Chapter XIX: Preface: To the Seventh Volume (18)

In realization of this programme an important "Development and
Road Improvement Funds Act" was introduced by Mr. Lloyd-George
in August, and passed, after considerable amendment of its
administrative details in Committee of the Commons and in the
House of Lords. It is divided into two parts, the first
dealing with development, or the aiding and encouraging of
agriculture and other rural industries, inclusive of forestry,
reclamation and drainage of land, improvement of rural
transport, construction and improvement of inland navigation
and harbors, and the development and improvement of fisheries.
The Act enables the Treasury to make free grants and loans,
from a Development Fund fed by an annual Parliamentary vote
and by a charge on the Consolidated Fund. An independent
Development Commission is to be appointed by the Treasury,
consisting of five members appointed for ten years, whose
recommendation for the rejection of applications shall be
final, though not that for their acceptance. The second part
of the Act sets up a Road Board to carry out schemes of road
improvement, either under its own direct control or through
the existing highway authorities.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: North America:
International Conference of Delegates from Canada, Mexico,
and the United States.

The movement instituted in the United States for a better
conservation of the natural resources of the country was
broadened, early in 1909, into a continental and international
movement, by an invitation from President Roosevelt to the
Governments of Canada and Mexico to send delegates to a
general conference on the subject at Washington, for the
purpose of arranging some cooperative and harmonious plans of
action in the three countries. The invitation was cordially
accepted in both of the neighboring countries, and the
delegates sent were met, on the 18th of February, by many of
the leaders of the conservation movement in the United States,
including the National Conservation Commission. After being
received and addressed by the President at the White House, a
two days session of the Conference was held in the diplomatic
room of the State Department, with good results.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: Turkey: A. D. 1909.
Reclamation projects in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1909 (OCTOBER).

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: United States:
The Great Movement for an Arresting of Waste.
An organized National care-taking of Forests, Waters, Lands,
and Minerals.
Forest Service, Irrigation, Development of Waterways.

It is more than possible that the administration of Government
in the United States under President Roosevelt will be
distinguished, in the judgment of coming generations, most
highly by the impulse and the organization it gave to measures
for conserving the natural resources of the country, in woods,
water sources, mineral deposits and fertile or fertilizable
soils,—rescuing them from a hitherto unrestrained recklessness
of waste. The key-note of a new determination in governmental
policy, pointed to this end, was sounded by the President in
his first Message to Congress, on the 3d of December, 1901,
when he opened the subject largely and earnestly, saying,
among other things, this:

"The preservation of our forests is an imperative business
necessity. We have come to see clearly that whatever destroys
the forest, except to make way for agriculture, threatens our
well-being. At present the protection of the forest reserves
rests with the General Land Office, the mapping and
description of their timber with the United States Geological
Survey, and the preparation of plans for their conservative
use with the Bureau of Forestry, which is also charged with
the general advancement of practical forestry in the United
States. These various functions should be united in the Bureau
of Forestry, to which they properly belong. The present
diffusion of responsibility is bad from every standpoint. It
prevents that effective cooperation between the Government and
the men who utilize the resources of the reserves, without
which the interests of both must suffer. The scientific
bureaus generally should be put under the Department of
Agriculture. The President should have by law the power of
transferring lands for use as forest reserves to the
Department of Agriculture. He already has such power in the
case of lands needed by the Departments of War and the Navy. …

"The wise administration of the forest reserves will be not
less helpful to the interests which depend on water than to
those which depend on wood and grass. The water supply itself
depends upon the forest. In the arid region it is water, not
land, which measures production. The western half of the
United States would sustain a population greater than that of
our whole country to-day if the waters that now run to waste
were saved and used for irrigation. The forest and water
problems are perhaps the most vital internal questions of the
United States. …

"The forests alone cannot, however, fully regulate and
conserve the waters of the arid region. Great storage works
are necessary to equalize the flow of streams and to save the
flood waters. Their construction has been conclusively shown
to be an undertaking too vast for private effort. Nor can it
be best accomplished by the individual States acting alone.
Far-reaching interstate problems are involved; and the
resources of single States would often be inadequate. It is
properly a national function. at least in some of its
features. …

{146}

"The reclamation of the unsettled arid public lands presents a
different problem. Here it is not enough to regulate the flow
of streams. The object of the Government is to dispose of the
land to settlers who will build homes upon it. To accomplish
this object water must be brought within their reach. …
Whatever the Nation does for the extension of irrigation
should harmonize with, and tend to improve, the condition of
those now living on irrigated land. We are not at the
starting-point of this development. Over two hundred millions
of private capital have already been expended in the
construction of irrigation works, and many million acres of
arid land reclaimed. A high degree of enterprise and ability
has been shown in the work itself; but as much cannot be said
in reference to the laws relating thereto. The security and
value of the homes created depend largely on the stability of
titles to water; but the majority of these rest on the
uncertain foundation of court decisions rendered in ordinary
suits at law. With a few creditable exceptions, the arid
States have failed to provide for the certain and just
division of streams in times of scarcity. Lax and uncertain
laws have made it possible to establish rights to water in
excess of actual uses or necessities, and many streams have
already passed into private ownership, or a control equivalent
to ownership."

_President's Message to Congress,
December 3, 1901._

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
The Nationalizing of Irrigation Works.

