrial education, it is to study our present needs in the large, and to set before our people the best examples of the successful meeting of such needs in this and in foreign lands. It is to promote unity of effort, by enabling every part of the country to profit at once by whatever has been well done in any other part of the world. As regards such a subject as the Conservation of our National resources, it is to take the broad view which concerns education in all the States, and to further the common treatment of that subject as related to the geography, the history, and the industries of the American people. Such work as this it is now doing in a preliminary and fragmentary way; but it needs more men—expert and informing men—to make of its educational contagion the really large and transforming thing that these times demand. Give us the men, and we will give the help. When the Nation has made its program, it cannot afford to carry it out on less than a National scale. (Applause) I have said that our National program already involves a measure of direct Federal aid to education in the States. There is every reason why such aid should be reserved as a last resort. But as a last resort, it has its place in our program. It is doubtful whether the industrial education which the Nation now requires can be adequately carried out without an increase of such Federal participation. But the point to be especially emphasized is this: Any such extension of Federal aid should be based on an accurate knowledge of the needs, and should be made in such ways as will strengthen and not weaken the educational systems of the States. For these reasons, a general investigation of the subject of industrial education in all sections of the country is one of the next things that should be undertaken by the Education Bureau. Such an inquiry has already been recommended from the office of the Secretary of the Interior. It has been urgently requested by the National Society for the Promotion When I speak of our National program in education, it is with warmth and conviction. No nation can come to its greatest, industrially and politically, save as it comes to its greatest in education. We have in our American form of governmental relations the basis for the noblest educational structure that any nation has ever erected. In full loyalty to the true relations of State and Nation, we have only to go forward doing generously the things which may rightly be done, in order to have an infinitely varied yet gloriously united educational organization, in which our democracy, our science, and our nationality shall all of them come to their best. 4. Fourthly and finally, what kind of education is it that the new needs call for? I cannot leave the subject without saying a few words on that theme. Our American schools and colleges have stood in the past for liberal culture. They have taken pride in doing so and they have believed that by so doing they have been serving the ends of democratic citizenship. American education from the beginning has looked the almighty dollar squarely in the face and passed on in serene devotion to spiritual ends. Is all of this to be changed with the new interest in industrial life? Is the technical, in other words, to take place of the liberal? I do not believe it. In fact, no greater calamity could befall our industrial interests. But we are undoubtedly changing our conception of what is liberal and what is technical. We may describe a liberally educated man as one who has learned so thoroughly how the whole world hangs together that he constantly sees his own interests only as related to general and permanent human interests (applause). A technical education, on the other hand, enables a man to do that which most men cannot do, but which has some useful relation to those general human interests. If this is a fair statement, there is no field in which a liberal education is more to be desired than that of our material resources and our industries; for this is the field on which the whole game and drama of human life is to be played, though there is no other in which the temptation to illiberal, narrow, and selfish views is so great. To make the material basis of human society itself a subject of liberal education is one of the greatest things that scholastic enterprise can possibly accomplish. The next step is to join the training for technical pursuits directly to our liberal culture thus broadly conceived, so that every citizen shall add some valuable skill to his more general attainments, and every special skill shall grow directly out of his general knowledge. This, I believe, will be the great aim of American education everywhere. It is a high patriotic service to further such education. Even in the elementary schools, let our pupils learn that their private interests are to be advanced only in accord with more general interests, and that they are to make their success in life by doing some one thing well for which the world at large has need. We have been, according to our critics, a Nation whose resources were greater and more impressive than our civilization. With such an education as this, we shall be a Nation whose civilization shall overtop all of the natural goods that may ever be discovered or conserved (applause). Such an education, moreover, could do much to overcome some of the chief obstacles which the Conservation movement now encounters; for it should give us a people who, from engineers and managers to farmers and miners, should not only be masters of their own trades but should pursue them with some positive regard for the public good (applause). Our education is not big enough and virile enough until it can deal with such great National issues as this. I am confident that it will come up to that high measure of power and efficiency, and that already it has begun to carry those larger responsibilities. (Applause) President Baker—Ladies and Gentlemen: Can there be higher patriotism than in the efforts of this Congress to protect the rights of all? Conservation is true patriotism; and Mrs Matthew T. Scott, President-General of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, will now address you on this subject. (Applause, the entire audience rising) Mrs Scott—Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In behalf of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, I wish to make my grateful acknowledgments to the Executive Committee (through its President, Honorable Bernard N. Baker) for its courtesy in giving to Mrs Amos G. Draper, the able Chairman of our D. A. R. Conservation Committee who has so splendidly inaugurated and developed this work, and to myself, the privilege and honor of taking part in these splendid exercises. In its last analysis the generic term "Conservation"—in its widest scope, and broadest sense—may be said to be the keynote and touchstone of our great D. A. R. organization. The finest brains and blood and nerve force of the land have been absorbed and found noble expression in various lines of work of the D. A. R. While the Daughters have turned their sympathetic attention to various material branches of Conservation work, we have not neglected the higher intellectual, ethical, and moral Conservation interests; we aim to help preserve the glorious heritage that has fallen to us of self-government, and hand down the birthright undiminished to those who come after us that the priceless boon of "government of the people by the people and for the people" perish not from the earth. (Applause) It has been borne in upon me of late that there are two Conservation interests whose importance we have not fully recognized, and they are the conservation of true womanliness, and the conservation of the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent. As to the former, the President of the United States in a recent address at Washington before the annual Congress of the D. A. R., said that woman's place and sphere are on too high a plane to be even discussed. It is surely an inspiration to have the privilege before this splendid assemblage of representing the great patriotic movement, which under the banner of the D. A. R., marches steadily forward, with ever increasing numbers, enthusiasm, prestige, and practical power. The Daughters of the American Revolution in distinctive and especial ways have lent their organized strength to various good causes, which may all be practically considered as Conservation interests: among other objects, to social uplift, to patriotic education in its widest scope, to placing bounds to the abuse of child labor, to playgrounds, to juvenile courts, to improvement of hygienic conditions in our great cities, to preservation of historic