Chapter XX: Part 20

The state that I represent, I am glad to say, recognizes the importance of perhaps its only industry, and how much its future was tied up in its development. It has had in motion for quite a number of years agencies that are looking forward to the betterment of life upon the land and the development of the natural resources, the only natural resources perhaps that we have. And I am glad to say that this movement had its inception in the hearts and minds of the men who lived upon the land in Nebraska. I am also glad to say that the men who lived in the cities, the business men, have responded in splendid manner to this idea. My mind runs back to that fine pioneer of my state, J. Sterling Morton, and the idea that he had in mind, and I want, Mr. President, to impress the thought that you so beautifully expressed today, that it is not the giving of more expert ability to exploit the soil, but it is the building up within the heart of the man and the boy and the woman and the girl who live upon the land a love for the place where they live; to love the tree that father planted; to love the home that father built, to love the farm that father homesteaded. That is what we want to cultivate. If along with these other agencies that we have in motion, we will see to it that this is emphasized in our educational system, then we will have a better conception of what real country life means. I like to think of my ancestral home, the generations that were born and died on the land. I was born on the land and I hope to die on the land. My children were born there, and I hope that they will have the same sentiment, and be willing and glad to die upon the land. Our state has in motion today—I will hurriedly tell you—I do not want to take any more of your time than necessary—I will tell you the agencies that we have at work. We have a farmers’ congress; we have a conservation congress; we have a rural life commission that was authorized by our last legislature, which I consider one of the most potent agencies for the betterment of rural conditions in the state of Nebraska; an affiliated agricultural society which takes in all the agricultural organizations. Every year our state university is their host, and nearly every year we have two thousand representative farmers of Nebraska gathered in our capital city to discuss questions pertaining to agriculture. Then we also have a conservation soil survey which is doing splendid work.

There is one feature to which I want to draw your attention, that I think is very important, and that is the question of sanitation upon the farm, sanitation in the small town. And this has been taken up by our conservation congress. We have different divisions of this congress, and we have splendid men at the head of these divisions, who during the year take pains with the particular work that has been assigned them, and then each year we meet and hear their reports. We have a lot of splendid things that are going forward in our state, and I am sure what we have heard today is inspirational, and that we will go home vowed to do better things. I do not want to boast, but I just thought as I listened to what every man who has spoken for his state had to say, I must tell you this story.

I live on a little farm in eastern Nebraska, which is typical of a large area of our state. If I had to go to the commercial fertilizer man and buy the fertilizing matter, the lime, the phosphorus, the potash, and nitrogen that are wrapped up in the first four feet of the soil that I till it would cost me $7,000 per acre. If I had to buy the same kind of fertilizing matter that is wrapped up in the first ten feet of the soil that I till, and which my alfalfa fields, when they are planted, supplied, it would cost me $28,000 per acre. I feel that we own pretty good land in Nebraska, and for that reason we are anxious to take good care of it. (Applause.)

REPORT FOR NEW YORK.

BY JOHN D. MOORE, _Member State Conservation Commission_.

On my arrival in Kansas City this morning a man at the hotel asked me where I came from, and I said I came from New York. And he said, “What have you fellows got in New York you want to get conserved?” And I said, “We have the greatest conservation problem in New York of all the states in the Union.” In the first place, we have nine million people, over one-tenth of the population of the United States. It is one of our jobs to provide these nine million people with pure water to drink. I told him about the great reservoir on which the city of New York alone has spent upwards of two millions of dollars in order to bring into New York drinking water at the rate of five hundred millions of gallons per day. I told him furthermore that in the state of New York there were 32,000,000 acres of land, and of that more than one-third wild forest land. I told him, too, that in the public parks of New York we had a conservation problem of our own which did not begin three years ago, or five or ten years ago, but began forty years ago when Governor Seymour appointed a commission in 1872 to investigate the matter of public parks and public forests.

Since that time the state of New York has accumulated more than 1,600,000 acres of the greatest parks in this Union, and of that 1,300,000 acres are in the Adirondacks, and in these parks any citizen of New York, or any other state can come and hunt and camp as freely as he will. Furthermore, of the timber land of that park, which is of priceless value, and a value which has been protected by a constitutional amendment adopted in 1894, and not yesterday, or the day before, but sixteen or seventeen years ago. This law says that these lands shall neither be leased or sold or exchanged nor taken by any person, or by any corporation, and the timber thereon shall not be removed, or cut or destroyed. That has placed a perpetual safeguard, the like of which exists in no other state in the union. (Applause.)

