1908-1911
1908-1911
1908
The Governors' Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources, organized
by Gifford Pinchot and his associate "WJ" (as he preferred to style himself)
McGee, whom Pinchot called "the scientific brains of the new [conservation]
movement," and largely financed by Pinchot himself, is held May 13-15 at the
White House, propelling conservation issues into the forefront of public
consciousness and stimulating a large number of private and state-level
conservation initiatives. The Conference's Proceedings are published in 1909.
A second such Conference is held at the end of the year to receive the
recommendations of the National Conservation Commission.
The National Conservation Commission, appointed in June by President Roosevelt
and composed of representatives of Congress and relevant executive agencies
with Gifford Pinchot as chairman, compiles an inventory of U.S. natural
resources and presents Pinchot's concepts of resource management as a
comprehensive policy recommendation in a three-volume Report submitted to
Congress at the beginning of 1909.
An article by Robert Underwood Johnson in Century magazine, "A High Price to
Pay for Water," helps bring the Hetch Hetchy controversy to national
attention.
Congress begins several years of hearings and debate on the Hetch Hetchy
question; the transcript of a Hearing held before the Committee on the Public
Lands of the House of Representatives, December 16, 1908 suggests the scope of
public concerns.
President Roosevelt issues Proclamations establishing Muir Woods National
Monument, California, on land donated to the Federal government for that
purpose by civic reformer and future Congressman William Kent; Grand Canyon
National Monument, Arizona; Pinnacles National Monument, California; Jewel
Cave National Monument, South Dakota; Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah;
Lewis and Clark Cavern National Monument, Montana; and Wheeler National
Monument, Colorado.
The Land Classification Board is established within the U.S. Geological Survey
to classify natural resources systematically so as to determine their best
use.
Dallas Lore Sharp publishes The Lay of the Land, a particularly fine example
of the way in which the era's nature essayists brought the American romance
with pastoral nature into the dooryards of the nation's burgeoning suburbs,
sustaining an appreciation for wild things in an ever-more-urban people.
With financial support from the Russell Sage Foundation, and reflecting
renewed concern for the value of rural life in an increasingly urban nation,
President Roosevelt appoints a Commission on Country Life, headed by Liberty
Hyde Bailey and including Gifford Pinchot, to study problems of rural life and
recommend measures to ameliorate them; the Commission's Report, published in
1909, deals chiefly with social and economic issues, but also draws attention
to such conservation problems as soil depletion and deforestation.
1909
President Roosevelt convenes the North American Conservation Conference, held
in Washington and attended by representatives of Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico,
and the United States.
Outlook magazine becomes a chief organ in the national campaign to save Hetch
Hetchy, publishing two editorials on the subject by its editor, Lyman Abbott.
The First National Conservation Congress is convened by the Washington (State)
Conservation Association; its Proceedings underscore the importance of private
conservation activity, including that of women's groups, at this time, and
highlight the energetic public response to the 1908 Governors' Conference.
Until 1915, these Congresses serve as annual forums for discussion and debate
among public and private conservation leaders, though they are eventually
undermined by internal squabbling.
Congress passes "An Act To create the Calaveras Bigtree National Forest,"
authorizing the acquisition of lands in California to protect stands of
Sequoia washingtoniana.
President Roosevelt issues a Proclamation establishing Mount Olympus National
Monument, Washington.
President Taft issues Proclamations establishing Oregon Caves National
Monument, Oregon, Mukuntuweap National Monument, Utah, and Shoshone Cavern
National Monument, Wyoming.
Under the influence of the work of the Inland Waterways Commission, Herbert
Quick publishes American Inland Waterways: Their Relation to Railway
Transportation and to the National Welfare; Their Creation, Restoration and
Maintenance, a broad overview which well illustrates how policymakers in this
era understood waterways development as an aspect of conservation.
For the next several years, conservationists appointed by Roosevelt turn to
the general public for support of their policies in the face of conflict with
Congress and appointees of President Taft; as a result, conservation gains
greater national attention, even as policy debates also increasingly involve
those more anxious to preserve natural resources for aesthetic/spiritual
reasons than to put them to practical use.
1910
Having publicly levelled charges of official impropriety against Secretary of
the Interior Richard A. Ballinger, Gifford Pinchot is dismissed from
government service by President Taft and turns to pressing for implementation
of his policies through the National Conservation Association, which he had
founded the previous year (it in turn had developed out of the Conservation
League of America, which Pinchot had founded in 1908); Pinchot serves as the
Association's President from 1910 until it dissolves in the 1920s (its
official periodical, American Conservation, is published only from February to
August of 1911, before folding for lack of subscribers).
In this same year, Pinchot publishes The Fight for Conservation, a summary of
his beliefs about the nature and importance of the conservation movement.