spots and records, to the safe and sane celebration of July Fourth; and to cooperation with the S. A. R. in their noble work for immigrants landing upon our shores and subsequently for these foreigners and their children in the effort to Americanize them and to inoculate them with ideals and principles known in this twentieth century as Americanism. Much has been done also among the mountain whites of the South. Every mountaineer, child or adult, that in our work we help to educate toward intelligent citizenship—and many of these mountaineers are of Revolutionary ancestry—is a barrier raised against the anarchistic tendencies and the unrest of our great cities; is a guarantee for the supremacy of the Caucasian race in America. Read, if you can secure it, Mr Thomas Nelson Page's plea for the education of the Southern Mountain whites in his magnificent address delivered at Washington before the last Continental Congress! We are also preserving, all over this broad land, landmarks of history—sacred relics of a vanished age—which are object-lessons for our own youth and for the strangers who crowd our shores. Every monument we rear, every tablet we place, every statue we erect, every old fort or bastian, every Revolutionary relic or Revolutionary soldier's grave we honor, is a tribute to those to whom we owe the imperishable gifts of liberty, of independence, of the right to worship God in our own way. Every fountain or stone recording the trail of the pioneer, the priest, the trader, the soldier, or the devotion of the Revolutionary heroine, is a breath of incense wafted back to the immortals, an inspiration for "tangible immortality" for ourselves, and those who come after us. (Applause) The Conservation of our natural resources is a subject of intensely practical importance to the D. A. R. Representing as we do the motherhood of the Nation, we feel that it is for us to see that the children of this and future generations are not robbed of their God-given privileges. It is our high privilege and mission to see to it that the future shall be the uncankered fruit of the past. The ideal democracy solemnly dedicated by the Founders, we, as their Daughters, declare shall not be forestalled. As women we cannot be silent and see the high ends at which they aimed made futile by the growth of a grovelling lust for material and commercial aggrandizement. This headlong haste for enormous gain, the total disregard of the future for the present moment, if not stopped will bring us to the condition of the Old World where the fertility and habitability of past ages have been destroyed forever. We feel that it is for us, who are not wholly absorbed in business, to preserve ideals that are higher than business—the outlook for the future, the common interests, and the betterment of all classes. The wasteful scrambling and greedy clutching at our natural treasures has made the present generation rich; but the mothers of the future must be warned by us lest they find that our boasted prosperity has been bought at the price of the suffering, of the poverty, and class war of our descendants. There is no lack of patriotic devotion in the country; but the mere thoughtlessness and inability or unwillingness of the commercial class to drop the interests of the moment long enough to realize how they are compromising the future—this hot haste and heedlessness, it is for us with our larger outlook, to restrain. Women have already preserved a large National forest in the Pennsylvania mountains; the women of Minnesota have to their credit the Minnesota National forests; it was the women of California who saved the immemorial groves of the Calaveras big trees. Our own work in behalf of the preservation of the Appalachian watersheds, in behalf of the preservation of historic sites, as well as the efforts being made by various women's organizations to preserve the natural beauty of the Palisades, of Niagara Falls, and of other precious scenic treasures of the Nation, are all steps in the right direction, are all preparation for the larger Conservation interests which the D. A. R. have begun actively to champion. It should be a second nature to women, with the spirit of motherhood and protecting care innate in them, to take an effective stand in the spirit of true patriotism—against the spirit of rank selfishness—the anti-social spirit of the man who declines to take into account any other interests than his own. (Applause) There is another great world interest that is peculiarly our own as Daughters and descendants of the peace-loving patriots who took up arms a century and a half ago. They were not professional soldiers, but plain citizens hastily rallied together in often-wavering Again, it is one of the glories of our great organization that we are first, last, and all the time, considering the child. Today in all civilized countries the child is leading the way. I am happy to be able to say that through the instrumentality of our chapters in different parts of the country, interest has been awakened in homeless and dependent children; organizations have been formed for children of foreign birth to teach them respect for the flag, and some things about our form of government. Many chapters provide instructive lectures in their own language for foreigners, who listen eagerly. Many chapters offer prize medals for the best essays on historical subjects—American history especially—and for memorizing our National songs. Nothing is more important than our organized work for the "Children of the American Revolution"—children of American birth and descent—unless it be our work for the "Children of the Republic" in teaching to be American citizens boys of foreign parentage who come to us with little idea of the difference between liberty and license. For patriotism consists as much in making good citizens as in saving the Nation from bad ones (applause). Every boy of foreign birth or extraction that we can help to transform into a thorough American through this magnificent branch of our work, every lad of foreign birth or extraction that we can help train to become a useful citizen and grow up into honorable manhood as a credit to his adopted land is an added asset to the ethical wealth of the country. Think for a moment what it means to help train these young foreigners in the plastic period of their life in the patriotic principles of their adopted country! A long stride has been taken in their patriotic and civic education, when through the exertions of noble women they have been given some idea of the great principles which are the basis of our form of government. Another branch of our Conservation work which is especially near my heart, and which I think must be near to the heart of every mother in this broad land, is that in connection with the splendid crusade now being carried on against the evil of child labor. We have attempted, in dealing with this as with every other problem, first to obtain a wide and sure knowledge of the facts, and secondly to avoid everything savoring of the spirit of fanaticism in concentrating our energies on some great constructive policy. The committee on child labor, under the leadership of its noble chairman—the late Mrs J. If in a serener atmosphere than that of the politics of the hour, we as patriotic women can meet and help to solve these and other equally important problems in the eternally feminine way that has always given us power over men—if we would indeed, in the words of the old Athenians, help to transmit our fatherland not only undiminished but better and greater than it was transmitted to us, and if we are indeed unwilling to transmit to posterity mere material possessions unillumined by divine ideals; if we can but rise to the height and might of a pure, disinterested, passionless consecration to the principles which time has proved to be the soul of the purpose of the Fathers of the Republic, and on that high level, above the distracting personalities and passing incidents and accidents of the hour, "live and move and have our being" as a National Society, then we shall best establish and preserve the useful influence and leadership in the country to which we loyally aspire. Our interest and work for these great Conservation interests we cannot too often reiterate for our own encouragement and inspiration and for the enlightenment of the public. As I said before, in the light of recent incidents and experiences, it has been borne in upon me that there are two great Conservation interests we have not yet sufficiently touched. With all the advance in learning, all the discoveries of science, all the enlightenment and uplifting of religion, all the refining of manners, all the acquisitions of men