The highest quality of statesmanship is represented by such
recommendations as these. So far as concerned the proposed
nationalization of irrigation works, to reclaim the arid lands
of the West, they bore fruit within a year, in the passage by
Congress of the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902. It devoted
most of the proceeds of the sale of public lauds, in Arizona,
California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New
Mexico, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington,
and Wyoming, to a special Reclamation Fund in the Treasury,
for the creation and maintenance of irrigation works. This was
a measure for which the late Major John W. Powell, Director of
the United States Geological Survey, had labored incessantly
for many years. In his book on "The Lands of the Arid Regions"
he was the first to show the possibility of redemption for
most of the wide spaces of land then supposed to be hopeless
desert, and he pleaded with Congress, session after session,
for some national undertaking to store and distribute the
waters from the mountains that would give life to their soil.
In 1888 he succeeded so far as to win authority and means for
investigating the water supply for the region, and from that
time he had kept an efficient small corps of engineers at work
in the survey and measurement of streams, accumulating
information that was ready for immediate use when actual
constructive work was taken in hand. At once, on the passage
of the Reclamation Act, the Director of the Geological Survey,
acting under the Secretary of the Interior, began the
execution of plans already well matured, for irrigation in
Arizona and Nevada; and was able three years later to report
similar undertakings in progress within three of the ten
Territories and thirteen States.

In May, 1908, the following statement of the reclamation work
then in progress appeared in _The Outlook:_ "The work as
a whole rivals the Panama Canal in the labor and expense
involved. The employment of 16,000 men and the expenditure of
$1,250,000 every month are but incidents in the service.
Already the canals completed reach a total of 1,815 miles—as
far as from New York to Denver. Homes have been made for ten
thousand families where before was desert. In the past five
years $33,000,000 has been spent, and the enterprises already
planned will add more than a hundred millions to this sum. Nor
is this money spent in one locality. In New Mexico one of the
largest dams in the world is being constructed. In California
and Nevada great reservoirs and irrigation plants are being
built. In western Kansas the beet-sugar raisers are to have a
$250,000 plant for pumping the ‘underflow,’ or the sheet water
found a few feet beneath the top-soil, of the Arkansas River
Valley to the surface, that ditches may be filled and crops
made certain. On seven great projects, involving the
expenditure of $51,000,000 and the reclamation of over a
million acres, the benefit is directly to the Northwest. These
projects lie in North and South Dakota, Montana, and
Washington. In these States lands that have been considered as
worthless except for the coarsest kind of grazing are being
transformed into productive farms. In South Dakota the largest
earth dam in the world is being constructed, that ninety
thousand acres of land may be made fertile; while just east of
the Yellowstone Park is being built a solid wall of masonry
310 feet high to hold back the waters of the Shoshone River
until a reservoir of ten square miles, capable of irrigating a
hundred thousand acres, is formed. The production of these
irrigated lands is marvelous."

The latest official statistics that are available represent
the total of acres irrigated at the end of the year 1907 as
being 11,000,000, in 167,200 farms, at an average cost (of
constructive work) of $13.46 per acre.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
A National Forest Policy.

Less promptitude of action followed the President's urging of
measures for forest preservation, and his warnings to Congress
and the country, against the consequences of this inaction,
were repeated from year to year. His Message of December,
1904, carried a specially urgent plea for legislation to unify
the national forest work.

"I have repeatedly," he said, "called attention to the
confusion which exists in Government forest matters because
the work is scattered among three independent organizations.
The United States is the only one of the great nations in
which the forest work of the Government is not concentrated
under one department, in consonance with the plainest dictates
of good administration and common sense. The present
arrangement is bad from every point of view. Merely to mention
it is to prove that it should be terminated at once. As I have
repeatedly recommended, all the forest work of the Government
should be concentrated in the Department of Agriculture, where
the larger part of that work is already done, where
practically all of the trained foresters of the Government are
employed, where chiefly in Washington there is comprehensive
first-hand knowledge of the problems of the reserves acquired
on the ground, where all problems relating to growth from the
soil are already gathered, and where all the sciences
auxiliary to forestry are at hand for prompt and effective
coöperation."

{147}

During its following session Congress took the desired action,
and the whole forest service was transferred to the Department
of Agriculture in February, 1905.

Early in June of that year the efforts of the President to
waken attention to the seriousness of the forest destruction
in the country were greatly helped by a notable convention at
Washington of about twelve hundred men, having both interest
and knowledge in the matter, who came together to discuss the
problems involved. They were mostly practical foresters,
intelligent lumbermen, railway men, ranch-owners, engineers
and miners, and their urgency of a systematic conservative
treatment of the surviving forest wealth of the country
carried great weight. The convention was under the direction
of the Secretary of Agriculture, and was addressed by the
President.

During a journey through parts of the Southern States, in
October, 1905, the President took occasion, in some of his
speeches, to urge that a large part, at least, of the rapidly
disappearing forests on the Atlantic side of the country
should be nationalized, for preservation in the manner of the
forest reserves of the Far West. In his Message of 1906 he
submitted this to Congress, as a specific recommendation,
saying that the forests of the White Mountains and the
Southern Appalachian regions need to be preserved, and "cannot
be unless the people of the States in which they lie, through
their representatives in the Congress, secure vigorous action
by the National Government." This proposal encountered strong
opposition from selfish interests, and Congress was prevailed
upon with difficulty to authorize a survey of the forests of
the White Mountains and the Southern Appalachians, which
resulted in a recommendation by the Secretary of Agriculture
that 600,000 acres in the former region and 5,000,000 in the
latter be purchased for a National Reserve. A bill responsive
to this recommendation was passed by the Senate, but rejected
by the House, which appointed a commission, instead, to make
further investigations in the matter. Meantime, in the White
Mountains alone, busy slaughterers of the forests were said to
be stripping three hundred acres per day.