In the reforestation we have six state nurseries. In these nurseries there are at the present time 15,000,000 trees. A man this morning said he did not believe it. I told him they were there and he could go and count them. (Laughter.)

Last year we sold to the railroad companies, and to the lumber companies of the state of New York approximately two million seedlings, and obtained for the state of New York something upward of ten thousand dollars. The state law says we must sell those seedlings at cost. We are able to furnish to the lumbermen and the railroad interests of New York seedling trees at the rate of less than one-half cent apiece. Furthermore, the state has reforested, as an example to her citizens, more than 6,000 acres of its own land. Those trees are there, and constitute an object lesson to every visitor to the Adirondacks. This afternoon I heard some of our friends say what their state was doing for good roads. The state of New York has expended within the last five years upwards of $100,000,000 for its state roads. (Applause) Of that we have built 10,000 miles of road—not dirt road, or earth road, but the finest kind of macadam roads, running from sixteen to twenty-four feet in width. We are gridironing New York with a system of highways the like of which is not found under the Stars and Stripes. More than that, we are not devoting our attention entirely to the development of our land locomotion. We are equally strong with water ways.

The Birch canal of the State of New York will be completed within three or four years. The state has appropriated money, sold bonds, and got the money in the treasury for $101,000,000 of Birch canal improvements in order that you Western gentlemen can bring your wheat on boats to the seaboard at the lowest possible cost of transportation. (Applause) Furthermore, we have a system of fish and game laws which is extremely rigorous and has had a marvelous tendency to improve the condition of the wild life of the state. I hold in the State of New York, ladies and gentlemen, that we must not look after only our water power and our forests; we must look after the wild things that live in the water and forest—the fish and the game. (Applause) The deer have been so thoroughly protected by our laws that they have increased so that last year in the Adirondacks there were killed 16,000 deer. Trappers tell our woodsmen today that never in the history of the Adirondacks have so many deer been seen.

This may appear to you strange. It is strange, except when we consider that in primitive times before the settlers came with firearms wolves were abundant in the Adirondacks and preyed upon the deer. Now there is not, within the confines of the State of New York, a single wolf—not one. The present legislature has passed a game law which has been in effect since the first of September, and we take a fair view of the protection of wild life. We are not confined to the protection of game in New York State. We have extended it to every state in the Union. The game law says in effect this: That you cannot bring into the State of New York and sell in the State of New York a bird or animal which has been killed under the American flag. In other words, we have closed to the pot hunter and the market hunter, to the slaughterer of game, the richest and the most plentiful market which they have enjoyed in the past. We have turned it to good account. The law states that they may bring in from foreign countries outside of the United States the unplucked carcasses of birds and venison. Incidentally we expect to import this year 100 tons of venison, and we have already imported 200,000 birds, and upon the leg of each the state has fastened a tag, and exacted for the tag one nickel. So out of the 2,000,000 birds which the dealers tell us they will import this year the State of New York is going to exact the magnificent sum of $100,000 and maybe more. This game law should be a lesson to every state in the Union. It is not fair for a state to protect its own game and fish and let the state be a market for the game of its neighbors.

The State of New York, gentlemen, is more prolific and a more bountiful spender in water power and more bountifully supplied with this power than almost any other state of the Union. I won’t dispute the figures of our friend from California who says there are 5,000,000 horsepower running loose there, but I do know that whereas his state has developed 250,000 horsepower, the State of New York, outside of the St. Lawrence river and Niagara Falls, which are really international waters, and do not come under consideration, my commission has upwards of 650,000 horsepower and we know from actual survey which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and has been in progress some eight years, that a million horsepower is still going to waste, but that million is to be harnessed and put to use, so that the State of New York can get some of the profits which have heretofore gone into private coffers.

REPORT FOR OKLAHOMA.

BY MILTON BROWN.