through invention and additions to the facilities for work and comfort of living, all the improvements of institutions providing for the farther and farther spread of well-being among the children of men, still, in the great underlying physical principles of existence, in the "main travelled roads" of humanity from birth to death, there is and can be no essential change. Nevertheless, there are an infinite number of variations and gradations in the product of these eternal operations of nature. Man's battle with nature—for human progress is a constant struggle against natural conditions, a continual re-making of the planet—has been ever accompanied, step by step, by the battle within himself against the contradictions in his inescapable heredity. It is the degree of success in this struggle for the triumph of the spiritual and the intellectual that marks the differences in racial types. Here then are the grand elements of the problem, the condition as well as theory confronting every well-wisher to humanity, every lover of her kind and her country, especially among women. For it is woman who I plead, as the representative of a great National organization of the women of the land, for the Conservation of true womanliness, for the exalting, for the lifting up in special honor, of the Holy Grail of Womanhood. But not merely the cup whence flows the stream of human life, must we guard and cherish; we must look to the ingredients which are being cast into the cup. We must protect the fountain from pollution. We must not so eagerly invite all the sons of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, wherever they may have first seen the light, and under whatever traditions and influences and ideals foreign and antagonistic to ours they may have been reared, to trample the mud of millions of alien feet into our spring. We must conserve the sources of our race in the Anglo-Saxon line, Mother of Liberty and Self-government in the modern world. I would rather our coming census showed a lesser population and a greater homogeneity. Especially do I dread the clouding of the purity of the cup with color and character acquired under tropical suns, in the jungle, or in paradisian islands of the sea alternately basking in heavenlike beauty and serenity and devastated by earthquake and tornado and revolution. (Applause) I come of the old Virginia stock (applause) which first passed over the Blue Ridge and possessed the great Middle West, just in time to prevent it from becoming Spanish or French or British. Some of the pioneers of Washington's times have stayed on right there, in that eagle's nest of pure Americans where Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia meet in the mountains against which Cornwallis' previously invincible raiding column—after devastating the Carolinas—dashed We, the mothers of this generation—ancestresses of future generations—have a right to insist upon the conserving not only of soil, forest, birds, minerals, fishes, waterways, in the interest of our future home-makers, but also upon the conserving of the supremacy of the Caucasian race in our land. This Conservation, second to none in pressing importance, may and should be insured in the best interests of all races concerned; and the sooner attention is turned upon it the better. (Great applause) [Pending the foregoing, Governor Eberhart resumed the Chair.] Professor Condra—Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: At the instance of the President of the Congress, and inspired by the splendid address of Mrs Matthew T. Scott, President-General of the Daughters of the American Revolution and one of the most eminent of American women, I move that the Secretary of the Congress be empowered to prepare a suitable expression of the condolence of the Congress to be sent to the family of the late Mrs J. Ellen Foster, a member of the Executive Committee of the Congress and one of the most militant women of the country in behalf of Conservation. The motion was seconded by several delegates. Governor Eberhart—Ladies and Gentlemen: You have all heard the motion. As many as favor its adoption will please rise to their feet. [The entire Congress arose.] The motion is carried unanimously, and the Secretary will be instructed to forward the expression. While the formal addresses of the women of the Nation to this Conservation Congress are now concluded, there is a little presentation which a lady of our State wishes to make; and in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Congress, I am pleased to introduce Mrs J. C. Howard, of Duluth. (Applause) Mrs Howard—Your Excellency, and Ladies and Gentlemen: Mrs Scott asks me to present this certificate which I hold in my hand, for her and for the D. A. R., to a man whom we all delight to honor. I used to live in Washington before I grew up and came to Minnesota, where I hope to spend the rest of my life; and there in my time I met many near-heroes and many heroes. I observed that modesty was always a sure sign of the real heroes; and if you had witnessed my efforts with Mr Gifford Pinchot to persuade him to Ladies and Gentlemen, this certificate is a tribute by the D. A. R., in the form of a diploma, as you see; it says, in part, He that planteth a tree is a servant of God. He provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him. I have intense pride in presenting it to the man who is first in the Conservation war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of all tree-lovers. [Mrs Howard here presented the certificate to Mr Pinchot amid great and prolonged applause, with cries of "Pinchot!" "Speech!"] Mr Gifford Pinchot—Mr Chairman, Mrs Scott, and Mrs Howard: There are two reasons, Ladies and Gentlemen, why I am profoundly moved, and delighted to receive this certificate: One of them is—and it is not a bit modified by the fact that you have so kindly, yesterday and today, given me far more credit than I deserve—that I would rather have the good opinion of the women who are interested in Conservation than that of the men—by far (applause and laughter). The other is, that of all the organizations that have been working for the Conservation movement, for the preservation of the forests and for the extension of the same idea to all our natural resources, there has been none more devoted and more effective than the D. A. R. Besides, of all the women in the D. A. R., no one has been more devoted or more effective than Mrs Howard's mother, Mrs Draper (applause). And in this certificate I have joined together in my mind the kindness of Mrs Scott and the organization which she represents, the good-will of Mrs Draper which I very deeply prize, and that of her daughter, Mrs Howard, who was kind enough to give it to me; and I want to thank them all most heartily. (Great applause) Governor Eberhart—When our friend Mr Pinchot comes here for the next Conservation meeting, after having seen all the charming ladies who have attended this Congress and worked in its interest, it is to be hoped that there may be still another certificate which he may have in his possession at that time (great applause). I am not saying this for the purpose of announcing any competition on the part of the ladies, but merely because Mr Pinchot himself suggested that he prizes this certificate so highly. But he would, I am sure, prize the other one still more if he got it (laughter). Some time ago, when it became necessary to send a man of ability, honor, and integrity out West to prosecute land frauds, President Roosevelt looked quite a while before he could find the right [Great and prolonged applause and cheers. Voices: "What's the matter with Heney?" "He's all right!"] Mr Heney (after asking an attendant to remove the water pitcher)—Mr Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: As I never take water, I have requested that it be moved over to another table before I commence. (Laughter) The efficiency of a democracy must ultimately depend on the intelligence of its voters. It was the recognition of that idea which caused the Fathers of this Republic to advocate so strongly the establishment of a public school system in this country. Any effort on the part of any public servant to prevent the voters of this country from having full knowledge of all its public affairs is, therefore, a species of treason, and any failure on the part of any citizen to acquaint himself as fully as possible with our National affairs is a failure to perform one of the duties and obligations which are imposed upon every member of a democracy. (Applause) Public opinion, it is said, rules the Nation. It might better be said (because it would be more accurate) that public opinion in a democracy should rule the