On the eve of the adjournment of Congress in March, 1907, the
President issued a proclamation adding some seventeen millions
of acres of forest lands to the National Forest Reserves
already established. This was just before he signed an Act of
Congress which abridged his authority to create reserves in
Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. It
was a characteristic proceeding, for which the President had
ample power under a statute of 1891, and it simply held the
forests designated in safety from destruction until the
question of their treatment was more carefully considered. The
next Congress, or the next President, could give them up to
private ownership, in whole or in part, if the one or the
other found reason for doing so. Meantime they were sheltered
from the axeman, while undergoing study. As a matter of fact,
Mr. Roosevelt’s successor, President Taft, did conclude that
some of the lands reserved should be released for sale, and so
ordered soon after he entered the executive office.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
The Inland Waterways Commission.

In his annual Message of December, 1907, the President
enlarged the range of considerations that connect themselves
with the question of economic forestry, by directing attention
to the importance of the waterways of the country and their
claim to a more systematic development. "For the last few
years," he said, "through several agencies, the Government has
been endeavoring to get our people to look ahead, and to
substitute a planned and orderly development of our resources
in place of a haphazard striving for immediate profit. Our
great river systems should be developed as National water
highways; the Mississippi, with its tributaries, standing
first in importance, and the Columbia second, although there
are many others of importance on the Pacific, the Atlantic and
the Gulf slopes. The National Government should undertake this
work, and I hope a beginning will be made in the present
Congress; and the greatest of all our rivers, the Mississippi,
should receive especial attention. From the Great Lakes to the
mouth of the Mississippi there should be a deep waterway, with
deep waterways leading from it to the East and the West. Such
a waterway would practically mean the extension of our coast
line into the very heart of our country. It would be of
incalculable benefit to our people. If begun at once it can be
carried through in time appreciably to relieve the congestion
of our great freight-carrying lines of railroads. …

"The inland waterways which lie just back of the whole eastern
and southern coasts should likewise be developed. Moreover,
the development of our waterways involves many other important
water problems, all of which should be considered as part of
the same general scheme. The Government dams should be used to
produce hundreds of thousands of horsepower as an incident to
improving navigation; for the annual value of the unused
water-power of the United States perhaps exceeds the annual
value of the products of all our mines. As an incident to
creating the deep waterway down the Mississippi, the
Government should build along its whole lower length levees
which taken together with the control of the headwaters, will
at once and forever put a complete stop to all threat of
floods in the immensely fertile Delta region. The territory
lying adjacent to the Mississippi along its lower course will
thereby become one of the most prosperous and populous, as it
already is one of the most fertile, farming regions in all the
world. I have appointed an Inland Waterways Commission to
study and outline a comprehensive scheme of development along
all the lines indicated. Later I shall lay its report before
the Congress."

The Inland Waterways Commission thus appointed by the
President in March, 1907, gave its attention first to the
project of a "Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Water Way," which had
been commanding wide interest in the Mississippi Valley for
some years. What the project, in its full magnitude,
contemplated, was stated as follows in the resolutions of a
great convention, of 4000 delegates, from 44 States, assembled
at Chicago in October, 1908:

"Any plan for the inland waterway development so imperatively
necessary to the material welfare of the valley should
comprise a main trunk line in the form of a strait connecting
Lake Michigan with the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Illinois
and Mississippi rivers.
{148}
The development of this trunk line should begin at once. The
improvement of the branches of this main line, such as the
upper Mississippi, with its tributaries; the Ohio, with its
leading tributaries, including the Tennessee and Cumberland;
the Missouri, the Arkansas, the Red, the White, and other
rivers, and the interstate inland waterway of Louisiana and
Texas, should proceed simultaneously with the development of
the principal line.

"The deep waterway is practically complete from Chicago to
Joliet through the courage and enterprise of the single city
of Chicago, which has by the expenditure of $55,000,000
created a deep waterway across the main divide between the
waters of Lake Michigan and those of the Mississippi. A
special board of survey, composed of United States engineers,
reported to Congress in 1905 that the continuation of the deep
waterway from Joliet to St. Louis was feasible and would cost
only $31,000,000. The State of Illinois, assuming that the
Federal Government will take the responsibility of completing
the waterway to the Gulf, is about to cooperate to the extent
of $20,000,000."

The waterway here mentioned as being "practically complete from
Chicago to Joliet" is that known as the Chicago Drainage
Canal. The $20,000,000 with which the State of Illinois would
cooperate in carrying out the whole project was voted by that
State in November, 1908, for building an extension of the
Drainage Canal from Joliet to Utica, Illinois, sixty-one
miles, for a development of water power. The depth of these
channels is and is to be twenty-four feet, and the project of
the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway contemplated that depth
throughout. The Board of Engineers to which the project was
referred reported, however, in June, 1909, against the
desirability of a waterway of such depth. Its cost from St.
Louis to the Gulf is estimated to be $128,000,000 for
construction, and $6,000,000 yearly for maintenance. In the
judgment of the board, the present demands of commerce between
St. Louis and the Gulf will be adequately met by an eight-foot
channel from St. Louis to the mouth of the Ohio and a channel
of not less than nine feet in depth below the mouth of the
Ohio. The board’s belief is that an eight-foot channel from
Chicago to St. Louis corresponding with the eight-foot project
from St. Louis to Cairo is the least that would adequately
meet the demands of commerce. It adds that such a waterway
would be desirable, provided its cost is reasonable. Present
and prospective demands of commerce between Chicago and the
Gulf would be adequately served, the board reports, by a
through nine-foot channel to the Gulf.

