Chapter XXIII: Section VIII: The Congress shall have power (13)

The first session considered State Surveys, their work and co-operation. As a result of this meeting an agreement was reached as to the order or sequence of the surveys, the object being to secure for the States the largest returns from each survey. The sequence of the surveys and the leading points to be emphasized, as decided by the commissioners, are as follows: (1) topography, (2) structure, (3) drainage, (4) ground water, (5) local climate, (6) soil, (7) plant and animal life, (8) social and industrial conditions. This order is thought to be most helpful so far as the surveys are concerned. It is also the natural order. It was plainly shown that several States have wasted time and money in taking up the various surveys in a way that does not develop these relationships. For instance, some States have started industrial and agricultural surveys before they have mapped the geology, topography and water resources. Such an order does not bring the best results. Furthermore, it is wasteful.

Several prominent directors of State surveys took part in the discussions of this session, among them being Dr. George W. Field, Dr. A. H. Purdue, Dr. F. W. DeWolf, Professor Kay, Dr. C. E. Bessey, Dr. C. H. Gordon, Dr. Frank W. Rane, Prof. George A. Loveland and Hon. J. E. Beal. Among the other speakers were Hon. George Coupland, Mr. Ellis, W. E. Barns, Henry A. Barker, H. E. Hardtner and Dr. H. H. Waite. Dr. David White, of the United States Geological Survey, gave valuable suggestions.

At the second session of the commissioners, the forest laws of Louisiana were discussed by Hon. H. E. Hardtner, ex-Chairman of the Louisiana Conservation Commission. Following this was a general discussion of forest laws and forest management. Hon. W. E. Barns, of the Missouri Conservation Commission, gave a talk on the improvements of lumbering in the South. Prof. Earl O. Fippin of the Agricultural College of Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y., read a paper; subject, “The Soil Survey as a Means of Agricultural Improvement.” This paper was followed by discussion, in which the value of the soil surveys as it relates to State development, was brought out with considerable detail.

The officers elected for the ensuing year were: President, Dr. G. E. Condra, Lincoln, Neb.; Vice-President, Dr. George W. Field, Sharon, Mass.; Secretary, Henry A. Barker, Providence, R. I.

_ACCIDENT PREVENTION SECTION._

On October 2, 3:30 o’clock, the section on “Accident Prevention” held a large and enthusiastic meeting in the Auditorium of the German House. The presiding officer was Mr. M. W. Mix, of Mishawaka, Ind., President of the Manufacturers’ Bureau of Indiana. At this meeting the following resolution was adopted:

Resolved, That we appreciate the efforts now being made by manufacturers of machinery for use in industrial plants to so far safeguard their machines as to minimize the danger of personal injury to workers; and that as manufacturers and individuals interested in accident prevention we recognize the difficulty, and in some cases even impossibility, on the part of purchasers of individual machines to properly attach safeguards; and realize that the original manufacturers of the machines by reason of their wide experience and efficient engineers, are better able to develop and provide proper safeguards for all machinery; and that it is the sense of this meeting that any efforts along this line are highly commendable and will be appreciated by all interested in the Conservation of human life.

Resolved, further; That a copy of this resolution be sent by the President to every machine manufacturer with a request for his co-operation.

_CONSERVATION OF WATERS._

Report of the Standing Committee on Waters. W. C. MENDENHALL, Washington, D. C., Acting Chairman.

To the public the Conservation movement seemed to rise suddenly in the last few months of 1908 and the early part of the year 1909, but what the people of the United States was really witnessing then was not so much the origin of a movement as its organization. Through a generation before that time Government bureaus, individuals, and associations here and there had been methodically assembling facts, and those who were familiar with these facts had been reaching conclusions that were oftentimes disturbing in their tenor. These individuals and groups were brought together, their conclusions were given publicity of a most effective type, and what had been scattered and disorganized recognition of a vital problem was given solidarity and nation-wide recognition by the acts of President Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot in organizing the National Conservation Commission and calling the Conference of Governors. The Forest Service, the Reclamation Service, and the Geological Survey had locked up in their archives the results of decades of research by their representatives, and these results supplied the facts which were the stimulus and the basis for the Conservation movement. Since that first great meeting, the Conservation Congress, giving official expression to the movement and formulating its doctrines and its platform, has served as a medium for the exchange of ideas among those who are engaged in one or the other of its manifold activities, for the subject-matter of Conservation is as comprehensive as the materials with which humanity deals. Furthermore, the term itself has been impressed upon the public mind. It has passed out of the category of a cult for the few, and has been taken up by statesmen and politicians, scientists and divines, commercial organizations, manufacturing associations, and has even invaded the realm of diplomacy. This proves merely that the seeds were well sown by those who were sponsors for the movement. Their work, the task of focusing public attention upon a theretofore neglected but vital series of problems, was superlatively well done.

