Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
to be a king." To the question, "Are the renters of farms in your
neighborhood making a satisfactory living?" he answers: "No; because
they move about so much hunting a better job." To the question, "Is the
supply of farm labor in your neighborhood satisfactory?" the answer is:
"No; because the people have gone out of the baby business"; and when
asked as to the remedy, he answers, "Give a pension to every mother who
gives birth to seven living boys on American soil." To the question,
"Are the conditions surrounding hired labor on the farm in your
neighborhood satisfactory to the hired men?" he answers: "Yes, unless he
is a drunken cuss," adding that he would like to blow up the stillhouses
and root out whiskey and beer. To the question, "Are the sanitary
conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory?" he answers:
"No; too careless about chicken yards, and the like, and poorly covered
wells. In one well on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall
of the well, and they used the water daily: his wife dead now and he is
looking for another." He ends by stating that the most important single
thing to be done for the betterment of country life is "good roads"; but
in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the
individual equation of the man or woman.
Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, the Country
Life Commission cost the Government not one cent, but laid before the
President and the country a mass of information so accurate and so
vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things
as they are; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the
reactionaries. The report of the Country Life Commission was transmitted
to Congress by me on February 9, 1909. In the accompanying message I
asked for $25,000 to print and circulate the report and to prepare for
publication the immense amount of valuable material collected by the
Commission but still unpublished. The reply made by Congress was not
only a refusal to appropriate the money, but a positive prohibition
against continuing the work. The Tawney amendment to the Sundry Civil
bill forbade the President to appoint any further Commissions unless
specifically authorized by Congress to do so. Had this prohibition
been enacted earlier _and complied with_, it would have prevented the
appointment of the six Roosevelt commissions. But I would not have
complied with it. Mr. Tawney, one of the most efficient representatives
of the cause of special privilege as against public interest to be found
in the House, was later, in conjunction with Senator Hale and others,
able to induce my successor to accept their view. As what was almost my
last official act, I replied to Congress that if I did not believe the
Tawney amendment to be unconstitutional I would veto the Sundry Civil
bill which contained it, and that if I were remaining in office I would
refuse to obey it. The memorandum ran in part:
"The chief object of this provision, however, is to prevent the
Executive repeating what it has done within the last year in connection
with the Conservation Commission and the Country Life Commission. It is
for the people of the country to decide whether or not they believe in
the work done by the Conservation Commission and by the Country Life
Commission. . . .
"If they believe in improving our waterways, in preventing the waste of
soil, in preserving the forests, in thrifty use of the mineral resources
of the country for the nation as a whole rather than merely for private
monopolies, in working for the betterment of the condition of the men
and women who live on the farms, then they will unstintedly condemn the
action of every man who is in any way responsible for inserting this
provision, and will support those members of the legislative branch who
opposed its adoption. I would not sign the bill at all if I thought
the provision entirely effective. But the Congress cannot prevent the
President from seeking advice. Any future President can do as I have
done, and ask disinterested men who desire to serve the people to give
this service free to the people through these commissions. . . .
"My successor, the President-elect, in a letter to the Senate Committee
on Appropriations, asked for the continuance and support of the
Conservation Commission. The Conservation Commission was appointed at
the request of the Governors of over forty States, and almost all of
these States have since appointed commissions to cooperate with the
National Commission. Nearly all the great national organizations
concerned with natural resources have been heartily cooperating with the
commission.
"With all these facts before it, the Congress has refused to pass a law
to continue and provide for the commission; and it now passes a law with
the purpose of preventing the Executive from continuing the commission
at all. The Executive, therefore, must now either abandon the work and
reject the cooperation of the States, or else must continue the work
personally and through executive officers whom he may select for that
purpose."
The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane, Washington, a singularly energetic
and far-seeing organization, itself published the report which Congress
had thus discreditably refused to publish.