In the States bordering on the Atlantic a "Deeper Waterways
Association" is pressing long-mooted plans for uniting the
bays, sounds, and navigable rivers along the Atlantic coast by
canals, thus affording safe deep-water communication from
Boston on the east to Florida at the far south.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
Conference of Governors at Washington.

In all his endeavors to establish a national policy directed,
systematically and scientifically, to the arresting of waste
in the use and treatment of the natural resources of the
country, President Roosevelt was assisted very greatly by the
knowledge and the energetic public spirit of the chief of the
National Forest Service, Mr. Gifford Pinchot. It is understood
to have been on the initiative of Mr. Pinchot that the
crowning expedient for stirring and determining public feeling
on the subject was planned, early in the winter of 1908, when
the President invited the Governors of all the States and
Territories to a Conference in Washington, for considering the
whole question of an economic conservation of natural
resources and concerting measures to that end. It was said,
indeed, by the President, in addressing the meeting of
Governors, that if it had not been for Mr. Pinchot "this
convention neither would nor could have been called." The
invitation went to others than Governors,—to men of national
prominence in public life, in scientific pursuits, in business
experience, and to heads of great associations. The resulting
assembly at the White House, on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of
May, 1908, marked an epoch in American history. There were
Governors from forty of the forty-six States of the Union,
with the President and members of his Cabinet, the Justices of
the Supreme Court, many Senators and Representatives from the
Congress, and a distinguished gathering of such citizens as
William Jennings Bryan, Seth Low, James J. Hill, Andrew
Carnegie, John Mitchell and Samuel Gompers. All sides of the
national thriftlessness that needed correction were discussed
by men who could best describe the evils produced and best
indicate the methods of remedy. Before adjourning their
meeting the Governors present adopted with unanimity a
declaration in which they say:

"We agree that our country’s future is involved in this: that
the great natural resources supply the material basis upon
which our civilization must continue to depend, and upon which
the perpetuity of the nation itself rests. We agree, in the
light of the facts brought to our knowledge and from the
information received from sources which we cannot doubt, that
this material basis is threatened with exhaustion. …

"We declare our firm conviction that this conservation of our
natural resources is a subject of transcendent importance
which should engage unremittingly the attention of the nation,
the States, and the people in earnest cooperation. These
natural resources include the land on which we live and which
yields our food; the living waters which fertilize the soil,
supply power, and form great avenues of commerce; the forests
which yield the materials for our homes, prevent erosion of
the soil, and conserve the navigation and other uses of the
streams; and the minerals which form the basis of our
industrial life, and supply us with heat, light, and power. …

"We commend the wise forethought of the President in sounding
the note of warning as to the waste and exhaustion of the
natural resources of the country, and signify our high
appreciation of his action in calling this Conference to
consider the same and to seek remedies therefor through
cooperation of the nation and the States. …

"We agree in the wisdom of future conferences between the
President, Members of Congress, and the governors of States on
the conservation of our natural resources with a view of
continued coöperation and action on the lines suggested; and
to this end we advise that from time to time, as in his
judgment may seem wise, the President call the governors of
States and Members of Congress and others into conference.

{149}

"We agree that further action is advisable to ascertain the
present condition of our natural resources and to promote the
conservation of the same; and to that end we recommend the
appointment by each State of a commission on the conservation
of natural resources, to coöperate with each other and with
any similar commission of the Federal Government."

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
The National Conservation Commission and its Report.

The President acted with promptitude on the suggestion of a
National Commission on the Conservation of Natural Resources,
to coöperate with kindred State Commissions. Within a month he
announced the appointment of such a Commission, composed of
nearly fifty men of special qualification for the inquiries to
be pursued, the recommendations to be made, and the action to
be taken. All sections of the country are represented on the
Commission, including such authorities on waters as Professor
Swain, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; on
forests, as Professor Graves, of the Yale Forestry School, and
Mr. Charles Lathrop Pack, of New Jersey; on lands, as
Ex-Governor Pardee, of California, and Mr. James J. Hill, the
eminent railway president; on minerals, as Messrs. Andrew
Carnegie, of New York, John Hays Hammond, of Massachusetts,
and John Mitchell, of Illinois.

The Commission is divided into four sections, one to consider
forests, another waters, a third minerals, and the fourth
lands. Over these divisions is an executive committee, of which
Mr. Gifford Pinchot is chairman. In each section there are
representatives from the Senate and House of Representatives,
and officials of Government from the Department which has to
do with the subject referred to it.

