Page:Report of the Oregon Conservation Commission to the Governor (1908 - 1914).djvu/14

6 with the President and his advisers, held at Washington last May, was the outcome of the resolution formed while on the way to the Memphis convention. At the Washington conference the conservation movement was fully launched. Its aims were clearly de6ned. The states and the nation were as strongly pledged to co-operation as their respective executives had authority to pledge them. The organization of the movement was further developed in the appointment by President Roosevelt. in June following, of the national Commission on the Conservation of Natural Resources, organized in four sections to consider the four great classes—water resources, forest resources, resources of the land, and mineral resources,

Following shortly after the appointment by the President of the National Conservation Commission, was the appointment of commissions by the governors of five or more states. Other states have since appointed such commissions. and the movement is likely soon to become general among the states of the Union.

The leaders of the nation and the states are thus with most wonderful unanimity committed to this movement. The next step is the enlistment of the support of the people, the securing of whose highest welfare now and henceforth is ts sole purpose.

Conservation means a bringing into every-day service in the interests of the common people the best light of science and the most effective methods of engineering skill, The land, the rivers, the soil, the forests, and the mines arc viewed as the people's resources to he conserved so as to yield the largest utility, This means that the people must rise to the occasion of doing the highest things for themselves and their posterity through the use of the latest results of science and of engineering skill. They must thus add a new meaning to patrh,tisni and to statesmanship. ‘Through the people’s power in the State the ‘nosE enlightened policies are to be applied. Co—ordinated and rightly adjusted measures for development and conscrv,tion must be approved by them. Only thus can such measures he secured and their benefits enjoyed.

Moreover, the conservation movement also for the first I in our national life brings into our national consciousness the idea that our natural resources are the patrimony of the people