The work of the Bureau of Corporations, under Herbert Knox Smith,
formed an important part of the Conservation movement almost from the
beginning. Mr. Smith was a member of the Inland Waterways Commission and
of the National Conservation Commission and his Bureau prepared material
of importance for the reports of both. The investigation of standing
timber in the United States by the Bureau of Corporations furnished
for the first time a positive knowledge of the facts. Over nine hundred
counties in timbered regions were covered by the Bureau, and the work
took five years. The most important facts ascertained were that forty
years ago three-fourths of the standing timber in the United States
was publicly owned, while at the date of the report four-fifths of the
timber in the country was in private hands. The concentration of private
ownership had developed to such an amazing extent that about two hundred
holders owned nearly one-half of all privately owned timber in the
United States; and of this the three greatest holders, the Southern
Pacific Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Weyerhaeuser
Timber Company, held over ten per cent. Of this work, Mr. Smith says:
"It was important, indeed, to know the facts so that we could take
proper action toward saving the timber still left to the public. But of
far more importance was the light that this history (and the history
of our other resources) throws on the basic attitude, tradition and
governmental beliefs of the American people. The whole standpoint of
the people toward the proper aim of government, toward the relation of
property to the citizen, and the relation of property to the government,
were brought out first by this Conservation work."
The work of the Bureau of Corporations as to water power was equally
striking. In addition to bringing the concentration of water-power
control first prominently to public attention, through material
furnished for my message in my veto of the James River Dam Bill, the
work of the Bureau showed that ten great interests and their allies held
nearly sixty per cent of the developed water power of the United States.
Says Commissioner Smith: "Perhaps the most important thing in the whole
work was its clear demonstration of the fact that the only effective
place to control water power in the public interest is at the power
sites; that as to powers now owned by the public it is absolutely
essential that the public shall retain title. . . . The only way in
which the public can get back to itself the margin of natural advantage
in the water-power site is to rent that site at a rental which, added
to the cost of power production there, will make the total cost of water
power about the same as fuel power, and then let the two sell at the
same price, i. e., the price of fuel power."
Of the fight of the water-power men for States Rights at the St. Paul
Conservation Congress in September, 1909, Commissioner Smith says:
"It was the first open sign of the shift of the special interests to the
Democratic party for a logical political reason, namely, because of the
availability of the States Rights idea for the purposes of the large
corporations. It marked openly the turn of the tide."
Mr. Smith brought to the attention of the Inland Waterways Commission
the overshadowing importance to waterways of their relation with
railroad lines, the fact that the bulk of the traffic is long distance
traffic, that it cannot pass over the whole distance by water, while it
can go anywhere by rail, and that therefore the power of the rail lines
to pro-rate or not to pro-rate, with water lines really determines the
practical value of a river channel. The controlling value of terminals
and the fact that out of fifty of our leading ports, over half the
active water frontage in twenty-one ports was controlled by the
railroads, was also brought to the Commission's attention, and reports
of great value were prepared both for the Inland Waterways Commission
and for the National Conservation Commission. In addition to developing
the basic facts about the available timber supply, about waterways,
water power, and iron ore, Mr. Smith helped to develop and drive into
the public conscience the idea that the people ought to retain title to
our natural resources and handle them by the leasing system.
The things accomplished that have been enumerated above were of
immediate consequence to the economic well-being of our people. In
addition certain things were done of which the economic bearing was more
remote, but which bore directly upon our welfare, because they add to
the beauty of living and therefore to the joy of life. Securing a great
artist, Saint-Gaudens, to give us the most beautiful coinage since the
decay of Hellenistic Greece was one such act. In this case I had power
myself to direct the Mint to employ Saint-Gaudens. The first, and
most beautiful, of his coins were issued in thousands before Congress
assembled or could intervene; and a great and permanent improvement was
made in the beauty of the coinage. In the same way, on the advice
and suggestion of Frank Millet, we got some really capital medals by
sculptors of the first rank. Similarly, the new buildings in Washington
were erected and placed in proper relation to one another, on plans
provided by the best architects and landscape architects. I also
appointed a Fine Arts Council, an unpaid body of the best architects,
painters, and sculptors in the country, to advise the Government as
to the erection and decoration of all new buildings. The "pork-barrel"
Senators and Congressmen felt for this body an instinctive, and perhaps
from their standpoint a natural, hostility; and my successor a couple
of months after taking office revoked the appointment and disbanded the
Council.
Even more important was the taking of steps to preserve from destruction
beautiful and wonderful wild creatures whose existence was threatened by
greed and wantonness. During the seven and a half years closing on March
4, 1909, more was accomplished for the protection of wild life in the
United States than during all the previous years, excepting only the
creation of the Yellowstone National Park. The record includes the
creation of five National Parks--Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South
Dakota; Platt, Oklahoma; Sully Hill, North Dakota, and Mesa Verde,
Colorado; four big game refuges in Oklahoma, Arizona, Montana, and
Washington; fifty-one bird reservations; and the enactment of laws for