Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
presented to the Joint Conservation Congress in December, at which there
were present Governors of twenty States, representatives of twenty-two
State Conservation Commissions, and representatives of sixty National
organizations previously represented at the White House conference.
The report was unanimously approved, and transmitted to me, January
11, 1909. On January 22, 1909, I transmitted the report of the National
Conservation Commission to Congress with a Special Message, in which
it was accurately described as "one of the most fundamentally important
documents ever laid before the American people."
The Joint Conservation Conference of December, 1908, suggested to me the
practicability of holding a North American Conservation Conference. I
selected Gifford Pinchot to convey this invitation in person to Lord
Grey, Governor General of Canada; to Sir Wilfrid Laurier; and to
President Diaz of Mexico; giving as reason for my action, in the letter
in which this invitation was conveyed, the fact that: "It is evident
that natural resources are not limited by the boundary lines which
separate nations, and that the need for conserving them upon this
continent is as wide as the area upon which they exist."
In response to this invitation, which included the colony of
Newfoundland, the Commissioners assembled in the White House on February
18, 1909. The American Commissioners were Gifford Pinchot, Robert Bacon,
and James R. Garfield. After a session continuing through five days, the
Conference united in a declaration of principles, and suggested to the
President of the United States "that all nations should be invited to
join together in conference on the subject of world resources, and their
inventory, conservation, and wise utilization." Accordingly, on February
19, 1909, Robert Bacon, Secretary of State, addressed to forty-five
nations a letter of invitation "to send delegates to a conference to be
held at The Hague at such date to be found convenient, there to meet
and consult the like delegates of the other countries, with a view of
considering a general plan for an inventory of the natural resources
of the world and to devising a uniform scheme for the expression of
the results of such inventory, to the end that there may be a general
understanding and appreciation of the world's supply of the material
elements which underlie the development of civilization and the welfare
of the peoples of the earth." After I left the White House the project
lapsed.
Throughout the early part of my Administration the public land policy
was chiefly directed to the defense of the public lands against fraud
and theft. Secretary Hitchcock's efforts along this line resulted in
the Oregon land fraud cases, which led to the conviction of Senator
Mitchell, and which made Francis J. Heney known to the American people
as one of their best and most effective servants. These land fraud
prosecutions under Mr. Heney, together with the study of the public
lands which preceded the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902, and
the investigation of land titles in the National Forests by the Forest
Service, all combined to create a clearer understanding of the need of
land law reform, and thus led to the appointment of the Public Lands
Commission. This Commission, appointed by me on October 22, 1903, was
directed to report to the President: "Upon the condition, operation, and
effect of the present land laws, and to recommend such changes as are
needed to effect the largest practicable disposition of the public lands
to actual settlers who will build permanent homes upon them, and to
secure in permanence the fullest and most effective use of the resources
of the public lands." It proceeded without loss of time to make a
personal study on the ground of public land problems throughout the
West, to confer with the Governors and other public men most concerned,
and to assemble the information concerning the public lands, the laws
and decisions which governed them, and the methods of defeating or
evading those laws, which was already in existence, but which remained
unformulated in the records of the General Land Office and in the mind
of its employees. The Public Lands Commission made its first preliminary
report on March 7, 1904. It found "that the present land laws do not fit
the conditions of the remaining public lands," and recommended specific
changes to meet the public needs. A year later the second report of the
Commission recommended still further changes, and said "The fundamental
fact that characterizes the situation under the present land laws
is this, that the number of patents issued is increasing out of all
proportion to the number of new homes." This report laid the foundation
of the movement for Government control of the open range, and included
by far the most complete statement ever made of the disposition of the
public domain.
Among the most difficult topics considered by the Public Lands
Commission was that of the mineral land laws. This subject was referred
by the Commission to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, which
reported upon it through a Committee. This Committee made the very
important recommendation, among others, "that the Government of the
United States should retain title to all minerals, including coal
and oil, in the lands of unceded territory, and lease the same to
individuals or corporations at a fixed rental." The necessity for
this action has since come to be very generally recognized. Another
recommendation, since partly carried into effect, was for the separation
of the surface and the minerals in lands containing coal and oil.