State action on the lines commended by the Conference of
Governors had already been instituted in a number of States,
and in many others it was promptly set on foot; so that the
desired coöperative organization of effort was soon well under
way, and contributing to the first undertaking planned by the
Executive Committee of the National Commission, which was the
making of an inventory of the natural resources of the United
States. So effective was the work done in the summer and fall
of 1908 that a Second Conference of State Governors, jointly
with the State and National Commissions, was found desirable,
for consideration of the mass of facts collected as a basis
for definite plans. The Second Conference, like the First, was
in Washington, and it was opened on the 8th of December, under
the chairmanship of the then President-elect of the United
States, the Honorable William H. Taft. The draft of a report
prepared to be made by the National Conservation Commission to
the President of the United States was submitted
confidentially to this Conference, and was sent to Congress a
little later with its approval, as well as with that of the
President. The Conference adopted, furthermore, two important
resolutions, as follows:

"_Resolved_, That a joint committee be appointed by the
chairman, to consist of six members of state conservation
commissions and three members of the National Conservation
Commission, whose duty it shall be to prepare and present to
the state and national commissions, and through them to the
governors and the President, a plan for united action by all
organizations concerned with the conservation of natural
resources. (On motion of Governor Noel, of Mississippi, the
chairman and secretary of the conference were added to and
constituted a part of this committee.) "

"We also especially urge on the Congress of the United States
the high desirability of maintaining a National Commission on
the Conservation of the Resources of the Country, empowered to
coöperate with State Commissions, to the end that every
sovereign commonwealth and every section of the country may
attain the high degree of prosperity and the sureness of
perpetuity naturally arising in the abundant resources and the
vigor, intelligence and patriotism of our people."

In subsequently communicating to Congress, on the 22d of
January, 1909, the report of the National Conservation
Commission, the President said:

"With the statements and conclusions of this report I heartily
concur, and I commend it to the thoughtful consideration both
of the Congress and of our people generally. It is one of the
most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the
American people. It contains the first inventory of its
natural resources ever made by any nation."

The report of the Commission was prefaced by a brief
explanatory statement from the Chairman of its Executive
Committee, partly as follows:

"The executive committee designated in your letter creating
the commission organized on June 19 and outlined a plan for
making an inventory of the natural resources of the United
States. On July 1 work was undertaken, accordingly, with the
coöperation of the bureaus of the federal departments,
authorities of the different States, and representative bodies
of the national industries. The results of this coöperative
work are herewith submitted as appendices of the commission’s
report. … In its coöperation ‘with other bodies created for
similar purposes by States,’ the National Conservation
Commission has had most valuable assistance. Within the first
month after the creation of the commission, the governors of 5
States had appointed conservation commissions, and an equal
number of organizations of national scope had named
conservation committees. At the time of the recent joint
conservation conference 33 States and Territories had formed
conservation commissions. The number has now increased to 36,
with indications that nearly all of the remaining States will
soon take similar action. The number of national organizations
which have appointed conservation committees is 41."

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
An Inventory of Natural Resources.

From the report itself it is only possible, in this place, to
glean a few of its most impressive and significant disclosures
of fact. For example:

CONCERNING FORESTS.

"Forests privately owned cover three-fourths of the total
forest area and contain four-fifths of the standing timber.
The timber privately owned is not only four times that
publicly owned, but is generally more valuable. Forestry is
now practiced on 70 per cent. of the forests publicly owned,
and on less than 1 per cent. of the forests privately owned,
or on only 18 per cent. of the total area of forests.

"The yearly growth of wood in our forests does not average
more than 12 cubic feet per acre. This gives a total yearly
growth of less than 7,000,000,000 cubic feet.

{150}

"We have 200,000,000 acres of mature forests, in which yearly
growth is balanced by decay; 250,000,000 acres partly cut over
or burned over, but restocking naturally with enough young
growth to produce a merchantable crop, and 100,000,000 acres
cut over and burned over, upon which young growth is lacking
or too scanty to make merchantable timber.

"We take from our forests yearly, including waste in logging
and in manufacture, 23,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood. We use
each year 100,000,000 cords of firewood; 40,000,000,000 feet
of lumber; more than 1,000,000,000 posts, poles, and fence
rails; 118,000,000 hewn ties; 1,500,000,000 staves; over
133,000,000 sets of heading; nearly 500,000,000 barrel hoops;
3,000,000 cords of native pulp wood; 165,000,000 cubic feet of
round mine timbers, and 1,250,000 cords of wood for
distillation.

"Since 1870 forest fires have destroyed a yearly average of 50
lives and $50,000,000 worth of timber. Not less than
50,000,000 acres of forest is burned over yearly. The young
growth destroyed by fire is worth far more than the
merchantable timber burned.

"One-fourth of the standing timber is lost in logging. The
boxing of long-leaf pine for turpentine has destroyed
one-fifth of the forests worked. The loss in the mill is from
one-third to two-thirds of the timber sawed. The loss of mill
product in seasoning and fitting for use is from one-seventh
to one fourth. Of each 1000 feet, which stood in the forest,
an average of only 320 feet of lumber is used.

"We take from our forests each year, not counting the loss by
fire, three and a half times their yearly growth. We take 40
cubic feet per acre for each 12 cubic feet grown; we take 260
cubic feet per capita, while Germany uses 37 and France 25
cubic feet.

"We tax our forests under the general property tax, a method
abandoned long ago by every other great nation. Present tax
laws prevent reforestation of cut-over land and the
perpetuation of existing forests by use.

"Great damage is done to standing timber by injurious forest
insects. Much of this damage can be prevented at small
expense.

"To protect our farms from wind and to reforest land best
suited for forest growth will require tree planting on an area
larger than Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia combined.
Lands so far successfully planted make a total area smaller
than Rhode Island; and year by year, through careless cutting
and fires, we lower the capacity of existing forests to
produce their like again, or else totally destroy them. …

"By reasonable thrift we can produce a constant timber supply
beyond our present need, and with it conserve the usefulness
of our streams for irrigation, water supply, navigation and
power. Under right management, our forests will yield over
four times as much as now. We can reduce waste in the woods
and in the mill at least one third, with present as well as
future profit. … We can practically stop forest fires at a
cost yearly of one fifth of the value of the merchantable
timber burned.