Years have passed since that time. It is appropriate that we review the results of those years as it was appropriate in 1908 to make our first inventory of the primary subject-matter of Conservation, namely, our natural resources. The period of initiation, difficult but well performed, is past. There remains a task that will never be finished—the equally difficult and the infinitely slower process of applying the principles of Conservation to our every-day activities. Such an application must be practical, reasonable, and gradual so that modes of life and industrial habits in which change is to be affected can be given time and opportunity to adjust to that change. How well have we, the workers in the ranks for these principles, performed our task? In what fashion has the movement been carried on? What real and creative steps have been taken in the public interest to reserve for future generations without unnecessary suppression of opportunity for the individual in the present or denial of his needs, that share in our natural wealth which should be so reserved?

I shall confine myself to a brief and casual review of that phase of the Conservation movement which deals with the one resource—water. Even in dealing with this one item in the subject-matter of Conservation, I shall have to leave aside for treatment by others, and indeed by other organizations than this, that phase of the problem of the waters which deals primarily with transportation and its allied problems of river improvement and waterway construction. There still remains a broad field, for water is the universal resource. Doctor McGee has estimated that the ultimate control of population in the United States will be exerted by the limitations in its water supply. We cannot say that this limit in population, even though it be placed at from five hundred to one thousand million people, is one that does not concern this generation, for we feel very keenly now in our arid and semi-arid sections the handicap which lack of water places upon our growth. Irrigation and dry-farming methods are attempts to overcome this handicap and forces us to realize that the ultimate growth predicted by Dr. McGee can be reached only through the most careful husbanding of the most universal and important gift of nature—water.

Because the human body, like all other organic structures, is largely water and because all of its nutritive and renewing processes are exercised by the function of water as the solvent of other foods, it has a primary value to man superior to that of any other substance. Its secondary value, scarcely less important than the primary and closely related to it in character, is as an aid in the production of nearly all things which man uses. In the humid regions, the supply is sufficient naturally so that the necessity of water is ordinarily given no more thought than the necessity for air, although without either we should instantly perish. Man’s use of water in crop production, hence, is automatic and unconscious in the eastern United States, but in western part, and especially in the arid districts, he at once becomes conscious of its importance because plans and crops fail without it. He establishes engineering works and conducts it to the land in order that food may be grown upon the land. Here, in the pioneer stages of settlement, comes the first great waste. Water was and too frequently still is carelessly used in irrigation. An equivalent of twenty or twenty-five feet in depth has been applied annually to the land where four or five feet is ample. The excess is sheer waste and in its application the land is ruined. Canals are often carelessly constructed and half of their carrying capacity leaks out before the tract to be irrigated is reached.

As settlement increases and demand becomes more intense, these conditions are improved. Their improvement in our own arid West and Southwest began under the pressure of necessity before the Conservation movement was given a name, but that improvement nonetheless represented the application of Conservation principles and the movement centered attention upon this and similar wastes, made men more generally conscious of them, and stimulated preventive measures. This stimulus, acting upon the public mind, aided many of the Government bureaus that for years had been combating such waste. The Department of Agriculture has a Bureau of Irrigation Investigations, which has systematically studied irrigation methods in the West and Southwest and has published many valuable reports calling attention to the losses of water in irrigation and suggesting methods for its prevention. The Geological Survey in its series of water-supply papers has repeatedly warned communities of the injuries and economic waste resulting from bad management of water supplies. The Reclamation Service, represented in its foundation a branch of Conservation, established and made a practical working idea. Since its foundation it has systematically continued the great work begun by the passage of its organic act in 1902, and is reclaiming, by careful and economic methods, millions of otherwise waste acres in the public land States. It has reached the point where the building of impounding reservoirs and of the canals by which the impounded water is conducted to the lands has been brought to practical completion on many of the projects so that its task is transformed into one of inducing settlement, of inculcating principles of economic irrigation practice in the minds of the farmers; of increasing the duty of water and therefore its usefulness, to the maximum; and of reclaiming through the establishment of drainage systems, lands which have been ruined by over-irrigation under the old systems absorbed by the reclamation projects. This movement is a part of, has aided, and has in turn been aided by the propaganda. It is practical Conservation of a high type.