As yet Oklahoma is not conserved in presidents like Ohio. We have conserved a lot of fads and vagaries and isms down there, but nevertheless notwithstanding all that, Oklahoma for the past two years has got down to a practical standpoint in this matter of the conservation of our material resources and a few of the items I want to mention in my five minutes are these. First, good roads. We are now constructing a road, beginning at the north line of Oklahoma and running almost through to the south, across the whole state, to be entirely of macadam. Of course, the Automobile Association started the matter in one sense, but yet all the farmers’ institutes joined in, and the two are now working together. Not only have we state aid in that matter, but we have aid in the counties. That is one item of the good roads that will make some of these older states ashamed of themselves when they come down to Oklahoma and see it. (Applause)

Another proposition is that we have gone into the development of our water supply down there for our own consumption, not only for the farmers but for the cities, and that, too, without any Federal aid. Some of the older states have been aided by donations from the Federal Government, and although millions of dollars have been taken from Oklahoma by the sales of lands to the settlers of that state, not one penny has been returned to Oklahoma in the way of any particular aid in the matter of the conservation of these resources. Yet at the last session of our legislature we appropriated $45,000 for the purpose of sinking deep wells in the extreme northwestern part of Oklahoma to get down to the underflow water, so that we can irrigate the lands out there in the extreme Northwest. They are going ahead and now have several of those wells in operation.

Another proposition is that these underground waters in the northwestern part of the state are just like the underground water in Nebraska, in Kansas and Colorado; they flow along with the country, with the fall of the country from the mountain ranges. We enacted a law at the last legislature to encourage any person, any firm, any corporation that will come in and put down wells, drains, dams or anything of that kind, and encourage them by exempting them from taxation for a period of five years. That is having its effect already. Some parties are there now engaged in the North Canadian and in the lower Canadian making surveys and putting in plants to raise this underground water by a process of gravity underflow and bring it out on the surface to spread it over our broad acres.

Also we have a pure water supply for the city, keeping the sewage separate and apart. We have laws upon that subject and they are being enforced.

We finally had to go into the Federal Court to have one proposition settled down there, so that our swamp lands could be drained under the law passed by our state legislature. We had a state drainage law by which they undertook to drain some of the lands southeast of Guthrie and Oklahoma City. That entrenched upon the railroads, and they set up the howl that the act was unconstitutional, that we could not change the bed of the river, that we could not change the flow of the water so as to bring our ditches in and drain the swamp lands. But Judge Cotterill of the United States Court held that law constitutional, and that big drainage ditch has been constructed and the swamp lands there have been reclaimed within the last year.

You remember the Arkansas river; if you have ridden along on the Santa Fe railroad out in Kansas you have seen it at times when you could walk across it dry shod and would not get your feet wet, for the bed was as dry as a bone. And yet from Arkansas City south there is more water. Congress passed an act, and today they are working on a survey, making the preliminaries up as far as Muskogee, and they propose to go on up to Arkansas City, so as to make the bed of that river broader and run boats. They have run boats up as far as Arkansas City in times past, and they have run to Muskogee in more recent years. Now, they are going ahead on that proposition to make the Arkansas navigable as far as Arkansas City.

REPORT FOR OREGON.

BY JOSEPH N. TEAL, _Chairman Oregon State Conservation Committee_.

On behalf of the Oregon State Conservation Commission and in response to your request, I herewith submit brief report of its work and activities.

The first conservation commission in Oregon was appointed by Honorable George E. Chamberlain, Governor of the state, on May 23, 1908. It was a semi-official organization and consisted of fifteen members. All funds were secured through voluntary subscription.

As the most pressing subject demanding legislation then was the use and conservation of water resources, a water code was prepared and submitted to the legislature for its consideration and action. The bill was adopted substantially as prepared. The act is elastic and practicable. It provides: (1) A simple, inexpensive method of determining and fixing rights initiated under earlier statutes; (2) a precise and definite procedure for initiating and perfecting new rights, beneficial use always being the basis thereof; (3) an elastic administrative board, to insure the enforcement of water right decrees and its own decisions.

The cost of administration is borne by those benefited. Water power franchises are limited to forty years with a preference right of renewal.

While it was not expected the fees provided for would produce excess revenue, the operation of the law has been very satisfactory and more than self-sustaining under the intelligent and careful administration of the State Engineer, John H. Lewis. The beneficial results following its enactment are conceded and are set forth in the official reports of the State Engineer. Since its enactment some minor changes have been made respecting practice and procedure, but none as to principle.

We are now engaged in a careful study of its workings in order to recommend such further changes as experience may show wise or necessary. That changes will be necessary is not to be doubted, but I feel I am safe in saying we have the foundation and framework of a water code based on right principles.

The legislature of 1909 also passed an act creating a state conservation commission of seven members, to be appointed by the Governor, carrying an appropriation of $1,000. Upon the enactment of this measure the original commission discontinued its work and Hon. F. W. Benson, then Governor, appointed another commission, the membership of which was selected from the original commission.

