Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
suggestions. Like other men who had thought about the national future at
all, I had been growing more and more concerned over the destruction of
the forests.
While I had lived in the West I had come to realize the vital need of
irrigation to the country, and I had been both amused and irritated
by the attitude of Eastern men who obtained from Congress grants of
National money to develop harbors and yet fought the use of the Nation's
power to develop the irrigation work of the West. Major John Wesley
Powell, the explorer of the Grand Canyon, and Director of the Geological
Survey, was the first man who fought for irrigation, and he lived to see
the Reclamation Act passed and construction actually begun. Mr. F. H.
Newell, the present Director of the Reclamation Service, began his
work as an assistant hydraulic engineer under Major Powell; and, unlike
Powell, he appreciated the need of saving the forests and the soil
as well as the need of irrigation. Between Powell and Newell came, as
Director of the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, who, after
the Reclamation Act was passed, by his force, pertinacity, and tact,
succeeded in putting the act into effect in the best possible manner.
Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, fought hard for the cause of
reclamation in Congress. He attempted to get his State to act, and when
that proved hopeless to get the Nation to act; and was ably assisted
by Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep interest in
irrigation matters. Dr. W. J. McGee was one of the leaders in all the
later stages of the movement. But Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom
the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the
preservation of the natural resources of our country. He led, and indeed
during its most vital period embodied, the fight for the preservation
through use of our forests. He played one of the leading parts in
the effort to make the National Government the chief instrument in
developing the irrigation of the arid West. He was the foremost leader
in the great struggle to coordinate all our social and governmental
forces in the effort to secure the adoption of a rational and farseeing
policy for securing the conservation of all our national resources. He
was already in the Government service as head of the Forestry Bureau
when I became President; he continued throughout my term, not only as
head of the Forest service, but as the moving and directing spirit in
most of the conservation work, and as counsellor and assistant on most
of the other work connected with the internal affairs of the country.
Taking into account the varied nature of the work he did, its vital
importance to the nation and the fact that as regards much of it he
was practically breaking new ground, and taking into account also
his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete
disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests of the
plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I believe it is but
just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my
administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of
the United States, he, on the whole, stood first. A few months after I
left the Presidency he was removed from office by President Taft.
The first work I took up when I became President was the work of
reclamation. Immediately after I had come to Washington, after the
assassination of President McKinley, while staying at the house of
my sister, Mrs. Cowles, before going into the White House, Newell and
Pinchot called upon me and laid before me their plans for National
irrigation of the arid lands of the West, and for the consolidation of
the forest work of the Government in the Bureau of Forestry.
At that time a narrowly legalistic point of view toward natural
resources obtained in the Departments, and controlled the Governmental
administrative machinery. Through the General Land Office and other
Government bureaus, the public resources were being handled and
disposed of in accordance with the small considerations of petty
legal formalities, instead of for the large purposes of constructive
development, and the habit of deciding, whenever possible, in favor of
private interests against the public welfare was firmly fixed. It was
as little customary to favor the bona-fide settler and home builder, as
against the strict construction of the law, as it was to use the law in
thwarting the operations of the land grabbers. A technical compliance
with the letter of the law was all that was required.
The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained,
and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition.
The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems
of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the
public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still
a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system,
with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by
the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect
on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there--a theory
which, I regret to say, still obtains.
The place of the farmer in the National economy was still regarded
solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the
human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still
remained wholly outside the recognition of the Government.
All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and
administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government
employ were in another Department. Forests and foresters had nothing
whatever to do with each other. The National Forests in the West (then
called forest reserves) were wholly inadequate in area to meet the
purposes for which they were created, while the need for forest
protection in the East had not yet begun to enter the public mind.
Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me. I
was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry, and, after listening
to my two guests, I asked them to prepare material on the subject for
me to use in my first message to Congress, of December 3, 1901. This
message laid the foundation for the development of irrigation and
forestry during the next seven and one-half years. It set forth the
new attitude toward the natural resources in the words: "The Forest
and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the
United States."
On the day the message was read, a committee of Western Senators and
Congressmen was organized to prepare a Reclamation Bill in accordance
with the recommendations. By far the most effective of the Senators
in drafting and pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was
Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and others at
several conferences and revised in important particulars; my active
interference was necessary to prevent it from being made unworkable by
an undue insistence upon States Rights, in accordance with the efforts
of Mr. Mondell and other Congressmen, who consistently fought for local
and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole.
On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It set aside the
proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming
the waste areas of the arid West by irrigating lands otherwise
worthless, and thus creating new homes upon the land. The money so
appropriated was to be repaid to the Government by the settlers, and to
be used again as a revolving fund continuously available for the work.
The impatience of the Western people to see immediate results from the
Reclamation Act was so great that red tape was disregarded, and the work
was pushed forward at a rate previously unknown in Government affairs.
Later, as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of
alleged illegality and haste which are so easy to make after results
have been accomplished and the need for the measures without which
nothing could have been done has gone by. These criticisms were in
character precisely the same as that made about the acquisition of
Panama, the settlement of the anthracite coal strike, the suits against
the big trusts, the stopping of the panic of 1907 by the action of the
Executive concerning the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and, in short,
about most of the best work done during my administration.
With the Reclamation work, as with much other work under me, the men
in charge were given to understand that they must get into the water if
they would learn to swim; and, furthermore, they learned to know that if
they acted honestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility,
I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other case, in
the end the boldness of the action fully justified itself.
Every item of the whole great plan of Reclamation now in effect was
undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the spring of 1909 the work was an
assured success, and the Government had become fully committed to its
continuance. The work of Reclamation was at first under the United
States Geological Survey, of which Charles D. Walcott was at that time
Director. In the spring of 1908 the United States Reclamation Service
was established to carry it on, under the direction of Frederick
Hayes Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Newell's
single-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive imagination
which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and high
character through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built
up a model service--all these have made him a model servant. The final
proof of his merit is supplied by the character and records of the men
who later assailed him.
Although the gross expenditure under the Reclamation Act is not yet
as large as that for the Panama Canal, the engineering obstacles to be
overcome have been almost as great, and the political impediments many
times greater. The Reclamation work had to be carried on at widely
separated points, remote from railroads, under the most difficult
pioneer conditions. The twenty-eight projects begun in the years 1902
to 1906 contemplated the irrigation of more than three million acres
and the watering of more than thirty thousand farms. Many of the
dams required for this huge task are higher than any previously built
anywhere in the world. They feed main-line canals over seven thousand
miles in total length, and involve minor constructions, such as culverts
and bridges, tens of thousands in number.
What the Reclamation Act has done for the country is by no means limited
to its material accomplishment. This Act and the results flowing from it
have helped powerfully to prove to the Nation that it can handle its own
resources and exercise direct and business-like control over them. The
population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the arid West,
while comparatively small when compared with that in the more closely
inhabited East, has been a most effective contribution to the National
life, for it has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West,
making for the stability of the institutions upon which the welfare of
the whole country rests: it has substituted actual homemakers, who have
settled on the land with their families, for huge, migratory bands of
sheep herded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners.
The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service, and on Mr. Newell, arise
in large part, if not altogether, from an organized effort to repudiate
the obligation of the settlers to repay the Government for what it has