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Commission on Country Life; and Commission on National Conservation. All of these commissions were suggested to me by Gifford Pinchot, who served upon them all. The work of the last four will be touched upon in connection with the chapter on Conservation.
All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government employ were in another Department. Forests and foresters had nothing whatever to do with each other. Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me.
The press again took the matter up and the controversy was carried into Congress, where an investigation was ordered. About the same time Pinchot was removed for insubordination, and additional heat entered into the disagreement.
In order that definite information may be available for the use of the Congress, I have appointed a commission composed of W. A. Richards, Commissioner of the General Land Office; Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Bureau of Forestry of the Department of Agriculture, and F. H. Newell, Chief Hydrographer of the Geological Survey, to report at the earliest practicable moment upon the condition, operation, and effect of the present land laws and on the use, condition, disposal, and settlement of the public lands.
His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Ballinger, came into conflict with Mr. Pinchot over conservation, and the public assumed that the President was not only unconcerned to uphold conservation, but was willing that the natural resources of the Nation should fall again into the hands of greedy private corporations.
The Democrats sent their most persuasive orator, President Wilson's friend, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist ticket, represented the Socialist Party. Edward Polling, Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party, arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.
There was a widespread belief, as well, that the President had handled the whole matter maladroitly and that in permitting himself to be driven to a point where he had to deprive the country of the services of Gifford Pinchot, the originator of the conservation movement, he had displayed unsound judgment and deplorable lack of administrative ability. The first half of Mr.
Pinchot compared our present consumption of wood to the case of a man in an open boat at sea, cut adrift from some shipwreck and with but a few days' supply of water on board. He drinks all the water the first day, simply because he is thirsty, though he knows that the water will not last long. The American people know that their wood supply will last but a few decades.
"What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a view and for a purpose more lofty?" When Governor of New York, as I have already described, I had been in consultation with Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, and had shaped my recommendations about forestry largely in accordance with their suggestions.
Japan, Korea, and India the whole Orient in fact bear witness to the importance of the forestry messages which Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt have been drumming into our more or less uncaring ears for a decade past.
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