I should like to diverge here for a moment to a collateral phase of Conservation activity which indirectly bears upon reclamation by irrigation. Our coal land laws provide for the sale of those parts of the public domain underlain by coal deposits at prices of not less than $10 or $20 per acre. Prior to 1906, this law was interpreted as evaluating coal lands on the basis of the thickness, quality and depths of individual beds, and basing sale prices upon these values. Through the fruition of this policy, coal lands are no longer sold at the minimum legal price unless they have minimum values. If coals are of sufficiently good quality and exist in sufficient thickness, they may now be sold at $40, $50, $100, $200, or even $500 per acre. A recent sale in the Rock Springs district, Wyoming, of one section of land at prices ranging from $370 to $410 per acre, netted the Government one quarter of a million dollars more than would have been received under the old policy of sales at minimum prices. This increment of a quarter million goes, like all other receipts from sales of public lands, into the reclamation fund and is there used in the application of water to the arid lands in the West. The Conservation phase of the present coal land policies is thus closely related to the question of waters and their use. The valuation of this natural resource and the sale at valuation prices was one of the collateral movements which stimulated and led to public recognition of the need of Conservation. It is a thoroughly practical application of Conservation principles and is an excellent example of governmental activity in this direction.

In one of the arid valleys of southern California in which irrigated lands bring prices of from $500 to $3,000 per acre and in which the limit to the number of acres to which such values are affixed depends wholly upon the quantity of water available, there has of course been earnest study of every possible means by which this quantity could be increased or made to serve a larger acreage. Here, in 1909, an interesting, practical step in Conservation was taken. Prior to that period water users in this valley who derive an important part of their supply from underground resources which, because of excessive drafts, were becoming depleted, had adopted the unique device of spreading flood waters which would otherwise escape to the sea and be lost, over the rough alluvial lands at the base of the mountain slopes in order that they might there sink and replenish the underground resources. The lands best adapted to this purpose had remained public lands because of their rough and uncultivable character, although adjacent to them were privately owned lands worth many hundreds of dollars per acre. In 1909 a law was passed by which these public lands were set aside for use in the distribution of these flood waters. They are now, and will remain, a permanent public reserve devoted to the conservation of water supplies and the increase of the quantity available for irrigation in a region in which water for this purpose has perhaps a higher value than in any other part of the United States. Here again is an example of practical Conservation work accomplished through the co-operation of private and governmental agencies.

The passage of the so-called Weeks bill in 1911 likewise marks a great advance in the direction of Conservation legislation. This is the bill which provides for the creation of an Appalachian forest reserve by the purchase of privately owned lands in the Appalachian Mountains. Its administration is in the hands of a commission whose active agents are the Forest Service and the Geological Survey, and one of the features of the bill is the clause which provides that the Geological Survey must affirm that the purchase of the lands will favorably affect the navigability of the streams on whose headwaters they lie, before the purchase can be made. Thus the conservation of waters is involved as well as that of the forests and of lands through the prevention of erosion. Those of you who for years advocated such a bill and assisted in its final enactment will agree with me, I believe, in the statement that its passage would not have been possible without the preliminary education of public opinion accomplished by the great pioneer advocates of the Conservation principles.

There is and will continue to be need for revision of the laws under which the administrative officers of the Government work to the end that these officers may administer our public resources more economically, more effectively, with less waste and therefore more thoroughly in the public interest. The enactment of laws does not anticipate the need for their enactment. There must always be widespread recognition of that need before public opinion crystallizes into statute. For, after all, the enactment of a law is nothing more nor less than the recognition on the part of our lawmakers of a public necessity which you and I as citizens force upon their attention. Until new laws can be secured, the task of the administrative officer is to administer with the greatest efficiency possible those laws that do exist. Under the stimulus of an active public opinion an interpretation may be given old laws which will enable them to fit the newer and changed conditions, for no enactment is absolutely rigid in its terms. An example of this adaptation of a law long upon our statute books to the passing of pioneer conditions in the West and the substitution for them of those changed conditions that result from augmented population, is that of the coal land law to which your attention has been called. The statute has not been altered since its passage in 1873, but coal lands are being sold under it now at prices which are based upon real values instead of at the lowest possible price under the law, as was true prior to 1906.