Nation; and it might further be said that if we had a real democracy, and a real representative government, public opinion would rule the Nation (applause). There are some evidences, however, that public opinion in this country does not have a free chance to operate. I need not mention many instances to convince you. Ninety percent of the people of the United States were opposed to men being permitted to make a profit by poisoning a people; they wanted a pure-food law, and yet it was locked up on the high shelf in Congress for sixteen years until Theodore Roosevelt, with the Big Stick, forced it out (great applause). What public opinion failed to do the Big Stick accomplished. (Renewed applause) Now, my friends, public opinion should be intelligent; and that requires accurate information. A friend of mine, riding on a street-car in the city of Washington, at a time when the Ballinger-Pinchot investigation was going on, saw two young men, beyond the voting Now, my friends, that sort of misinformation is one of the diseases with which we are afflicted in this Republic, and I again call your attention to the responsibility of citizenship; and in that connection I congratulate myself, and I congratulate the Nation, that so many women are beginning to come to places like this, on occasions like this, to learn something about our National affairs (applause), because the future of this country is in the hands of the boys who are now growing up, and, perchance, the girls—who knows what may become of woman suffrage in the next generation? (Applause) Therefore, the more information the mothers have the better opportunity the Nation has of getting intelligent action from the voters. The subject of my text today is "Safeguarding the Property of the People." Well, my friends, there are just two ways in which the property of the people may be safeguarded: one is by the Legislative arm of the Government, to whom the Constitution of the United States has entrusted the power of disposing of, regulating, and controlling public property; the other is the Executive arm of the Government, to which, under the Constitution, the power is entrusted of enforcing the laws which have been provided by the Legislative body. Now, it must be apparent to any one that the most efficient Executive must fail in safeguarding the property of the people if the laws provided for that purpose by the Legislative body are loose, inaccurate, or unfitted to conditions. I want to make the charge plainly and unequivocally that, when we come (as we shall in a moment) to inquire into the safeguarding of the property of this Nation, we will find that all the despoiling of the Nation is directly chargeable upon the Legislative branch of the Government, the Congress of the United States, to whom, under the Constitution, we gave the power of trustees. In the first place, if unfortunately our representatives in the United States Senate—and I use the word "our" figuratively—if the representatives in the United States Senate from each State, respectively, are there in the interest of specially privileged classes instead of in the interest of the average, common man, it will follow that What is the result? The result is that if the lumber interests in a particular district are strong, because of having already succeeded in despoiling the people of a large part of their timber interests, they are apt to dominate the election of a United States Senator; and those lumber interests are also liable to dictate, through that United States Senator, the appointment of the United States officials whose duty it will be to enforce the laws of the United States against their benefactors. (Applause) I would not dare to make such serious charges if I did not speak from absolute experience (applause). When I reached Oregon I found that situation existing in Oregon—indeed, I found on investigation before a grand jury that the then United States attorney was protecting certain men, who belonged to the higher-up class, from indictment, and that he had entered into a corrupt conspiracy with both the United States Senators from that State, by which they had agreed to have him reappointed United States attorney upon condition that these men should not be prosecuted (applause). Moreover, I found that when the first stealing of timber commenced in Oregon and men were arrested for it, a man representing a big and influential timber company had taken to the railroad train about twenty-five men at Portland and carried them up to Salem and had them file openly on contiguous timber claims, each one swearing falsely that he was taking the timber for his own use; and when the matter was exposed immediately and the United States attorney took the matter before a grand jury and indicted the leaders who had instigated those men to go up and make the filings, influential State officials appealed to the United States Senators from Oregon to interfere, and appeals were sent to the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior, so that finally the indictments were dismissed. Shortly thereafter about one hundred men filed on timber claims, under a contract to turn them over as soon as they were acquired, and again the influence of politicians and big business men brought about a failure of justice through an Professor Hadley has well said that the fundamental divisions of power in the Constitution of the United States are between the voters on the one hand and the property owners on the other. That is the fight. That always has been the fight. That always will be the fight in this country. You heard, probably, all of you, that great address by the greatest citizen of the world, made in this hall the other day (applause), in which he outlined those conditions. Now let us come back, for I want to show you wherein our trouble lies; and I want to show that great genius in railroad building (who is a citizen of your State, and who talked to you yesterday afternoon)—I want to show you and him who is responsible for the "extravagance and waste" of the great natural resources of this country. (Applause) I have pointed out to you how big business controlled the execution of the laws in practically every place in the West—except, of course, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota; in the early days when there was timber here none of these evils existed because these conditions didn't exist; your timber lands were not stolen in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan; you didn't have United States attorneys suggested by United States Senators who had been selected by owners of large timber tracts or railroads. Some States in the Union have suffered from that, but you never had any such thing come home to you (laughter). I congratulate you (renewed laughter). The Nation has had in its possession, owned in common by all of us and our forefathers, 1,800,000,000 acres of land. That is some property (laughter); that is more than either you or I possess today (laughter). And that included all of the present Rockefeller oil possessions, it included all of the Northern Pacific's land-grant possessions, it included all of the great anthracite companies' coal possessions, it comprised all of the millions of acres of timber land throughout the United States, including what there was in Minnesota. It belonged to you and me and our fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. We were pretty rich at that time. We could have held on to it and developed it, because I can't believe that if we had offered to pay a patriotic citizen like James J. Hill the sum of $50,000 a year to build a railroad for us from Lake Superior to Puget Sound and to furnish him the money with which to build it, that he would have refused the job (applause); even had he considered it inadequate compensation for his great ability, his patriotic love of the people of the United States would have led him to do it. (Great My friends, the way the people of the United States have been treated in regard to this vast property which we owned reminds me of a story I heard about a man down South—a white man. He was going along the river in flood time in the back country, and the river was full of floating logs and refuse and all sorts of timber, and he saw a nigger sitting on the bank—and will you pardon me for using the word "nigger" instead of "colored man," because I have just been making a visit down in Virginia and I suppose I fell into it (laughter); it is not meant as a term of reproach, nor is it used as such there or here—and seeing this negro sitting on the bank, he said to him, "Sam, what are you doing?" "Nothin', Suh." "Whose boat is that?" "That's mine, Suh." "Well, Sam, let me tell you what I'll do; you