During the year 1909 the commission offered money prizes to students in the various educational institutions of the state covering the following topics: The Forests in Oregon; Irrigation Institutions in Oregon; Soils; Dry Land Farming in Oregon; Roads in Oregon; Fish in Oregon.

The prizes were awarded and paid according to announcement. The money for this purpose, as well as for other uses by the commission, was secured through voluntary contributions, no public money being used for this purpose.

In 1909 Mr. C. B. Watson, one of the members of the commission, called the attention of the commission to the beauty and grandeur of the Josephine County caves and asked that steps be taken to preserve and keep them in their original beauty as a national monument. The commission took up the matter with Mr. Gifford Pinchot, then Forester of the United States, and on July 12, 1909, the caves were, by proclamation of President Taft, duly set apart as a national monument by an act approved June 8, 1906, under the name “Oregon Caves.” These caves are under the immediate care of the Forest Service, being in a national forest. They are of great beauty and will be preserved as a public monument forever.

During the year 1910 the work of educating the public to the necessity of action in the protection of our forests from fire and other destructive agencies was carried on. In coöperation with other organizations a law was framed to submit to the legislature for action. The legislature of 1911 adopted this measure, and it was passed with but few amendments, and in connection with the bill an appropriation of $60,000 was made.

We submitted to the same legislature a bill for coöperation between the state and federal agencies engaged in gathering physical data of the state’s resources and in disseminating the information so gathered. This bill carried with it an appropriation of $20,000 in addition to the $5,000 provided by the Act of 1905, conditioned upon the Federal Government appropriating an equal amount. The legislature passed this measure with substantial unanimity.

The commission has prepared and circulated annual reports for the years 1908, 1909 and 1910; also a special report during the years 1908 and 1910 on the rivers and harbors in Oregon, setting forth their needs and requirements for improvement and justification therefor. In conjunction with the Forest Service and other associations, the commission also aided in the preparation of a pamphlet for general distribution on the use of Oregon woods.

The only appropriation the commission has received from the state was the one made in 1909 of $1,000.

To insure prosperity to the agriculturist, the tiller of the soil, the producer, should be our constant aim. His well-being is the measure of the well-being of the country. The commission has therefore undertaken to aid and further better agricultural methods throughout the farming sections of the state, particularly in the semi-arid regions of eastern Oregon. It is its desire to encourage improved methods, wise selection of products, diversity of crops and increased animal productions. It is operating in close and sympathetic affiliation with the State Agricultural College, the railroads and others taking an active interest in this work. It is proposed to offer prizes, employ an expert farmer to live in the particular section in question during the coming harvest year, to encourage the holding of district fairs, and in every way possible awaken an active interest in better farming methods. It seems to us that a more fruitful field for the principles of conservation cannot be found. It is practical and shows that conservation is a real vital force with a definite object and aim.

It is hoped something can be accomplished toward encouraging the development of this industry in the state. One of the members of the commission is especially qualified for this task, and he has it in hand.

While Oregon is a great agricultural state, it also has large mineral resources. The state, however, has not given the encouragement to this industry that it deserves.

The laws for the protection of game birds and other fowl and food fish are constantly being improved. A very excellent game commission has been appointed with a game warden of national reputation who has the keenest sympathy with animal and bird life, who does not believe in extermination, and who will, we believe, enforce the law.

It has been suggested that the national resources in the various states, and heretofore undisposed of, be turned over to the respective states by the National Government. Personally, I do not think this would be the wise course to pursue. Those of us—and there are many—who were born and raised in the West understand how little regard has been paid in the past to the public interest in the disposition of public resources by both state and Nation. We know that it is not necessary for the rapid development of the West that every valuable right and resource now belonging to the public should irrevocably pass from the public to be monopolized by the few. It is my conviction that in every state on the Pacific Coast the great mass of the people is in favor of the conservation of the public resources in the interest of the people as a whole. I do not believe the methods of the past appeal to them. Their face is toward the rising sun. The conservation in which they believe is that which secures the greatest, widest and wisest use. They believe in equal opportunities now, and, what is of more importance, opportunity for their children hereafter. They are not alarmed at national conservation where necessary or proper. They realize that many of the public resources are the property of the Nation and not that of the state. That there must be a wise and sympathetic coördination of purpose and effort. The Nation has its duties and functions; the state has its duties and functions; and the individual has his. They must all unite in a common cause, under a common banner, for the common good. No matter by what name conservation may be called, conservation has come to stay. No more will the great resources of this country, either public or private, be treated or allowed to be treated as they have been in the past. An enlightened public opinion and a growing one will in itself prevent it. A much higher standard in viewing this matter now prevails than formerly. Money and material prosperity are not everything. Patriotism and good citizenship are much more important. We look at things now from a different point of view than we did formerly. Those who are primarily responsible for this great movement builded more wisely than they knew and their work will endure forever. No one need feel in the least discouraged—the old ways are gone forever. All that is needed from now on is a wise, prudent, conservative policy, meeting the problems as they arise and allowing for the greatest possible use, without unnecessary waste, of every resource. The principles are understood. It is in their wise application that wholesome results will be secured.