Under the stimulus of the changed character of public opinion, which has resulted from Conservation agitation, all of our public land laws are being carefully scrutinized to determine whether they do not admit of an interpretation and of an administration that is more in consonance with Conservation principles than the interpretation and administration of the past. Among the statutes thus scrutinized is the Carey Act, a law only less vital to the West than the Reclamation Act. In general it provides that public lands may be transferred by the Federal Government to the State in which they lie if that State will enter into a contract for their irrigation, by the terms of which they will eventually be delivered to bona fide homesteaders in tracts of suitable size. Undoubtedly, there have been instances in the past of careless administration of this law. The Federal Government has considered that its responsibility to the settler had ceased when the lands were turned over to the State in trust to him. The State, in turn, has considered that its responsibility ceased when the contract with the irrigating company was signed, and this company has been left free to deal with its actual and prospective settlers in a fashion that was intended too frequently to bring profits to a promoting company rather than water upon arid lands. It has thus happened that settlers, depending upon the State and through the State upon the Federal Government for protection of their interests, have found when the time came to apply for patents to their lands that although they had paid to a company large sums for water supplies, the water was not delivered, the land could not be reclaimed as the law required, and they were therefore unable to secure patent to it; but the irrigating or promoting company to which their funds had gone had disappeared and was inaccessible under the law. The genuine farmer, who at the sacrifice of hard-earned funds and years of labor was intended to be the beneficiary of this law, became instead its victim. This condition is believed to be past. The Federal Government and many of the States are now exhibiting a keen recognition of their responsibilities and of scrutinizing with the utmost care the water supply of each proposed project, the practicability of the engineering features of that project, and the financial standing and responsibility of its backers. A recent interesting example of this changed attitude occurred in one of the Western States, which in the past has administered this law carelessly, but I am glad to record is now exhibiting due care in meeting its responsibilities. In this case, literature issued by the promoters came to the attention of the Department of the Interior. In this literature statements were made to prospective buyers as to the available water supply and as to the acreage to which it would be applied that were known from the departmental records to be highly misleading. The attention of the Governor of the State was called to this condition of affairs by an emphatic letter from the Secretary of the Interior. The State in turn called upon the promoting company for an explanation. The representatives of the company hastened to Washington for a hearing. As a result of that hearing, the acreage segregated in the project was promptly reduced, the company was forced to agree to cease its sale of water rights to private lands until the rights of the Government lands to which it was inviting settlers were satisfied, and thus the situation so full of menace to prospective settlers was promptly corrected. Other examples of this type of action which represents closer, more careful administration of old laws might be multiplied. Each of them marks a step in the application of the principles for which the Conservation Congress stands.

If the first use of water by man is in the direct sustenance of life and its second is for the production of food supplies through irrigation, perhaps its third most important use is the development of power for all of those manifold purposes tending toward the amelioration of life and the increase of its comforts, for which power may be used. Cities are lighted; street cars are moved; ores are smelted; manufacturing plants are supplied with their motive power; homes are heated; and water is pumped for irrigation by the use of hydro-electric power. No question has been the subject of more bitter controversy than that of the control of this tremendous resource. It has been energetically sought on the one hand by those who seek opportunities for profit and desire that no control be exercised over those opportunities by the power of the State. On the other hand, public opinion, working largely through its State and Federal representatives, has demanded that this resource whose magnitude can be but rudely estimated, and whose future value but guessed at, be so controlled that communities depending upon it shall not be unduly taxed for the purpose of piling up private profits. Here again, both public opinion and Federal officers have repeatedly urged the enactment of new laws which will make possible the exercise of reasonable control in the public interests and at the same time properly safeguard capital which must be invested in order that the resources now wasted may develop and become useful. Bills have been introduced and debated in Congress; conferences have been held with representatives of the public and of capital, but the plans thus far considered have brought no fruition in amended legislation, although some excellent bills are under consideration and it is believed will soon become law. Here again, the task of the administrative officer is to so interpret and apply the laws now upon our statute books, pending the enactment of others more satisfactory, that development may continue and the rights of the public of this generation and the next be at the same time duly safeguarded. Here also there has been progress in the interpretation of law. The responsibility for the administration of the laws for the development of water powers in the national forests lies in the Forest Service where it is admirably exercised in the public interest. The law which provides for the development of powers on the public domain, whether within or without the reserves, is a permissory law, one that authorizes the department having jurisdiction to permit the development of these water powers under general regulations to be fixed by the Secretary. After a thorough study of the situation, the Forest Service on December 28, 1910, issued certain regulations providing for the development of powers under this permissory law, the permit being by the terms of the law itself subject to cancellation at any time and the regulations under it providing for moderate charges upon the developing company. With these regulations in force in the national forests, and no similar procedure provided for on the public lands outside the forests which are under the jurisdiction of the Interior Department, applicants for the privilege of developing water powers which lay in part within and in part without the forest reserves found themselves under two jurisdictions without any provision for uniform procedure. The problem as to the precise amount of control that could be exercised on the Interior Department lands under the act of 1901 has not been solved until recently; but as a result of this final solution, there were approved by Secretary Fisher on the 24th of August, 1912, regulations controlling the issue of permits for power development outside of the national forests that are in substantial accord with those heretofore in force within the forests. These regulations provide for the exercise of the authority of the Secretary in a definite, uniform, and systematic manner that much more fully safeguards the rights of the public than the policy heretofore pursued in relation to public water powers. The situation, therefore, seems to be as well safeguarded as it can be under the present statutes, at least so far as hydro-electric powers on other than navigable streams are concerned, and this end has been accomplished not by new legislation, which we all recognize as badly needed, but by a proper interpretation and acceptance of responsibility under old legislation.