take your boat and go and haul those logs out of the river there, and I'll give you half of all you get on shore." (Laughter) It took a little while for that to sink in (laughter). It has taken you forty years to let this railroad proposition sink in. (Laughter) Right while I am on it, while it is fresh in my mind and in yours: Mr Hill says, "We have been extravagant." Why, my friends, do you know what we gave to Mr Hill? I say we "gave" it; as a matter of fact, we weren't consulted (laughter); we didn't have a referendum on it (laughter and great applause). We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world—sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific. We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. Now, it is easy to demonstrate, and I hardly believe Mr Hill would care to deny it—and if he does, I'll get the figures and demonstrate it (applause)—that this land-grant was worth, at a fair figure, ten dollars an acre at the very least. That is six hundred million But what does that mean? Why, the road is 2000 miles long; $50,000 a mile on an average for the entire road is a very fair figure as the cost of it, making, if I calculate correctly, $100,000,000, to build it. Let's double that, and allow $100,000 a mile for the 2000 miles; that certainly would build and equip the road. That is two hundred million dollars. And we gave six hundred million dollars worth of land, and the railroad was built and now wants forever to charge you rates—upon how much of a capitalization? Well, I don't know. But four hundred million dollars profit! Why, that would more than build the Panama Canal—and I wonder that some private corporation didn't do that (laughter). It would, undoubtedly, if we had been willing to give to it all of the remaining 700,000,000 acres of land that we have left—including Alaska, with the coal mines that Guggenheim wants (laughter and applause). We have been "improvident"—or somebody has—with the property of the people. Now, who was so improvident? Why, Congress; because the Constitution places in the hands of Congress the power to dispose of, regulate, and control the property of the United States; and Congress did it—and did us, too (laughter and applause). But not satisfied with that, Congress gave to the Southern Pacific, the Central Pacific, and the Union Pacific 120,000,000 acres more of our inheritance, which we purchased with both blood and money—because the war with Mexico led to a part of the purchase, in which thousands of American citizens were killed, and thousands of American women widowed, and thousands of American children orphaned, while we put fifteen millions of our money—our common pot—into the purchase on top of that human blood; and then we "extravagantly and improvidently" gave it away. (Applause) Not satisfied with that, when we commenced to realize that it was necessary to save the forests of this country—some of the forests which were left—Congress again passed an act, in 1907, called the New Land Act. In 1891 it had passed the law authorizing the President to create National forest reserves. At the same time it had passed a law authorizing the States to select new lands for the school sections which might be included in the National forest reserves. A gentleman in California by the name of Frederick A. Hyde, and another gentleman (who is since dead, and who served a year in jail, just before his death, for defrauding the United States), were actively operating in the State of California in school lands. Now, don't get the idea in your heads from what I have been saying about the way Congress has handled the lands and property of the United States that I am in favor of turning over to the States the power to handle any property in the hope that it will be better handled, because there, again, my experience teaches me that it will be worse—if Why, my friends, they didn't even put the patents on record, because the tax collector of the county would put them on the assessment roll if they did (laughter). And so they grabbed millions of acres, that they had no idea of using in the present; they were holding it for the profit which would come from scarcity of timber through the waste and use which is going on. Why, people living in the very neighborhood of the timber grabbed don't know that it has passed out of Government ownership! And yet those are some of the people who have been living "extravagantly." I believe that some of them wear shoes that cost the high price of a dollar, and eat bacon that is four-fifths fat. (Laughter and applause) Let me tell you that extravagance is largely a matter of trying to copy after the Higher-ups. No nation was ever destroyed until it had a large leisure class to set a bad example (applause) in living to the common people; and this Nation has a leisure class which is rapidly growing, and which is more wealthy than any leisure class ever known to the world, civilized or barbarian. Why? My friends, solely because Congress has by bad laws permitted all this vast property of the people to get into the hands of the few (applause). There Now, I haven't time to finish—I am afraid I have overstepped my time already—(Voices: "Go on, go on," and applause) but I want to "go on" just a little longer (laughter and applause) because I have something on my mind that I want to put on yours. (Laughter) We didn't lose our great inheritance until after the Civil War. Practically all of the rapes of this Nation by Congress have been committed since the Civil War, and every land law which Congress has placed upon the statute books since 1860 has been vicious—absolutely vicious—in its tendencies, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior have constantly, every year, told Congress about it in printed reports and begged and urged Congress to change the laws: and it has refused to do it! (Applause) Of course all members of Congress are not to blame for that; because this fight which Hadley says is going on always, and always will go on, in the division of power fundamentally between the voters and the property owners, has resulted in the property owners having more representatives in Congress than the people ever had. (Applause) Now, I am not here to abuse anybody. I heard a man tell a homely story last night that went directly to my heart; it's exactly in line with what I think about most of the men who are responsible for the present condition; I don't say these men are bad, but only that they have a wrong viewpoint—and that was illustrated in the story. This gentleman said that one day his boy brought home a fox-terrier. They had poultry at his home, some brown leghorns and some white chickens. This fox-terrier had been born and raised on a ranch where they had nothing but brown leghorns, and consequently when he went out in the chicken-yard and saw the feed thrown out he rushed out immediately—of course, without being told to do it—and weeded out the white chickens from the brown leghorns and drove them away from the feed and let the brown leghorns have it all (laughter). Now, it wasn't the fault of the dog that the white chickens lost their feed (laughter); we mustn't blame him; that had become second nature, from what we would call, speaking in reference to human beings, environment (laughter and applause); and it's a rare dog who can discover for himself that the white chickens ought to have an equal right with the brown leghorns to get some of the feed. (Laughter and applause) When, after the Civil War, business commenced to swing with great strides in this country, owing to the great inventions in machinery, Let me explain; because I want you to take home something, besides figures, that you will remember. When a man in the old days, when they had no machinery, employed four or five men, he commenced to be a business man; and when he began to put profit in his pocket—even at the rate of only ten cents a day for the labor of each man working for him, if he had five men he was making a clear profit of fifty cents a day, and if he had fifty men the profit was five dollars a day—he got on the road to "big business." If he could have five hundred men and could make fifty cents a day off the labor of each one, he would be making two hundred and fifty dollars a day; and if he could have factories spread out over the United States in which he had an aggregate of ten million men working for him—as in shoe factories when they made shoes entirely by hand—and could make fifty cents a day off each of the ten million men, he would make five million dollars a day. The figures stagger us. Now, with machinery you can take coal, oil, timber, gas, or water-power—those are the energy-creating natural resources—and make machinery run