"Conservation means the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest
time," Pinchot writes (p. 48); "it demands the complete and orderly
development of all our resources for the benefit of all the people, instead of
the partial exploitation of them for the benefit of a few. It recognizes fully
the right of the present generation to use what it needs and all it needs of
the natural resources now available, but it recognizes equally our obligation
so to use what we need that our descendants shall not be deprived of what they
need" (p. 80).
Between January and April, following a Joint Congressional Resolution, a Joint
Committee of the Senate and the House holds hearings on the Ballinger-Pinchot
controversy, investigating the activities of both the Department of Interior
and the Forest Service; though dominated by politics, these
investigations--which eventually fill some thirteen printed volumes--are also,
in historian Samuel Hays's words, "a gold mine of information about resource
affairs" in this era.
In the legislation known as the Withdrawal Act, Congress authorizes the
President to withdraw public lands from entry and reserve them for
"water-power sites, irrigation, classification of lands, or other public
purposes," but reaffirms its ban on the creation or enlargement of national
forests in six Western states.
Congress passes a bill establishing Glacier National Park, Montana.
President Taft issues a Proclamation establishing Rainbow Bridge National
Monument, Utah.
In an early attempt to come to grips with the growing problem of large-scale
urban water pollution, Congress passes "An Act To prevent the dumping of
refuse materials in Lake Michigan at or near Chicago".
Reflecting the surge of popular interest in conservationism in the wake of
events such as the 1908 Governors' Conference, several books published in this
period offer an overview of conservation issues for the general public; the
most notable of these include Charles Richard Van Hise's authoritative
Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States, published this year;
Mary Huston Gregory's broader-based Checking the Waste: A Study in
Conservation, published in 1911; Rudolf Cronau's 1908 jeremiad, Our Wasteful
Nation: The Story of American Prodigality and the Abuse of Our National
Resources; and Thomas Herbert Russell's Natural Resources and National Wealth
(also 1911), which includes a chapter on irrigation by Reclamation Service
Director F.H. Newell, and is particularly directed at businessmen.
John Burroughs, nearing the end of his long career as the preeminent
interpreter of nature to the American public, publishes In the Catskills:
Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs, a volume of nature-essays
about his home region originally published across four decades; it epitomizes
the literary and philosophical stance which sustained his popularity for
nearly half a century and influenced the work of a host of other
nature-essayists in an era when Americans were redefining their relationship
with the natural world.
By this time, conservationists primarily interested in nature as an aesthetic,
spiritual, or recreational resource join with sportsmen, railroads, travel
agencies, and highway associations to begin calling for the creation of a Park
Bureau in the Department of Interior to take charge of national parks.
1911
The American Game Protective and Propagation Association (usually referred to
as the American Game Protective Association) is founded by
sportsmen-conservationists with financial backing from gun and ammunition
companies; it advocates conservation for the purposes of sustainable hunting,
and reaffirms the role of sportsmen in the conservation movement.
Congress passes the legislation known as the Weeks Act, which (among other
provisions) authorizes interstate compacts for water and forest conservation
and Federal acquisition of land for the purpose of protecting watersheds; it
also places large amounts of Eastern forest land under Federal jurisdiction
for the first time; and provides financial aid to efforts to protect
timberlands at the heads of navigable streams from fire.
President Taft issues Proclamations establishing Colorado National Monument,
Colorado, and Devil Postpile National Monument, California.
John Muir publishes My First Summer in the Sierra, a reflective memoir
embodying his mature vision of nature's divine beauty and integrity, inviting
modern man to redemptive re-integration in a relationship of reverent love:
"No Sierra landscape that I have seen holds anything truly dead or dull...
This quick, inevitable interest attaching to everything seems marvelous until
the hand of God becomes visible; then it seems reasonable that what interests
Him may well interest us. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find
it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our
own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to
speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow-mountaineers" (p. 211).
The first of four important National Parks Conferences convenes at Yellowstone
National Park to explore the need for a National Park Service (the others are
held in 1912, 1915, and 1917); participants include officials of the Interior
Department and Forest Service, railroad representatives, and the owners of
park hotels and camps; the printed Proceedings of the National Park Conference
Held at the Yellowstone National Park (1912) reveal much about the parks'
evolving identity, public expectations about them, the pressures on them, and
the issues and dilemmas confronting them in this formative era.
Increasing concern for what became known as "human conservation," the impact
of environmental factors (especially in urban areas) on human health and
well-being, is reflected in the work of socially-concerned engineers and
scientists such as chemist Ellen H. Richards; in this year, she publishes
Conservation by Sanitation: Air and Water Supply; Disposal of Waste, a work
which is particularly concerned with the management of water pollution and its
effect on human health.
Former President Roosevelt's leadership in efforts to irrigate the West is
recognized at the dedication of the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in
Arizona; the contemporary importance of projects like the Roosevelt Dam is
later documented in film footage of the dam and its impact.