An incidental phase of the effort to administer a law which provides for no definite tenure of lands having power values has been the constantly repeated attempt of interests desiring to acquire valuable water powers to secure them under the irrigation laws, those laws having great advantage from the commercial viewpoint of providing for a grant instead of a revocable permit. Application after application has been filed with the Department of the Interior in which it is stated solemnly that the rights of way are desired for purposes of irrigation, when it is perfectly obvious to the engineering advisers of the Secretary that the power value is the dominant value and that if the waters are used for irrigation at all, it will be merely in order to effect a technical compliance with the law under which they are acquired. Refusal to approve rights of way of this type have been followed by appeals and by emphatic protests on the part of the applicants. These protests take various forms. Among them are attempts to influence public opinion through various congresses similar to this Congress, and other attempts to secure the enactment of special legislation which will grant to the applicant that which he is unable to secure through the administrative officers. In a particularly interesting case of this type recently acted upon by the Department of the Interior, the acting Secretary expressed the present policy of the department in these emphatic terms, which I am sure will appeal to every member of this Congress. He said:

I consider it the imperative duty of every supervisory officer of the Government upon whom any duty devolves to conserve the paramount interests of the people, to protect these natural power sites from exploitation under any law which successfully invoked would turn them over to private interests charged with a perpetual easement against the United States.

One other type of administrative action in connection with the conservation of water resources has recently been inaugurated which may well be brought to the attention of this Congress. This is a new exercise by the President of the power of withdrawal conferred upon him by the so-called withdrawal act, approved June 25, 1910, and amended August 24, 1912. By this action those lands in arid States upon which small water supplies essential to the control of the adjoining range are situated are withheld from entry. Those of you who are acquainted with the range industry of Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico realize that the use and control of the ranges are exercised not so much through the ownership of the range lands themselves as through the ownership of small tracts which include the springs and other watering places that alone make the ranges accessible and of value. Literal war has been waged between rival stock interests in parts of the West over the control of springs. Large interests have frequently forced their rivals to abandon the range in a particular area by acquiring through the application of scrip or by a real or pretended exercise of homestead rights the lands on which the springs that alone give value to the range are located. Laws have from time to time been considered which will provide properly for the disposition of those remaining parts of the public domain that are chiefly valuable for grazing purposes. It is recognized that the homestead and desert land laws are inappropriate for the acquisition of range lands in that they do not provide for a sufficient acreage to make the stock industry possible. If the time shall come when such a law is placed upon the statute books, and at that time all of the water supplies adjacent to the ranges shall have been acquired by private interests, the Government will be unable to dispose of its range lands even under a favorable law except to those who already control the water supplies which are the key to the situation. Recognizing this important condition and desiring likewise to provide for fair play between rival stock men on the remaining public lands, the President, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, has inaugurated the policy of withholding from entry lands upon which these desert watering places exist, and in pursuance of this policy the first desert water hole withdrawal was made in March, 1912.

It will be realized from this brief review that the process of translating the Conservation doctrines into action is well under way. Before and since the First Conservation Congress met, Federal bureaus have advocated practical measures for the proper use of our natural resources, water among them. With the enlightenment of public opinion dating from the organization of the National Commission and the meeting of the Governors the work has been greatly facilitated. It is advancing now not only through the medium of the unorganized effort of individuals, associations, and isolated bureaus and divisions in the public service, but by the organized efforts of an enthusiastic body of supporters. Laws embodying its principles have passed, proposed laws inimical to those principles have been defeated, old laws have been re-examined and reinterpreted to accord more fully with Conservation doctrines in the public interests. Party platforms are no longer complete without a Conservation plank and indeed it may almost be said that a new party has been founded upon the Conservation idea. On the whole the country and this Congress have ample ground for optimism in considering the great advance that has been made.

_WILD LIFE PROTECTION._

Report of Standing Committee, Dr. W. T. HORNADAY, New York City, Chairman.

The Committee on Wild Life Protection wishes to call the attention of the Congress to the enormous losses that are being inflicted upon the farming and fruit-growing interests of the United States through the destruction of insect-eating birds. While the main facts of the situation are known to many persons, the mass of the people of the United States are sound asleep on this subject. The 5,000,000 men and boys who are slaughtering our birds are levying tribute on every American pocketbook. An immense number of birds of great economic value are being slaughtered annually, and many of our most useful and valuable bird species are on the toboggan slide toward extermination. The destruction of our insect-eating birds means a great increase in the armies of destructive insects, a great decrease in our agricultural products, and a great loss to consumers and to farmers. The value of the birds destroyed as “game” and for “food” is declared to be not equal to one-thousandth of the value they would save to the national wealth, if permitted to live.