with them; and if you own enough of those Now, at the time of the Civil War we didn't understand this great power and the importance of preserving it in the ownership of the people—because it all belonged to us then. There is available—so the report of the National Conservation Commission says—37,000,000 horsepower in the streams of this country. What does this mean? Why, my friends, the energy expended by an average draft-horse working eight hours a day is equal to only four-fifths of the unit horsepower, as we use it in speaking of water-power, so that it would be equivalent, for an eight-hour day's work, to more than fifty-four million average draft horses. Now, machinery used to be driven by man-power before the draft horse was made to work in place of the man; that was what they did in the old tread-mill before the discovery of steam, which has only been in effective use about a hundred years; and in man-power, what does the forty million horsepower available immediately for use mean? You don't conceive of it, I am sure. A horsepower is equal to the work of at least ten men, and forty million horsepower would be equal to the work of 400,000,000 men! Why, all the people in the United States today are only 90,000,000, including babies. Four-hundred-million-of-men power! And just as sure as the sun will rise, if we permit that to go into perpetual ownership of individuals, the day will come when one corporation will own it all and one man will dictate and dominate that corporation (applause). If you want this country to have material progress at the cost of human liberty, let this source of energy slip out of your hands (applause); but if you want to hold on to any kind of a chance for your children and children's children to have equal opportunities like yours, then follow the policies laid down by Theodore Roosevelt the other day in regard to those energy-producing resources—coal, oil, gas, and water, as well as timber—and this country will be so great that all earlier history will never have told of such progress as the human race will make within these confines. (Applause) It seems to me that we all ought to be able to realize that no human being in the short space of a lifetime can have earned a hundred million dollars—he cannot have given an equivalent to mankind for $100,000,000; and when we see the example set by some of these great captains of industry who go over to Monte Carlo and risk a fortune on one bet and one turn of the wheel, and come back My friends, we must have more democracy in this country (applause). I know this is no place to talk politics, and I am not here for the purpose of talking politics in a partisan sense; but the Conservation of the natural resources for the benefit of the human race—not only the people of the United States—is of such transcendent importance that it rises above all parties and all men (great applause). Why is it that some of these men who have profited by our mistakes and our improvidence in the past are fighting against this Conservation movement? Is it because they fear that we will fail to develop the country rapidly enough? No! Every true Conservationist believes in developing the country rapidly as possible. But we realize the danger, the menace to human liberty, that lies in parting with the fee title to all these great energy-producing natural resources; and if we can arouse the people of the United States to a realization and understanding of this question—which, after all, is simple when we get down to it—there will be such a wave of insurgency sweep over this country as will drive the representatives of the special interests out of every public office in the Nation. (Great and prolonged applause and cheers) Now, in order to illustrate what I have said about what these people—or Congress—have done and failed to do, I must draw your attention to the fact that under the Timber and Stone Act, 13,000,000 acres of the finest timber in the world have been extravagantly and improvidently disposed of and lost to the people through a vicious Act of Congress, and have gone largely into the hands of a few owners; for the repeated reports of the Secretary of the Interior—even the present Secretary, Mr Ballinger—show that ten of the thirteen million acres are in the hands of a few individuals and corporations. Ten million acres! Why, that is equal to two of the smaller eastern States. In 1878, the then Secretary of the Interior, immediately after the Act was passed, said in his report for that year (Report of Secretary of Interior, 1878-1879, pp. xii-xv):
No less emphatic were later recommendations for repeal or amendment of the Timber and Stone Acts (Report of Secretary of Interior, 1879-80, p. 27):
My friends, every report from 1878 down to the last report this year, tells Congress exactly the same thing, and begs and urges Congress to repeal this Timber and Stone Act. Not only that; every report goes on and tells that large tracts are being stolen and taken Now, I have taken altogether too much of your time. I have not been able to present this matter as satisfactorily to myself as I would have liked on account of the limitation of time—I suppose most of you are glad of that. (Voices: "No, no, no; go on!") I can't go on; it wouldn't be fair to other gentlemen who are here to speak, especially to Mr Gifford Pinchot who is to talk to you immediately after I conclude, and I know you want to hear from him (applause). But I want to say to you that the fight to prevent our natural resources from getting into private ownership is a war that will have a greater influence upon the future of the human race than even the great Civil War in this country had (applause); and I want to say to you, further, that I have enlisted in that war as a private soldier (applause, and a voice: "We'll make you the leader!") for the full term of my natural life. (Great applause) Governor Eberhart—The next subject for consideration is "The Conservation Program"; and I wish that time would permit me to say some of the fine things I would like to say about the speaker. I will say just one thing: A short time ago I was in the Belasco Theater in the city of Washington and the question of Conservation was up, and this man stood on the rostrum and said to that vast congregation that the time had come when we must forget personalities and men, and work for principles—that it was time for every man Mr Gifford Pinchot—Governor, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am not tired of receiving your kindness, but I wonder if you are not tired of receiving my thanks! I do want to thank you most earnestly for all your kindness; and I have wished all along that one person who has made the fight with me could be here, and that is my Mother. (Great applause) I shall have to read a good deal of my paper to you tonight, because there are some things I want to say more exactly than I otherwise could; but I will read just as little as possible. Like nearly every great reform—and Conservation is a great reform—the Conservation movement first passed through a period of generalities, general agitation and general approval, when all men were its friends; and it hadn't yet really begun. You have all noticed that when a minister in church makes a general arraignment of wickedness, no particular sinner seems to care very much—it passes over his head, or he applies it to the other fellow; but when he comes down to particular cases, and the special shortcomings, the special desires, the special impulses which control each one of us, begin to be the subject of his oration, then there is a very different situation. Now, it was just so with the Conservation movement. At first everyone approved it, because it touched no one nearly; then it passed into a period of practical application, out of the sweep of the generalities, and at once the men whose particular interests were threatened began to take an active interest in the question, and the opposition began; and with that opened the second period of the Conservation movement. When this fight began, it was found that the people believed in Conservation all over this Nation, and that fact had to be taken into consideration by the people who were opposing the movement. When there is a general movement of which all men approve, the regular way in which the attack is made upon it is to join in the approval and then get after the men and the methods by which the general proposition is being carried out. So, now we find that the desire of the opponents of Conservation—and there are not so very many of them in numbers—is not at all that we should abandon the principle of making the best use of our natural resources; they do not urge that we should abandon the ideas