REPORT FOR PENNSYLVANIA AND PHILADELPHIA.

BY EMIL GUNTHER.

As a concrete example of what conservation has done, I desire to cite the County of Lancaster, which, according to its area, occupies the distinction of being the leading county in agricultural wealth in this country. I am also informed that the children in the public schools are taught the importance of each planting at least two trees each year.

The campaigns inaugurated throughout the states for the conservation of the national resources of our country have secured the attention of the whole Nation. To some it may seem that the East has looked supinely upon the movement which has received the most practical endorsement of the western half of our continent. The City of Philadelphia, however, which I have the honor to represent, may justly claim to have been a pioneer in questions of conservation, nor is there any state more alive to the importance of this matter than the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia’s place in the history of this movement may not be known to all, but it is interesting to note that as early as 1868 there was organized in our city a national board of trade largely under the initiative of our local board of trade of the Executive Council, of which I have the honor to be a member. That this board has taken an early interest in such matters permit me to quote from an address lately delivered by Mr. George H. Maxwell at the annual meeting of the National Board of Trade.

“I should like to say for Philadelphia that its local board of
trade was among the first to recognize by official utterance
its deep interest in the question of national irrigation. It
expressed in its petitions and memorials the view that the
national control of this important subject was of the deepest
interest to the whole Nation, independent of locality. It
has likewise strongly urged upon the National Government the
improvement of all navigable rivers and harbors, believing that
such improvements must inure greatly to the prosperity of our
whole country and to place our manufacturers and producers in a
position successfully to compete with foreign trade.”

It is hardly necessary for me to call to your attention the place which Philadelphia holds in the manufacturing world due to its position upon the banks of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. Nor have these waterways alone been put to commercial use; they have also afforded to the inhabitants of Philadelphia opportunities of real recreative value.

Philadelphia has recognized that true conservation is to put to proper and immediate use those resources which are peculiarly its own. From the days of the proprietors large areas have been set aside and improved for the enjoyment of the people; under the Fairmount Park Commission has been developed the largest—and it would seem to many of us the most beautiful—park of its kind in the world. Thirty-five hundred acres abounding in streams and woodlands, with formal gardens and wild ravines, are always open to the use of our citizens. There have been organized, not only under municipal control but also through the instrumentality of private citizens, many associations to conserve those resources which are our heritage.

Therefore, it is with pleasure that on behalf of the city of Philadelphia I bring to this Congress a word of greeting and assure you that our interest in all that pertains to conservation is both practical and sincere.

ORGANIZATION OF THE CONSERVATION MOVEMENT IN PENNSYLVANIA.

BY A. B. FARQUHAR, _President of the State Branch of the N. C. A. of Pennsylvania_.

Our movement is nowhere a thing of yesterday and least of all in Pennsylvania, where work of the highest value for conservation in certain particular directions has for a number of years been conducted. Only within three months, however, has the cause of conservation in general progressed so far as to have an organization especially devoted to it, and it was on the 23d of last June that the Pennsylvania state branch of the National Conservation Association was formed in Harrisburg. It is of and for that branch that I speak.

The aims and purposes of the branch which I shall first set before you are in ten sections, designated by Bishop Darlington, one of the conferees, as “_The Ten Commandments of Conservation_.”

“1. _A Purified Water Supply._ Since the physical, mental
and moral health of our people is the most important of all
national resources, and since stream pollution by sewage and
by factory wastes is a menace to the health as well as to
the comfort of all citizens, the state should continue and
extend its systematic investigation of the extent, sources and
effects of stream pollution to the extreme headwaters of every
stream in the commonwealth, where danger is often the greatest
because least suspected, in order to discover the facts and to
propose adequate remedial measures. Any further legislation
required should be promptly enacted into law, under conditions
which would continue, strengthen and fully enforce the present
admirable work of the Department of Health, under Dr. Dixon and
his assistants.