The committee will distribute a campaign circular containing a table of figures showing the annual losses to the people of the United States by insect pests. Those figures were taken from an official report published in the “Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture.” The farmers who grow cereal crops lose about $200,000,000 per annum. The fruit-growers lose $27,000,000 per annum. Hay loses $53,000,000; cotton, $60,000,000; and truck crops, $53,000,000.

The committee’s circular gives the cost of certain insects per species to the people of the United States. For example, the codling moth and curculio apple pests cost the American people $8,250,000 a year for spraying operations, and $12,000,000 per year in annual shrinkage in the apple crop. The chinch bug wheat pest sometimes costs $20,000,000 per year, and the cotton boll weevil the same amount. The tree insect pests damage trees and timber to a total of $100,000,000 a year.

Your committee contends that the American people _do not realize_ that scores of species of the birds that sportsmen and pot-hunters are regularly allowed to shoot for sport are of _immense value_ to agriculture. How many men are there out of every thousand who know that at least thirty species of shore birds feed upon noxious insects, and are immensely valuable to our agricultural industries? The gunners who shoot legally are destroying 154 species of birds that legally are classed as game birds, even in the North.

Very few Americans out of every thousand know the _immense value_ of our song birds, swallows, woodpeckers, blackbirds, quail, doves and nighthawks in destroying countless millions of noxious insects.

THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION.

In view of the decrease already accomplished in the general volume of the bird life of America, in view of the enormous losses annually inflicted upon the people of this country by the ravages of insects, and in view of the destruction of wild life that now is furiously proceeding throughout all America, the McLean bill, now before Congress, to provide Federal protection for all migratory birds, becomes the most important wild life measure that ever came before the Congress of the United States in any form. In view of the annual losses to the wealth of this country that will continue so long as the McLean bill fails to pass, it is impossible for any one to put forth one good reason, unless it be on purely technical grounds, against that measure. By the inexorable logic of the situation, any man who opposes the enactment of a law for the Federal protection of migratory birds becomes by that opposition an enemy to the public welfare. The bills introduced in Congress by Representatives Weeks and Anthony have dragged long enough. They provided for the protection of migratory _game_ birds, only. Now it is time to strengthen their proposition, as Senator McLean has done, by providing also for the protection of all the migratory insectivorous birds.

Unless the people of America wish to shut their eyes to their own interests, and pay out millions of dollars annually in the form of increased cost of living, they should arouse from their lethargy and put up to Congress such a demand for the passage of the McLean bill that it will be enacted into law at the next session of Congress. It is Senate Bill No. 6497, and on the Senate calendar it is No. 606. We can not afford to wait until 1914 or 1915; and Congress has full power to act next winter.

How many people in the North know that the negroes and poor whites of the South annually slaughter millions of valuable insect-eating birds for food? Around Avery Island, Louisiana, during the robin season (in January when the berries are ripe), Mr. E. A. McIlhenny says that during ten days or two weeks, at least 10,000 robins are each day slaughtered for the pot. “Every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after them!”

There are seven States in which the robin is regularly and legally being killed as game! They are Louisiana, Mississippi, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida.

There are five States that expressly permit the killing of blackbirds as “game”: Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Cranes are killed and eaten in Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska, North Dakota and Oklahoma.

In twenty-six States doves are regularly killed as game—much to the loss of the farmers.

The bobwhite quail is a great destroyer of the seeds of noxious weeds. In our fauna he has no equal. And yet this fact is ignored. Throughout the North and most of the South that species is mercilessly shot, and as a result it is fast _becoming extinct_. In New York State it will soon be as extinct as the mastodon, unless given a ten-year close season at once. Its value as a plentiful game bird is gone.

The shore birds are _fast_ becoming exterminated by sportsmen and pot-hunters who kill them for food, “according to law.” The Eskimo curlew is totally extinct, and other species are fast going over the same road. Nothing in this world will save this group of birds except _a law for the Federal protection of migratory birds_, such as the McLean bill, now before Congress. The way the whole group of shore birds is being exterminated is nothing less than a crime. And yet, at least thirty members of this group are of a great value to all of us, because of the great numbers of crop-destroying insects that they annually consume.

THE DUTY OF THE HOUR.

The _only way_ in which all these valuable migratory birds can be saved to us is through the strong arm of the National Government, and a Federal law for the protection of _all_ migratory birds! Protection of game birds alone will not answer. Too many other birds are being killed for food, especially in the South.