"We shall suffer for timber to meet our needs until our
forests have had time to grow again. But if we act vigorously
and at once, we shall escape permanent timber scarcity." The
report adds much of interest on this subject.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
CONCERNING WATERS.

"Our mean annual rainfall is about 30 inches; the quantity
about 215,000,000,000,000 cubic feet per year, equivalent to
ten Mississippi rivers. Of the total rainfall over half is
evaporated; about a third flows into the sea, the remaining
sixth is either consumed or absorbed. These portions are
sometimes called, respectively, the fly-off, the run-off and
the cut-off. They are partly interchangeable. About a third of
the run-off, or a tenth of the entire rainfall, passes through
the Mississippi. The run-off is increasing with deforestation
and cultivation.

"Of the 70,000,000,000,000 cubic feet annually flowing into
the sea, less than 1 per cent. is restrained and utilized for
municipal and community supply; less than 2 per cent. (or some
10 per cent. of that in the arid and semi-arid regions) is
used for irrigation; perhaps 5 per cent, is used for
navigation, and less than 5 per cent, for power. …

"For irrigation it is estimated that there are $200,000,000
invested in dams, ditches, reservoirs, and other works for the
partial control of the waters; and that 1,500,000,000,000
cubic feet are annually diverted to irrigable lands,
aggregating some 20,000 square miles. Except in some cases
through forestry, few catchment areas are controlled, and few
reservoirs are large enough to hold the storm waters. The
waste in the public and private projects exceeds 60 per cent.
while no more than 25 per cent. of the water actually
available for irrigation of the arid lands is restrained and
diverted.

"There are in continental United States 282 streams navigated
for an aggregate of 26,115 miles, and as much more navigable
if improved. There are 45 canals, aggregating 2,189 miles,
besides numerous abandoned canals. Except through forestry in
recent years, together with a few reservoirs and canal locks
and movable dams, there has been little effort to control
headwaters or catchment areas in the interests of navigation,
and none of our rivers are navigated to more than a small
fraction even of their effective low-water capacity.

"The water power now in use is 5,250,000 horse power; the
amount running over government dams and not used is about
1,400,000 horse-power; the amount reasonably available equals
or exceeds the entire mechanical power now in use, or enough
to operate every mill, drive every spindle, propel every train
and boat, and light every city, town, and village in the
country. … Nearly all the freshet and flood water runs to
waste, and the low waters which limit the efficiency of power
plants are increasing in frequency and duration with the
increasing flood run-off. … The direct yearly damage by floods
since 1900 has increased steadily from $45,000,000 to over
$238,000,000. …

"A large part of that half of the annual rainfall not
evaporated lodges temporarily in the soil and earth. It is
estimated that the ground water to the depth of 100 feet
averages 16 2/3 percent, of the earth-Volume, or over
1,400,000,000,000,000 cubic feet, equivalent to seven years'
rainfall or twenty years’ run-off. This subsurface reservoir
is the essential basis of agriculture and other industries and
is the chief natural resource of the country. It sustains
forests and all other crops and supplies the perennial springs
and streams and wells used by four-fifths of our population
and nearly all our domestic animals. Its quantity is
diminished by the increased run-off due to deforestation and
injudicious farming."

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CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
CONCERNING LANDS.

"The total land area of continental United States is
1,900,000,000 acres. Of this but little more than two-fifths
is in farms, and less than one-half of the farm area is
improved and made a source of crop production. We have nearly
6,000,000 farms; they average 146 acres each. The value of the
farms is nearly one-fourth the wealth of the United States.
There are more than 300,000,000 acres of public grazing land.
The number of persons engaged in agricultural pursuits is more
than 10,000,000. …

"There has been a slight increase in the average yield of our
great staple farm products, but neither the increase in
acreage nor the yield per acre has kept pace with our increase
in population. Within a century we shall probably have to feed
three times as many people as now; and the main bulk of our
food supply must be grown on our own soil.

"The area of cultivated land may possibly be doubled. In
addition to the land awaiting the plow, 75,000,000 acres of
swamp land can be reclaimed, 40,000,000 acres of desert land
irrigated, and millions of acres of brush and wooded land
cleared. Our population will increase continuously, but there
is a definite limit to the increase of our cultivated acreage.
Hence we must greatly increase the yield per acre. The average
yield of wheat in the United States is less than 14 bushels
per acre, in Germany 28 bushels, and in England 32 bushels. We
get 30 bushels of oats per acre, England nearly 45, and
Germany more than 47. Our soils are fertile, but our mode of
farming neither conserves the soil nor secures full crop
returns. The greatest unnecessary loss of our soil is
preventable erosion. Second only to this is the waste, nonuse,
and misuse of fertilizer derived from animals and men."

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
CONCERNING MINERALS.

"The available and easily accessible supplies of coal in the
United States aggregate approximately 1,400,000,000,000 tons.
At the present increasing rate of production this supply will
be so depleted as to approach exhaustion before the middle of
the next century.

"The known supply of high-grade iron ores in the United States
approximates 3,840,000,000 tons, which at the present
increasing rate of consumption can not be expected to last
beyond the middle of the present century. In addition to this,
there are assumed to be 59,000,000,000 tons of lower grade
iron ores which are not available for use under existing
conditions.