“2. _Forest Fire Protection._ The state authorities should
have power in dry and dangerous seasons to establish, in such
localities as need protection, efficient patrols for the
prevention of forest fires. The expense of such fire-patrol
service should be assessed upon the forest lands protected
thereby. Lumbermen should be required, under adequate
inspection, to burn or otherwise dispose of all inflammable
debris, at times and under conditions to be prescribed by
the State Forestry Reservation Commission. The use of fire
in or near woodlands in dry and dangerous seasons should be
prohibited, except under stringent regulation and upon written
permit from a responsible officer of the forest service or fire
patrol; and the governor should have power to designate, upon
suggestion to that effect from the Commissioner of Forestry,
periods of peculiar danger within which the carrying of
firearms, the carrying and use of matches, and the setting of
fires for any purpose in public or private woodlands, should be
forbidden by law.

“3. _Just Taxation of Forest Lands._ To encourage reforestation
and the growth of timber on land chiefly valuable for that
purpose, timber land which the owners are willing to treat
upon modern reproductive forest methods should be classified
separately from other real property, with the levy of a nominal
annual tax until the trees are cut at the proper stage,
under regulation or with knowledge of the State Forestry
Commissioner, when a higher rate of tax should be imposed
either per acre or per thousand feet.

“4. _Watercourses as a Public Resource._ The waters of the
state are one of its most important assets. They should be
systematically mapped and considered, and eventually developed
and utilized for the equal benefit of all citizens. In such
development every stream should be considered as a unit, from
its source to its mouth. Domestic and municipal water-supply
should be recognized as the highest use, and consideration of
the value of the stream as a potential source of attracting
revenue by reason of its scenic beauty and for its educational
worth should rank as equal in importance with its potential
value in respect to navigation and the production of power; and
preference rights should be recognized and granted in order of
the above uses in all cases where projects for two or more of
these uses conflict. There should be every endeavor to combine
these various uses in so far as such combination may be found
practicable. For these ends the coöperation of the Federal
Government may require to be sought. Existing private rights in
waters and riparian lands should not be enlarged, except upon
conditions adequate to insure full public control.

“5. _Supervision of Use of Water by Corporations._ Private
projects for water-power development seeking state aid in the
form of a corporate franchise carrying the right to condemn
property, to use land or water rights belonging to the public,
to obstruct navigable rivers, or otherwise, should be subjected
to careful consideration and to strict regulation, in order
to secure prompt, complete and orderly development; efficient
service at fair prices and on equal terms to all consumers
in like conditions; full public information as to costs and
profits; honest capitalization on the basis of cost; and fair
rentals for public property used within the franchises granted.
No water-power franchises or privileges should be granted for a
longer period than from thirty to fifty years, with a provision
for a readjustment of the compensation or terms at least each
ten years, and any assignment of the right or privilege should
require the approval of the proper state authorities to be
legal.

“6. _Wild Life in the Forest and Stream._ A prompt recognition
of the remaining wild life in the forest and in the stream as
a valuable natural resource is desirable, through uniform game
laws for its effective protection, and the present game laws
of Pennsylvania should be revised and extended as required to
properly protect such wild life for its beneficient value to
the state.

“7. _Economy of Mineral Resources._ Mining is the most
important industry of Pennsylvania. It is now accompanied by a
culpable waste of human life and of minerals, especially coal.
There should be promptly applied preventive measures reducing
materially the loss of life through mine accidents, and
requiring careful economy in the exploitation of our remaining
mineral wealth. The state should take the position that, in
respect to these unreplaceable natural resources, the temporary
owner of the land has no right so to treat his property as to
work injury to all.

“8. _Agricultural Resources._ Since cultivated land is the
foundation of the Nation’s prosperity, the proper use and
continued improvement of the soil should everywhere receive
especial care; and in order that agricultural and horticultural
products may reach the best markets with the least loss of time
and at the least expense, we most heartily favor the present
policy of Pennsylvania in the development of improved highways,
and urge their rapid and efficient extension, with due economy
and under capable and expert engineering supervision.

