Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Every year the Forest Service had to fight for its life.
One incident in these attacks is worth recording. While the Agricultural
Appropriation Bill was passing through the Senate, in 1907, Senator
Fulton, of Oregon, secured an amendment providing that the President
could not set aside any additional National Forests in the six
Northwestern States. This meant retaining some sixteen million of acres
to be exploited by land grabbers and by the representatives of the great
special interests, at the expense of the public interest. But for four
years the Forest Service had been gathering field notes as to what
forests ought to be set aside in these States, and so was prepared to
act. It was equally undesirable to veto the whole agricultural bill, and
to sign it with this amendment effective. Accordingly, a plan to create
the necessary National Forest in these States before the Agricultural
Bill could be passed and signed was laid before me by Mr. Pinchot. I
approved it. The necessary papers were immediately prepared. I signed
the last proclamation a couple of days before, by my signature, the bill
became law; and, when the friends of the special interests in the Senate
got their amendment through and woke up, they discovered that sixteen
million acres of timberland had been saved for the people by putting
them in the National Forests before the land grabbers could get at them.
The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath;
and dire were their threats against the Executive; but the threats could
not be carried out, and were really only a tribute to the efficiency of
our action.
By 1908, the fire prevention work of the Forest Service had become so
successful that eighty-six per cent of the fires that did occur were
held down to an area of five acres or less, and the timber sales, which
yielded $60,000 in 1905, in 1908 produced $850,000. In the same year, in
addition to the work of the National Forests, the responsibility for the
proper handling of Indian timberlands was laid upon the Forest Service,
where it remained with great benefit to the Indians until it was
withdrawn, as a part of the attack on the Conservation policy made after
I left office.
By March 4, 1909, nearly half a million acres of agricultural land in
the National Forests had been opened to settlement under the Act of
June 11, 1906. The business management of the Forest Service became so
excellent, thanks to the remarkable executive capacity of the Associate
Forester, Overton W. Price (removed after I left office), that it
was declared by a well-known firm of business organizers to compare
favorably with the best managed of the great private corporations,
an opinion which was confirmed by the report of a Congressional
investigation, and by the report of the Presidential Committee on
Department method. The area of the National Forests had increased from
43 to 194 million acres; the force from about 500 to more than 3000.
There was saved for public use in the National Forests more Government
timberland during the seven and a half years prior to March 4, 1909,
than during all previous and succeeding years put together.
The idea that the Executive is the steward of the public welfare was
first formulated and given practical effect in the Forest Service by its
law officer, George Woodruff. The laws were often insufficient, and it
became well-nigh impossible to get them amended in the public interest
when once the representatives of privilege in Congress grasped the fact
that I would sign no amendment that contained anything not in the public
interest. It was necessary to use what law was already in existence,
and then further to supplement it by Executive action. The practice
of examining every claim to public land before passing it into private
ownership offers a good example of the policy in question. This
practice, which has since become general, was first applied in the
National Forests. Enormous areas of valuable public timberland were
thereby saved from fraudulent acquisition; more than 250,000 acres were
thus saved in a single case.
This theory of stewardship in the interest of the public was well
illustrated by the establishment of a water-power policy. Until the
Forest Service changed the plan, water-powers on the navigable streams,
on the public domain, and in the National Forests were given away for
nothing, and substantially without question, to whoever asked for them.
At last, under the principle that public property should be paid for
and should not be permanently granted away when such permanent grant is
avoidable, the Forest Service established the policy of regulating the
use of power in the National Forests in the public interest and making
a charge for value received. This was the beginning of the water-power
policy now substantially accepted by the public, and doubtless soon to
be enacted into law. But there was at the outset violent opposition to
it on the part of the water-power companies, and such representatives of
their views in Congress as Messrs. Tawney and Bede.
Many bills were introduced in Congress aimed, in one way or another, at
relieving the power companies of control and payment. When these bills
reached me I refused to sign them; and the injury to the public interest
which would follow their passage was brought sharply to public attention
in my message of February 26, 1908. The bills made no further progress.
Under the same principle of stewardship, railroads and other
corporations, which applied for and were given rights in the National
Forests, were regulated in the use of those rights. In short, the public
resources in charge of the Forest Service were handled frankly and
openly for the public welfare under the clear-cut and clearly set forth
principle that the public rights come first and private interest second.