Our land laws have of recent years proved inefficient; yet the land laws
themselves have not been so much to blame as the lax, unintelligent, and
often corrupt administration of these laws. The appointment on March 4,
1907, of James R. Garfield as Secretary of the Interior led to a new era
in the interpretation and enforcement of the laws governing the
public lands. His administration of the Interior Department was beyond
comparison the best we have ever had. It was based primarily on the
conception that it is as much the duty of public land officials to
help the honest settler get title to his claim as it is to prevent the
looting of the public lands. The essential fact about public land frauds
is not merely that public property is stolen, but that every claim
fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making of a home or a
livelihood by an honest man.
As the study of the public land laws proceeded and their administration
improved, a public land policy was formulated in which the saving of
the resources on the public domain for public use became the leading
principle. There followed the withdrawal of coal lands as already
described, of oil lands and phosphate lands, and finally, just at the
end of the Administration, of water-power sites on the public domain.
These withdrawals were made by the Executive in order to afford to
Congress the necessary opportunity to pass wise laws dealing with their
use and disposal; and the great crooked special interests fought them
with incredible bitterness.
Among the men of this Nation interested in the vital problems affecting
the welfare of the ordinary hard-working men and women of the Nation,
there is none whose interest has been more intense, and more wholly free
from taint of thought of self, than that of Thomas Watson, of Georgia.
While President I often discussed with him the condition of women on
the small farms, and on the frontier, the hardship of their lives as
compared with those of the men, and the need for taking their welfare
into consideration in whatever was done for the improvement of life on
the land. I also went over the matter with C. S. Barrett, of Georgia,
a leader in the Southern farmers' movement, and with other men, such as
Henry Wallace, Dean L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and Kenyon Butterfield.
One man from whose advice I especially profited was not an American, but
an Irishman, Sir Horace Plunkett. In various conversations he described
to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm life which had
been accomplished by the Agricultural Organization Society of Ireland,
of which he was the founder and the controlling force; and he discussed
the application of similar methods to the improvements of farm life
in the United States. In the spring of 1908, at my request, Plunkett
conferred on the subject with Garfield and Pinchot, and the latter
suggested to him the appointment of a Commission on Country Life as a
means for directing the attention of the Nation to the problems of the
farm, and for securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions
of life in the open country. After long discussion a plan for a Country
Life Commission was laid before me and approved. The appointment of the
Commission followed in August, 1908. In the letter of appointment the
reasons for creating the Commission were set forth as follows: "I doubt
if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount
of attention given by the Government, both Federal and State, to
agricultural matters. But practically the whole of this effort has
hitherto been directed toward increasing the production of crops. Our
attention has been concentrated almost exclusively on getting better
farming. In the beginning this was unquestionably the right thing to do.
The farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to support himself
and his family. But when this has been secured, the effort for better
farming should cease to stand alone, and should be accompanied by the
effort for better business and better living on the farm. It is at least
as important that the farmer should get the largest possible return in
money, comfort, and social advantages from the crops he grows, as that
he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he
farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country life. The great rural
interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the
farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm."
The Commission on Country Life did work of capital importance. By means
of a widely circulated set of questions the Commission informed itself
upon the status of country life throughout the Nation. Its trip through
the East, South, and West brought it into contact with large numbers of
practical farmers and their wives, secured for the Commissioners a most
valuable body of first-hand information, and laid the foundation for the
remarkable awakening of interest in country life which has since taken
place throughout the Nation.
One of the most illuminating--and incidentally one of the most
interesting and amusing--series of answers sent to the Commission was
from a farmer in Missouri. He stated that he had a wife and 11 living
children, he and his wife being each 52 years old; and that they owned
520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had
himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had
done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed
in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He
states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they
should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the
schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the farm,
because they allow them to get an idea in their heads that city life is
better, and that to remedy this practical farming should be taught. To
the question whether the farmers and their wives in his neighborhood are
satisfactorily organized, he answers: "Oh, there is a little one-horse
grange gang in our locality, and every darned one thinks they ought