“9. _The Value of Natural Scenery._ We hold that the beauty of
the land is one of the main sources of that love of country
which is at the very basis of patriotism, and that natural
scenery is an economic asset of great value yet unconsidered
and undeveloped. With the rapid disappearance of the great
primeval forest which once covered two-thirds of the area of
the state; with the mutilation of wide areas in the careless
abstraction of mineral wealth; with the pollution and
restriction of streams for private benefit, and the laying
waste of areas of arable lands through preventable floods, this
great and potentially valuable resource is being constantly and
ruthlessly destroyed. We insist that it should be considered
as of great economic importance, and we point, in support of
this attitude, to the scenic travel income of many millions of
dollars contributed each year to Europe by Americans, who leave
at home, unnoted and in process of destruction, many natural
scenic advantages of at least equal merit.

“We further assert that it is not only in the interest of
the state to foster and encourage the provision of adequate
breathing places and playgrounds for the relief of our
congested population, but that it is equally important that the
state shall open and adequately maintain in suitable forest
reserves public camping-grounds, available especially to those
of our population who cannot otherwise obtain access to the
restorative and uplifting influences of an intimate association
with Nature. We insist that it is the part of wisdom for the
state to intelligently promote public parks in all their
forms—municipal, county and state—in order that every citizen
may have easy opportunity to receive the material and definite
benefits attendant upon their proper use.

“10. _Education in Conservation._ In order that the rising
generation may know of the actual basis of the prosperity of
the state which makes life here possible, and of its rapid and
serious depletion through senseless and unconsidered waste,
we urge that an accurate statement of the remaining natural
resources of the state be prepared in such form as to make it
available for public school instruction. We favor all proper
methods of inculcating in the youth of the state that care for
its prosperity which alone can prevent the state from becoming
a barren waste, resembling like areas in foreign lands in which
selfishness, neglect and ignorance have accomplished their
destructive work.”

It is not claimed that our “ten commandments” cover the whole of the moral law, on our subject, although the endeavor was to include in them the points that most urgently needed attention in the campaign for conservation in Pennsylvania. The principles as stated in the development of a “commandment” are often of a wider generality than as set forth in the heading; in the opening sentence, for example, to which attention will be called further on, and in the third paragraph also, where the principle of encouraging the care of forests appears in the text, while the heading alludes only to forest taxation. Care for the forests is itself but a special application of the still broader principle of saving where we are now wasting, of which this national association is the great exponent.

The civilized man, as President Roosevelt reminded us, looks beyond present needs and provides for those to come. He seeks to leave his children, who will be in a few years all that is left to represent him, as good a patrimony as he received from his forefathers. He would provide for the greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. He therefore necessarily interests himself in the conservation of natural resources. For conservation does not mean, as has been too hastily inferred, locking up something valuable so that it will be of no service to anybody; it means using and safeguarding the resources of ourselves and posterity in the way that will best serve both. It means use without waste.

That there has been waste, and shameful waste, of natural resources no rational man will deny. It is an abuse of many centuries standing, as witness Persia, The Euphrates valley, Syria, and much of Asia Minor, and the once fertile valleys of China, where the sites of a teeming population are now deserts. When the forests disappear, the water no longer remains in the soil; there is alternation of dry stream-bed, and flood-torrent carrying away the soil itself. Vegetation, requiring a steady water supply, can no longer exist; and man cannot outlive vegetation. This may be the history of the destroyed woodlands of Pennsylvania. The disappearance of trout streams has been but a symptom; the real evil is the sacrifice of our woodland, of which all belonging to our state were until a generation ago sold without discrimination at twenty-seven cents an acre. The same land, denuded of timber, the state is now buying back, though at a much higher price, and endeavoring to reforest it. A million acres have already been so purchased, and it is hoped that the replanting will proceed rapidly and uninterruptedly so that our children’s heritage may yet be saved for them.

The preservation of our woodlands, it has already been admitted, is only one way of stopping waste. There is the waste of war, of recovery from war as counted in our annual pension roll, and of preparation for war for which we are now paying, in these years of profound peace, more than three hundred millions annually. The most terrible of all wastes, doubtless, is that of disease, especially when we include with it the Nation’s drink bill, of which the first cost of the liquor, huge though that is the country over, is the smaller part; the greater, all a dead waste, being the impairment of physical, mental and moral vigor and of productive capacity to which that baleful appetite leads, and the cost of the crimes of which it is the constant cause. We should no less include the costs in money and in deterioration of body, mind and soul, that are incurred by disregard or defiance of sex-hygiene. To these two points, particularly the last, the tenth of our Pennsylvania Conservation Commandments, on “Education in Conservation,” particularly applies. On nothing, not even “the remaining natural resources” of our commonwealth, is it more vitally necessary that education should lay stress than the conditions of bodily and moral health. Conservation of human life is the most important element in the conservation problem, for without man everything else would be valueless.