of doing the best thing for all of us for the longest time; but the soft-pedal Conservationists do demand that Conservation shall be safe and sane. Safety and sanity, in the meaning of the men who use that term most as applied to legislation, means legislation not unfriendly to the continued domination of the great I take it, of course, that every friend of Conservation is fully and heartily in sympathy with safety and sanity; that goes without saying, for if there ever was a prudent, safe and sane program, it is that of the Conservation movement, expressing a prudent, safe and sane spirit, and intention as well. But we must never forget that safety and sanity from the point of view of the men who are advocating Conservation—from the point of view of a great gathering like this—means that, first, last, and all the time, the interests of all the people shall be set ahead of the interests of any part of the people. (Applause) Among the things that have been charged against the Conservation movement is this, that Conservation does not know what it wants—that the Conservation movement is an indefinite striving after no one knows exactly what. I want to tell you, on the other hand, that the Conservation program is now, and has for at least two years been a definite concrete attempt to get certain specific things; and that the impression which has been made, or has been sought to be made, that we didn't know what we were after, is wholly misleading. (Applause) The Conservation program may be found, most of it, in the following reports—the report of the Public Lands Commission of 1905; the report of the Inland Waterways Commission, March, 1908; the great Declaration of Principles adopted by the Governors at the White House, in May, 1908—one of the great documents of our history; the report of the Commission on Country Life, January, 1909; and the Declaration of the North American Conservation Conference, February, 1909. By the close of the last Administration, the Conservation program had grown into a well-defined platform, and the only important addition of more recent date is a clearer understanding—and we have now a very clear understanding—that monopoly of natural resources is the great enemy of Conservation, and that monopoly always must depend on the control of natural resources and natural advantages of a few as against the interests of the many. (Applause) None of the men, so far as I know, who are engaged in the Conservation movement, took hold of that side of the fight because they wanted to. I can say, for myself at least, that it was not until I was forced into it by experience that I could not doubt, by being defeated over and over again in trying to get things I knew were right—it was not until the covert opposition of the special interests in Conservation was beaten into me, and beaten into the rest of us, that that end of it was taken up at all. There are troubles enough in this world without The principles of Conservation are very few and very simple. That is one of the beauties of this whole movement—that there is nothing mysterious or complicated or hard to understand about it; it is the simplest possible application of common sense. The first of the principles is this: that the natural resources and the natural advantages both belong to all the people and should be developed, protected, and perpetuated directly for the benefit of all the people and not mainly for the profit of a few (applause). The second principle is that the natural resources still owned by the people which are necessaries of life, like coal and water-power, should remain in the public ownership and should be disposed of only under lease for limited periods and with fair compensation to the public for the rights granted (applause). I have never sympathized with the ideas we have heard so much of that the people must not try to protect themselves because they are not fit to handle their own affairs, and especially that they cannot handle their affairs in the matter of Conservation. By all means let us have the resources cared for, held in ownership by the people of the States as well as of the Nation, and handled for the benefit of the people first of all. (Applause) Now, I want to state a few propositions as to each of the four great categories of the natural resources, which seem to me to include not all but a very considerable proportion of the fundamental things that Conservation people seek. It is very likely that some will not agree that these are the fundamental things; but I believe these propositions, taken together, represent fairly the opinion of most of the many millions of men and women who believe in Conservation. First, as to our waterways: Every stream should be made useful for every purpose in which it can be made to serve the public. We have been in the habit of sacrificing, for example, irrigation to power, or power to the city water supply. Let us study our streams and use them for every purpose to which they can be put. The preparation of a broad plan is needed without delay for the development of our waterways for navigation, domestic supply, irrigation, drainage and power. (Applause) Second, every water-power site now in State or Federal control should be held in that control (applause), and should be disposed of only under lease for a limited time and with fair compensation to the public. Third, in the development of our waterways, the cooperation of the States with the Nation is essential to the general welfare. (Applause) Now, as to our forests: First, all forests necessary for the public welfare should be in the public ownership and remain there (applause). Among these are the National Forests already in existence and the proposed Appalachian and White Mountain National Forests Second, the protection of forests against fire is the duty of State and Nation alike (applause); and that lesson has been driven home this year in a way that I think will make our people understand and remember it for many years to come. I want to pay a tribute in a word, if you will allow me, to the wonderful work done by the boys of the National Forest Service, of the Army, and of the great fire-fighting associations of the West, and by many private citizens, in making what seems to me to have been one of the best, one of the boldest, one of the most devoted fights for the public welfare of which I know anything in recent years (applause). The way to stop fires in a forest, as in a town, is to get men to them as soon as they begin. The maintenance and extension of forest fire patrol by the Nation and States and by their subdivisions and by associations or private citizens who own timber lands is absolutely necessary. And we must have not only a patrol but a sufficient patrol. Third, the development of existing forests by wise use is the first step in forestry, and reforestation is the second. Practical forestry in our existing forests comes first, tree planting follows; both are absolutely essential if we are to handle this problem right. (Applause) Fourth: Land bearing forests should be taxed annually on the land value alone, and the timber crop should be taxed only when cut, so that private forestry may be encouraged (applause). Next to fire, there is nothing that so stubbornly stands in the way of practical forestry in this country as bad methods of taxation. (Applause) Fifth—and I feel very strongly about this: The private ownership of forest lands is in reality a public trust, and the people have both the right and the duty to regulate the use of such private forest lands in the general interest. (Applause) Then as to the lands: Every acre of land should be put to whatever use will make it most serviceable to all the people (applause). All agricultural land should be put to agricultural use. I have never been one to maintain that forest-bearing land which could be more useful under the plow should be kept for forest uses (applause); I have never been one to maintain, either, that land bearing heavy timber, acquired ostensibly for agricultural uses, should be cut over and afterward abandoned (applause). The fundamental object of our land policy should be the making and maintenance of permanent prosperous homes—that is the whole story (applause). Land monopoly, and excessive holdings of lands in private ownership in great bodies, must not be tolerated (applause). One of the very great difficulties in several parts of our country arises in huge consolidated holdings of land, which make tenants out of men who ought to be freeholders—free men on their own land. (Applause) Settlement should be encouraged by every legitimate means on all the land that will support homes. That is a fundamental proposition. Thus the tillable land