The Wild Life Protection Committee urges all delegates to take home with them the burden that rests on every good citizen regarding the enactment into law of a satisfactory measure for the preservation of the insect-eating birds. If any opposition should arise on account of the feature of the bill which covers the ducks, geese and swans, and other migratory wild fowl, the committee is quite willing that those birds should be stricken out of the bill entirely, in order that the protection of the crop-saving birds may be secured. It is believed that no sensible person can possibly raise any objection to the protection of the insectivorous birds by the passage of the McLean or Weeks bill, in case the water fowl are left out. It is, however, regarded as extremely necessary that the shore birds should be included because of their immense value to agriculture.

In concluding, the committee urges all delegates to take this matter up with your members of Congress, and urge them to vote for, and work for, whatever bill may finally be agreed upon as best calculated to protect the insectivorous birds, and be free from objections regarding its constitutionality. A number of able lawyers have decided that it will be wholly within the spirit and letter of the Constitution of the United States for the Federal Government to protect all insectivorous birds through a law of Congress.

_VITAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION._

Dr. HENRY STURGIS DRINKER, President of Lehigh University, a Delegate from the State of Pennsylvania, from Lehigh University, and from the American Forestry Association.

What subject is there to which the constant attention of Conservationists, of patriotic men and women, could be better devoted than to the care of the vital resources of the nation—the care of the lives of all our people, not of a selected few, the teaching and the impressing of the lessons of steady life, of sobriety, of continence, and of due rest and recuperation from the wear and tear of our American life. Surely we have good reason to be proud of the intelligence and activity of our people, formed as they are of the intermingling of many peoples, with a resulting product as a nation that is markedly free from in-breeding and its usually unsatisfactory outcome.

I think it was Mr. Lieber, in the course of his gracious and cordial opening address of welcome to the Congress, who referred to our duty to endeavor to alleviate the condition of the sweat-shop and mine workers, but is there not another and equally great duty of which we are habitually more neglectful? What is our duty, the duty of society, to those self-sacrificing, altruistic men, devoted to public service, men such as Dr. Wallace, Mr. White, Mr. Farquhar, who devote themselves to and ably lead great movements like this Congress for the betterment of conditions among our people—men who are not only captains of industry, but generals in the army of public service, and leaders and exemplars in the pursuit of public duty? What should we, as a body, say to them and to others like them (for, thank God, America owns a great army of good men like them), who uphold the good cause of public service? They become in leading these great movements, in a measure, the custodians of the public welfare, but—“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”? Who shall watch these very guards, and see that they conserve the intelligence, patriotism and energy, that goes out from them to public welfare, that it may not be prematurely exhausted? Surely we should take measures to have them feel how the Nation values them as a public asset, and how they owe it to their country as well as to their homes to heed and to preach to others the wise words of dear old Mark Twain, who (writing from Naples in 1867) sent us these words, pregnant with the lesson of the higher Conservation:

“We walked up and down one of the most popular streets for some time, enjoying other people’s comfort, and wishing we could export some of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe—comfort. In America, we hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early, or drop into a mean and lean old age, at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear across the continent in the same coach he started in—the coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it aside for a few weeks, and the edge comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges.”

As the official call for this Congress stated, we have in previous meetings dealt with four great subjects—our forests, waters, lands, and minerals, but in taking for its theme this year the subject of “Vital Resources,” the Congress is studying the very life of the Nation, is seeking to benefit our people not only by the conservation of our material natural resources, but to do good to them by bringing home the duty of life Conservation in our whole Nation; and what greater task can patriotic men and women devote themselves to than this, and what words can epitomize the sentiment underlying this service better than those in Sophocles’ “Oedipus,” where it is said:

“Methinks, no work so grand
Hath man yet compassed, as with all he can
Of chance or power, to help his fellow-man.”

_CONSERVATION OF THE SOIL._

Hon. JAMES J. HILL, of St. Paul, Minn.

Just as all industry depends upon the production and increase of the fruits of the earth, so all other forms of Conservation must be held subordinate to the preservation of the productivity of the soil. To preserve and defend the public health, to see that human beings are brought into the world and kept there under favoring conditions, and to lengthen their term of life will but add to the total of human misery unless they are well fed and housed and clothed. For this, as for the material of all their varied activities, they must come back in the last analysis to the soil. Earth is the mother not only of mankind but of all human industry.

In the years during which the necessity of this most imperative form of Conservation has been the subject of my thought and the theme of most of my public utterances, much has been accomplished. The interest of the public is awake. It is not necessary any longer to urge a Conservation movement, but rather to direct the energy already enlisted in its behalf into wise channels. While the farmer is still subject to some unfavorable legislative discrimination, we know that his prosperity must be made a first object before prosperity can visit others. The progress of the farm is put first in many schemes of public improvement where, a few years ago, it would have been mentioned perfunctorily if at all.

