Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/320

314 and dissipation of our national wealth is not one which quickly impresses itself on the people of the older communities, because its most obvious instances do not occur in their neighborhood, while in the newer part of the country, the sympathy with expansion and development is so strong that the danger is scoffed at or ignored. Among scientific men and thoughtful observers, however, the danger has always been present; but it needed some one to bring home the crying need for a remedy of this evil so as to impress itself on the public mind and lead to the formation of public opinion and action by the representatives of the people. Theodore Roosevelt took up this task in the last two years of his second administration, and well did he perform it.

As president of the United States, I have, as it were, inherited this policy, and I rejoice in my heritage. I prize my high opportunity to do all that an executive can do to help a great people realize a great national ambition. For conservation is national. It affects every man of us, every woman, every child. What I can do in the cause I shall do, not as president of a party, but as president of the whole people.

Conservation is not a question of politics, or of factions, or of persons. It is a question that affects the vital welfare of all of us—of our children and our children's children. I urge that no good can come from meetings of this sort unless we ascribe to those who take part in them, and who are apparently striving worthily in the cause, all proper motives, and unless we judicially consider every measure or method proposed with a view to its effectiveness in achieving our common purpose, and wholly without regard to who proposes it or who will claim the credit for its adoption. The problems are of very great difficulty and call for the calmest consideration and clearest foresight. Many of the questions presented have phases that are new in this country, and it is possible that in their solution we may have to attempt first one way and then another. What I wish to emphasize, however, is that a satisfactory conclusion can only be reached promptly if we avoid acrimony, imputations of bad faith, and political controversy.

The public domain of the government of the United States, including all the cessions from those of the thirteen states that made cessions to the United States and including Alaska, amounted in all to about 1,800,000,000 acres. Of this there is left as purely government property outside of Alaska something like 700,000,000 of acres. Of this the national forest reserves in the United States proper embrace 144,000,000 acres. The rest is largely mountain or arid country, offering some opportunity for agriculture by dry farming and by reclamation, and containing metals as well as coal, phosphates, oils and natural gas. Then the government owns many tracts of land lying along the margins of streams that have water power, the use of which is necessarily in the conversion of the power into electricity and its transmission.