The natural result of this new attitude was the assertion in every form
by the representatives of special interests that the Forest Service
was exceeding its legal powers and thwarting the intention of Congress.
Suits were begun wherever the chance arose. It is worth recording that,
in spite of the novelty and complexity of the legal questions it had
to face, no court of last resort has ever decided against the Forest
Service. This statement includes two unanimous decisions by the Supreme
Court of the United States (U. S. vs. Grimaud, 220 U. S., 506, and Light
vs. U. S., 220 U. S., 523).
In its administration of the National Forests, the Forest Service
found that valuable coal lands were in danger of passing into private
ownership without adequate money return to the Government and
without safeguard against monopoly; and that existing legislation was
insufficient to prevent this. When this condition was brought to my
attention I withdrew from all forms of entry about sixty-eight million
acres of coal land in the United States, including Alaska. The refusal
of Congress to act in the public interest was solely responsible for
keeping these lands from entry.
The Conservation movement was a direct outgrowth of the forest movement.
It was nothing more than the application to our other natural resources
of the principles which had been worked out in connection with the
forests. Without the basis of public sentiment which had been built up
for the protection of the forests, and without the example of public
foresight in the protection of this, one of the great natural resources,
the Conservation movement would have been impossible. The first formal
step was the creation of the Inland Waterways Commission, appointed
on March 14, 1907. In my letter appointing the Commission, I called
attention to the value of our streams as great natural resources, and to
the need for a progressive plan for their development and control, and
said: "It is not possible to properly frame so large a plan as this
for the control of our rivers without taking account of the orderly
development of other natural resources. Therefore I ask that the Inland
Waterways Commission shall consider the relations of the streams to the
use of all the great permanent natural resources and their conservation
for the making and maintenance of prosperous homes."
Over a year later, writing on the report of the Commission, I said:
"The preliminary Report of the Inland Waterways Commission was excellent
in every way. It outlines a general plan of waterway improvement which
when adopted will give assurance that the improvements will yield
practical results in the way of increased navigation and water
transportation. In every essential feature the plan recommended by the
Commission is new. In the principle of coordinating all uses of the
waters and treating each waterway system as a unit; in the principle
of correlating water traffic with rail and other land traffic; in the
principle of expert initiation of projects in accordance with commercial
foresight and the needs of a growing country; and in the principle
of cooperation between the States and the Federal Government in the
administration and use of waterways, etc.; the general plan proposed by
the Commission is new, and at the same time sane and simple. The plan
deserves unqualified support. I regret that it has not yet been adopted
by Congress, but I am confident that ultimately it will be adopted."
The most striking incident in the history of the Commission was the trip
down the Mississippi River in October, 1907, when, as President of the
United States, I was the chief guest. This excursion, with the meetings
which were held and the wide public attention it attracted, gave the
development of our inland waterways a new standing in public estimation.
During the trip a letter was prepared and presented to me asking me
to summon a conference on the conservation of natural resources. My
intention to call such a conference was publicly announced at a great
meeting at Memphis, Tenn.
In the November following I wrote to each of the Governors of the
several States and to the Presidents of various important National
Societies concerned with natural resources, inviting them to attend the
conference, which took place May 13 to 15, 1908, in the East Room of the
White House. It is doubtful whether, except in time of war, any new idea
of like importance has ever been presented to a Nation and accepted
by it with such effectiveness and rapidity, as was the case with this
Conservation movement when it was introduced to the American people
by the Conference of Governors. The first result was the unanimous
declaration of the Governors of all the States and Territories upon
the subject of Conservation, a document which ought to be hung in every
schoolhouse throughout the land. A further result was the appointment of
thirty-six State Conservation Commissions and, on June 8, 1908, of the
National Conservation Commission. The task of this Commission was to
prepare an inventory, the first ever made for any nation, of all the
natural resources which underlay its property. The making of this
inventory was made possible by an Executive order which placed
the resources of the Government Departments at the command of the
Commission, and made possible the organization of subsidiary committees
by which the actual facts for the inventory were prepared and digested.
Gifford Pinchot was made chairman of the Commission.
The report of the National Conservation Commission was not only the
first inventory of our resources, but was unique in the history of
Government in the amount and variety of information brought together. It
was completed in six months. It laid squarely before the American people
the essential facts regarding our natural resources, when facts were
greatly needed as the basis for constructive action. This report was