"The supply of stone, clay, cement, lime, sand, and salt is
ample, while the stock of the precious metals and of copper,
lead, zinc, sulphur, asphalt, graphite, quicksilver, mica, and
the rare metals can not well be estimated, but is clearly
exhaustible within one to three centuries unless unexpected
deposits be found.

"The known supply of petroleum is estimated at 15,000,000,000
to 20,000,000,000 barrels, distributed through six separate
fields having an aggregate area of 8,900 square miles. The
production is rapidly increasing, while the wastes and the
loss through misuse are enormous. The supply can not be
expected to last beyond the middle of the present century.

"The known natural-gas fields aggregate an area of 9,000
square miles, distributed through 22 States. Of the total
yield from these fields during 1907, 400,000,000,000 cubic
feet, valued at $62,000,000, were utilized, while an equal
quantity was allowed to escape into the air. The daily waste
of natural gas—the most perfect known fuel—is over
1,000,000,000 cubic feet, or enough to supply every city in
the United States of over 100,000 population.

"Phosphate rock, used for fertilizer, represents the slow
accumulation of organic matter during past ages. In most
countries it is scrupulously preserved; in this country it is
extensively exported, and largely for this reason its
production is increasing rapidly. The original supply can not
long withstand the increasing demand. …

"The National Government should exercise such control of the
mineral fuels and phosphate rocks now in its possession as to
check waste and prolong our supply."

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
CONCERNING LIFE AND HEALTH

"Since the greatest of our national assets is the health and
vigor of the American people, our efficiency must depend on
national vitality even more than on the resources of the
minerals, lands, forests, and waters. …

"Our annual mortality from tuberculosis is about 150,000.
Stopping three-fourths of the loss of life from this cause,
and from typhoid and other prevalent and preventable diseases,
would increase our average length of life over fifteen years.
There are constantly about 3,000,000 persons seriously ill in
the United States, of whom 500,000 are consumptives. More than
half this illness is preventable. …

"The National Government has now several agencies exercising
health functions which only need to be concentrated to become
coordinated parts of a greater health service worthy of the
nation."

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
FINAL WORDS.

"The inventory of our natural resources made by your
commission, with the vigorous aid of all federal agencies
concerned, of many States, and of a great number of associated
and individual cooperators, furnishes a safe basis for general
conclusions as to what we have, what we use and waste, and
what may be the possible saving. But for none of the great
resources of the farm, the mine, the forest, and the stream do
we yet possess knowledge definite or wide enough to insure
methods of use which will best conserve them. … The pressing
need is for a general plan under which citizens, States and
Nation may unite in an effort to achieve this great end. The
lack of cooperation between the States and the Nation, and
between the agencies of the National Government, is a potent
cause of the neglect of conservation among the people. An
organization through which all agencies, state, national,
municipal, associate, and individual, may unite in a common
effort to conserve the foundations of our prosperity is
indispensable to the welfare and progress of the nation. To
that end the immediate creation of a national agency is
essential."

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CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
Beginnings of a General Organization of all
Conservation Agencies.

The Joint Committee which the Chairman of the Second
Conference of Governors was instructed to appoint, for the
preparation of "a plan for united action by all organizations
concerned with the conservation of natural resources," met at
Washington on the 5th of March, 1909, for its first
consultation. The Committee, of eleven members, consists of
six chairmen of State Conservation Commissions, and five who
are members of the National Conservation Commission. In
preparation for the meeting the various conservation bodies
which have been actively at work for several months are
sending in suggestions based on their own experience.

Action for the preservation and increase of forests has been
stimulated in many if not all of the States of the Union by
the national agitation of the subject in these late years.
Nowhere has the influence been more effective than in New
York, which has not only greatly enlarged its control and
improved its care and treatment of the extensive forest tracts
in the Adirondack region, but has done even more important
reforesting work in other parts of its territory. "James S.
Whipple, forest, fish and game commissioner, has not only
planted more trees in this State than have been planted in any
other State, or even by the national government, but this year
he has made another great advance in the reforesting movement.
The commission has sold to private land owners at cost
1,034,050 pine and spruce trees for reforesting land within
the State."

_New York Evening Post,
April 24, 1909._

These trees went to every county of the State, in numbers
ranging from 50 to 200,000.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
Threatened Monopoly of Water Power.

See (in this Volume)
Combinations, Industrial, &c.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
Withdrawal of Water Power Sites from Land Office Entry.

What is said to be the largest number of acres of land
withdrawn for temporary water power sites in the history of
the Interior Department was made August 13, 1909, when Acting
Secretary Wilson withdrew 87,360 acres along the Colorado
River, in Utah. The land in question was withdrawn to prevent
"monopolies," and with a view to procure legislation from
Congress to preserve them to the Government.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
The National Conservation Association.

"Great significance," said a Press despatch from Washington,
September 16, 1906, "is attached here to-day to the
announcement from Chicago of the formation of the National
Conservation Association, with Charles W. Eliot, ex-president
of Harvard University, as president. Friends of conservation
interpret the launching of the new organization to mean that a
national organization of the widest possible membership and
the greatest possible scope is to supplant the American
Forestry Association in administration favor as the
educational branch of the conservation movement."