Education in agriculture has made much progress. The number of institutions teaching agriculture increased more than sixty per cent. in nineteen months. They had ten per cent. more students in agriculture in 1910 than in 1909, and more than eight times as many students taking the teachers’ course in agriculture. Colleges and high schools give place to some form of agricultural instruction; and the necessity of fostering soil Conservation is recognized today as never before.

What we need to do at once belongs rather to the practical than to the theoretical side of Conservation. There is little reason to doubt that the farmer of the future should be a highly intelligent man, commanding from his acres crops that are far beyond those of today in their abundance. But the present generation may and should do far better for itself, in its own time, while it is also preparing the way for the more careful and productive agriculture which should follow.

I use intentionally the words “careful” and “productive” instead of the word “scientific,” as applied to soil treatment and crop raising, because they express the simple and easy processes within the reach of men of the present generation as well as the new; because they avoid a misleading implication that attaches to the word “scientific.” It is true that the best methods of soil treatment and crop growing are scientific; but they require only that form of popular science which is within the comprehension and use of every farmer.

The essentials of soil Conservation have been known for centuries. They were practiced in Babylonia, just as irrigation was resorted to there on a splendid scale. They have been the property of the Chinese for four thousand years, and maintained there a dense population in spite of croppings so frequent and severe that it would seem impossible for any soil to stand such treatment without exhaustion. The latest bulletin of the best agricultural institution is scarcely more instructive or helpful than a study of the “forty centuries of agriculture” included in the experience of these skilled and laborious people of the Orient.

The soil is a living thing, and must receive the treatment due to all organic and vital beings from which we expect service or tribute. The first requisite is that the individual man learn with what manner of soil he is dealing. There is now an agricultural college or experiment station within the reach of every farmer in the country. Some are and all should be equipped for a scientific analysis of all soils submitted to them. From this the cultivator may learn the first two things indispensable to any intelligent conduct of his industry: First, to what crops his land is best adapted; second, what elements of fertility have been drawn from it so lavishly that they need to be restored. This information having been given by competent authority, every farmer may do all the rest for himself.

There is no secret and no mystery about the processes involved. If farmers will rotate their crops, fertilize plentifully and intelligently, keep live stock to diversify their industry, refresh the land and utilize waste products, and cultivate thoroughly and frequently, the problem of soil Conservation is solved. The earth has been kept as productive for thousands of years as it was when it produced its first crop of cultivated cereals wherever these few and simple conditions have been observed. If seed is carefully selected, after a test for germination, and the practices mentioned are followed, there is no reason why the yield per acre of the principal crops of the United States should not equal those of England, Germany or many other countries which produce twice as much as we do with far inferior natural advantages.

Dr. Knapp, of the Department of Agriculture, said: “It has been found that the best seed bed added 100 per cent. to the average crop on similar lands, with an average preparation; planting the best seed made a gain of 50 per cent.; and shallow, frequent cultivation was equal to another 50 per cent., making a total gain of 200 per cent., or a crop three times the average. With better teams and implements, this crop is made at less cost per acre.” A bulletin of the Bureau of Plant Industry, at Washington, says: “It is possible within a few years to double the average production of corn per acre in the United States, and to accomplish it without any increase in work or expense.” It declares that twice twenty-six bushels, which is about what we now get, is a fair crop where these conditions are observed, three times twenty-six bushels a good crop and four times twenty-six bushels frequently produced. A similar increase in other farm growths is just as possible.

In a high sense this is conservation of the soil, because it shows the way to make one acre do the work of two or three or four. It is conservation of the soil in a still better sense, because the land, when so intelligently and considerately treated, instead of “wearing out,” not only maintains its productive power indefinitely but actually increases in fertility and value. These are facts which all history attests. They are facts which the most recent scientific research supports. The work before the promoters of the Conservation movement today is one not of discovery but of education. It is to assist in bringing home the truth to the minds and embodying it in the daily practice of the present farm population of the United States.

This tremendous task can be accomplished only by local demonstration and the force of practical example. Small model farms should be operated, preferably consisting of a few acres selected from ordinary neighborhood farms and treated intelligently, in every State, county and township. We have made a beginning of this work in the Northwest; and the results, though not yet completely enough ascertained for tabulation until the tale of threshing and marketing is ended, are as amazing as they are encouraging. Some of the States are providing for traveling instructors and supervisors in agriculture, following the policy successfully adopted in the most enlightened countries of Europe, thus raising the level of agricultural practice and educating the millions who are beyond the reach of the institutions where formal instruction is given to the young. It is imperative that we reach the older people, and the large percentage of the children of the farm who never get beyond the district school, if we are in earnest in the work we have undertaken.