in public ownership, within and without the National Forest, should be disposed of in fee simple to actual settlers, but never to speculators. (Applause) The first and most needed thing to do for our cultivated lands is to preserve their fertility by preventing erosion, the greatest tax the farmer pays. (Applause) The non-irrigable and arid public grazing lands should be administered and controlled by the Federal Government in the interest of the small stockman and the homemaker until they can pass directly into the hands of actual settlers (applause). Many millions of acres are now having their forage value destroyed because Uncle Sam exercises no control whatever over a territory vastly larger than any single State—even Texas. Finally, rights to the surface of the public land should be separated from rights to the forests upon it and the minerals beneath it, and each should be held subject to separate disposal; and the Timber and Stone Act should be repealed! (Applause) As to our minerals: Those which still remain in Government ownership should not be sold—especially coal—but should be leased on terms favorable to development up to the full requirements of our people. I want to make it plain, if anyone should happen not to understand, that the withdrawals which have been made of coal lands and oil lands and phosphate lands are not intended to be permanent; they are intended simply to prevent those lands from passing into private ownership until Congress can pass proper laws for retaining them in the public ownership and having them used there (applause). Until legislation to this effect can be enacted, temporary withdrawals of land containing coal, oil, gas, and phosphate rock, are required in order to prevent speculation and monopoly. It is the clear duty of the Federal Government, as well as that of the States in their spheres, to provide, through investigation, legislation, and regulation, against loss of life and waste of mineral resources in mining. The recent creation of a National Bureau of Mines makes a real advance in the right direction. And I want here to pay my tribute to the man who has recently and most wisely been appointed director of that Bureau of Mines, Joseph A. Holmes, one of the best fighters for Conservation that this country has produced. (Applause) With regard to National efficiency: The maintenance of National and State conservation commissions is necessary to ascertain and make public the facts as to our natural resources. That seems to me to be fundamental. We must have the machinery for continuing this work. Such commissions supply the fundamental basis for cooperation between the Nation and the States for the development and protection of the foundations of our prosperity. A National Health Service is needed to act in cooperation with similar agencies within the States for the purpose of lengthening life, decreasing suffering, and promoting the vigor and efficiency of our people (applause). I think it is high time we began to take as much care of ourselves as we do of our natural resources. (Applause) These are not all the things for which Conservation stands, but they are some of the more important. I had meant to speak here of the conflict between State and Federal jurisdictions, which we have seen illustrated in this Congress, but I prefer to speak, not of the conflicts, but of the chances for cooperation (applause). I believe in the Federal control of water-power in navigable and source streams and of water-power sites that are now in the Federal hands. I believe equally that every State has a great duty to its own people in Conservation, and that only by full and free and hearty cooperation between the Nation and the States can we all of us get together to control or develop, as the case may be, those intrastate or interstate agencies which are attempting for private profit to harm all the people (applause). When a question is settled, as I think this Congress has pretty well settled in its own mind certain of the questions relating to the division of the Federal and State work, that is the time to go on and act upon it; and I believe we ought to emphasize here most vigorously the functions of the State as well as the functions of the National Government, always remembering that the Federal Government alone is capable of handling questions which exceed the limits of any one State, and that, as Colonel Roosevelt said here the other day, nearly all of the great corporations have affiliations extending throughout the Nation or at least across State boundaries. I am as vigorously for the recognition of the State power and the State duty as I am for the recognition of the Federal power and the Federal duty, each in its proper place (applause). But should I at any time see an attempt made to hide behind either one of these powers at the expense of the people, I would not be doing my duty if I didn't stand up and say so. Just a word in closing: No body like this can get together without firing a man's imagination and heart. I have been at many great meetings, but never at one that seemed to me to contain within itself the possibility and power for good that this one does (applause). I have watched this Conservation movement grow, as we all have; I see it now on the very verge of the most practical kind of results. The clouds have cleared away; we know where we stand; we are ready to go forward, and we know where we are going and how. There has been gathered here a body of men and women whose motive is clearly this, that they propose when they depart to leave this good old earth better for their children than when they found it (applause), and they are carrying that message to the people of the United States more powerfully than it has ever been carried before. If any man or any woman were disposed not to be hopeful about the Governor Eberhart—Ladies and Gentlemen: Just a few words before we take a recess until this evening: I wish on this occasion, as it will be perhaps the only one afforded to me, to express my sincere thanks to the officers of this Congress for the splendid manner in which they have done their work. I have never met a more congenial and kindly set of officers than those who are handling this convention (applause), and a great deal of the credit of the success of this convention is due to their personal, persistent, and strenuous efforts. I take it that this is the time at which, as Chief Executive of the State, I should present my acknowledgments. I regret that the President of the Congress, who is always unselfish, has determined that, in order to give the other officers, delegates and guests a chance tonight to be heard, his own lecture—which we have all been waiting for—shall not be presented at this time. Among the splendid sentiments which Mr Pinchot has uttered, one of the very best, I think, was that the States and the Nation instead of struggling among themselves as to how authority should be divided, should cooperate (applause) in the Conservation of the resources of the country for the benefit of all the people for all time. After two or three announcements have been made, we will take a recess until this evening at 8 oclock. Professor Condra—The Committee on Nominations will meet, immediately after this meeting adjourns, in Room 601, Saint Paul Hotel. Since the report of the Committee on Credentials was received and filed with the Secretary yesterday, there has been an additional registration of 40 or 50 delegates. It was announced this morning that the Call of the States would be made this afternoon, but it became impossible to do so. President Baker asks me to say that tonight the order of business will be, first, the election of officers; second, the reception of the resolutions from the Committee on Resolutions; and third, special reports from the States—this to continue tomorrow if necessary. Another suggestion: If any of you have anything to be read from the platform, please put it in such form that it can be read properly and understood clearly. We had an example of misunderstanding this morning, which I regret; and I want to advertise the papers of this city by asking you to read the report in one of them from which you will see the results of that misunderstanding. Do not blame anybody; these things come. Do not blame the ladies of this State for any misunderstanding. I have had too many thousands of womanly women in my classes at the university and elsewhere (and I married one of the most lovely women in the world), and I have too much faith in women to blame them. I blame myself for trying to read Thereupon Governor Eberhart, for President Baker, declared a recess until 8 oclock p.m. |
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