Not long after its formation the Association issued an earnest
appeal to the country to bring the pressure of its opinion on
Congress for needed legislation. The special subject of this
appeal was the vast coal field in Alaska, which can only be
saved from monopoly by speedy amendment of existing laws. "We,
therefore," said the Association, "appeal to the American
people to bring the urgent needs of the situation to the
attention of their representatives in Congress, in order that
comprehensive legislation upon this vital matter may be
enacted at the next session of Congress. To this end, every
individual citizen is urged to do his part, and to act at
once."

On the request of Dr. Eliot, Mr. Gifford Pinchot, after the
withdrawal of the latter from the office of Chief Forester of
the United States, was made President of the Association, in
January, 1910, but Dr. Eliot was named Honorary President.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES:
Legislation recommended by President Taft.

Earnestly upholding the Conservation policy instituted by his
predecessor, President Taft, in a Special Message to Congress,
January 14, 1910, recommended several measures of legislation,
for which suggested bills had been drafted by the Secretary of
the Interior.

"One of the most pressing needs," said the Message, "in the
matter of public-land reform is that lands should be
classified according to their principal value or use. …

"It is now proposed to dispose of agricultural lands as such,
and at the same time to reserve for other disposition the
treasure of coal, oil, asphaltum, natural gas, and phosphate
contained therein. This may be best accomplished by separating
the right to mine from the title to the surface, giving the
necessary use of so much of the latter as may be required for
the extraction of the deposits. The surface might be disposed
of as agricultural land under the general agricultural
statutes, while the coal or other mineral could be disposed of
by lease on a royalty basis."

The importance of an enlargement of the undertakings of the
Government in the line of irrigation works, for reclaiming
arid lands, is urged by the President with great force, and he
recommends "that authority be given to issue not exceeding
$30,000,000 of bonds from time to time, as the secretary of
the interior shall find it necessary, the proceeds to be
applied to the completion of the projects already begun and
their proper extension, and the bonds running ten years or
more to be taken up by the proceeds of returns to the
reclamation fund, which returns, as the years go on, will
increase rapidly in amount."

The Message gives approval to a Bill which passed the lower
House of the late Congress, directing that "the national
government appropriate a certain amount each year out of the
receipts from the forestry business of the government to
institute reforestation at the sources of certain navigable
streams to be selected by the Geological Survey with a view to
determining the practicability of thus improving and
protecting the streams for Federal purposes."

Finally, on the subject of waterway improvement, the Message
recommends the project of dams in the Ohio River from
Pittsburg to Cairo, and in the Upper Mississippi from St. Paul
to St. Louis.

CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: A. D. 1910.
Removal from office of Chief Forester Pinchot.
Investigation of charges against Secretary Ballinger.

Unfortunate differences between the Secretary of the Interior,
Mr. Ballinger, and the head of the Bureau of Forestry, Mr.
Pinchot, led to the removal of the latter from office early in
January, 1910. As a further result, formal charges of
unfaithfulness to public interests, in conducting national
measures of conservation, were brought against Secretary
Ballinger, and are undergoing investigation by a Congressional
Committee at the time of the passing of this matter to the
printers (March, 1910).

----------CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: End--------

{153}

CONSERVATIVE-UNIONIST PARTY:
Surrender of the Government in Great Britain.
Defeat in the Elections.

See (in this Volume)
ENGLAND: A. D. 1905-1906.

CONSPIRACY LAW, British, as affecting Trades Unions.

See (in this Volume)
LABOR ORGANIZATION: ENGLAND A. D. 1906 (MARCH).

CONSTABULARY, The Philippine.

See (in this Volume)
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1901-1902.

CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1901.
Loss of political importance.

See (in this Volume)
RUSSIA: THE ASIATIC FUTURE.

CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1908-1909.
The Turkish Revolution.

See (in this Volume)
TURKEY: A. D. 1908 (JULY-DECEMBER), and after.

CONSTITUTION OF AUSTRALIA:
Proposed Amendments.

See (in this Volume)
AUSTRALIA: A. D. 1909 and 1910.

CONSTITUTION OF BRITISH INDIAN GOVERNMENT:
The Indian Councils Act.

See (in this Volume )
INDIA: A. D. 1908-1909.

CONSTITUTION FOR CHINA:
Nine years of approach to it.
Promised for 1907.

See (in this Volume)
CHINA: A. D. 1905-1908, 1908 (December),
and 1909 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).

CONSTITUTION OF ENGLAND:
Resolution of the Commons contemplating a change affecting
the Legislative Power of the House of Lords.

See (in this Volume)
ENGLAND: A. D. 1906 (APRIL-DECEMBER), and 1910.

CONSTITUTION OF GEORGIA:
Suffrage Amendment.

See (in this Volume)
GEORGIA: A. D. 1908.

CONSTITUTION OF MONTENEGRO.

See (in this Volume)
BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES.

CONSTITUTION OF OKLAHOMA.

Some of the more radical features of the Constitution under
which Oklahoma was admitted to the American Union are
summarized in the following:

"Legislative authority is vested in a legislature, but the
people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and
amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject the same
at the polls independent of the legislature, and also reserve
power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls
any act of the legislature.

"Eight per cent of the legal voters have the right to propose
any legislative measure and 15 percent of the legal voters
have the right to propose amendments to the constitution by
petition. A referendum may be ordered, except as to laws
necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace,
health or safety, either by petition signed by 5 per cent of
the legal voters or by the legislature as other bills are
enacted. The veto power of the governor does not extend to
measures voted on by the people. The powers of the initiative
and referendum are also reserved to the legal voters of every
county and district as to local legislation or action.