The public health is most evidently a public concern, and its furtherance has now become, by general consent, a recognized part of the duties of government. For a generation and more, a board of health has been one of the most important branches of our city government; county health boards are now found to be requisite for similar reasons; the services of state boards, bureaus or departments of health, are coming more and more in demand; and there is by this time an imperative call for a national bureau or department with similar functions and wider authority. That is a call that cannot long be resisted. The several agencies now under federal control, among which its care for health has heretofore been scattered—those pertaining to the army, the navy, the revenue marine service, and the “pure food” office of the Agricultural Department—have severally done some very good work, despite their limited separate responsibility; and their work could not but be more effective for good if brought all under one direction, and granted appropriations correspondingly ample. There would be the same increase in efficiency through combination, that has so often been noted in consolidations of railways, combinations of industries, forming a federal army out of promiscuous state militias, and welding a bunch of geological “surveys” into a well-disciplined, compact bureau. It is a reform demanded by the interests of sound government, and by the people’s needs: and it must come.

Testimony to the good work that can be done in a few years by the Health Department of our state, I am enabled to give by the favor of a highly capable member of that department in Harrisburg, Chief Medical Inspector Royer, as follows:

In the creation of the Department of Health of this commonwealth and in the very liberal provision of funds for its organization and maintenance, Pennsylvania took her first great step forward in the conservation of human life.

The bill which when enacted created the Department of Health of Pennsylvania was drawn by Dr. Charles B. Penrose of the University of Pennsylvania, and carried with it an appropriation of $400,000 for its organization and maintenance and $50,000 for emergency work. The governor was slow to make his selection of the commissioner, Dr. Dixon, who was appointed in June, 1904, during an epidemic of smallpox. The emergency work was carried on with the organization which was completed January 1, 1906, when the work assumed its great systematic battle against disease. This police department had to be handled with exceeding care, as the people in our representative form of government had not been used to the observation of health laws.

So rapidly did the work grow that the 1907 legislature appropriated $1,000,000 for general health work and $1,000,000 for the purpose of organizing a campaign against tuberculosis, $600,000 of which was specifically set aside for state sanatoria and $400,000 for dispensaries and additional work.

The commissioner was permitted to take over the small tuberculosis camp already organized by the Forestry Department, and he almost immediately enlarged it by the addition of tents to accommodate more than one hundred additional patients and at once planned a great sanatorium to be built on the site near Mont Alto.

The legislature of 1909 repeated the appropriation of $1,000,000 for general health work, including sanitary engineering, and gave the unprecedented sum of $2,000,000 for extending the tuberculosis campaign, both by increased facilities offered through the dispensaries already organized and by further extension of state sanatoria.

The legislature of 1911 still further increased the appropriations for the department so that a total of $3,701,360 was provided for furthering public health work, including $2,653,248 for fighting tuberculosis.

In the first organization of the Department of Health a broad and liberal educational campaign was started, on a comprehensive plan through seven important executive divisions and two auxiliary divisions, whose chiefs reported directly to the central authority, the Commissioner of Health. In a very short time the vital statistics of this commonwealth were so thoroughly gathered that the census office included the state in the “registration area.”

The division of medical inspection, in a comprehensive way, covered all the quarantinable diseases in the second-class townships of the commonwealth, the reports being gathered from the health officers in the 720 sanitary districts under the general supervision of sixty-six county medical inspectors. By these officers quarantining and disinfecting is performed.

The division of sanitary engineering, through seven subdivisions, undertook the important work of protecting the stream from pollution and the supervision of the plans for water works and sewerage works.

The sanatorium division took charge of operating the hospitals.

A dispensary division with 115 dispensaries, one in each large center of population, rendered great assistance to the indigent poor afflicted with tuberculosis, and supervised the work done by a corps of 110 nurses.

The division of distribution of biological products had the disposition of diphtheria antitoxin from 650 distributing stations and of tetanus antitoxin from sixty-seven.

The auxiliary division of accounting, auditing and purchasing looked out for important business and office details.

A division of supplies arranged for prompt distribution of everything needed for record work and field work and through each of these important divisions forwarded daily, weekly and monthly reports to the commissioner’s office, a record of its work and accomplishment. All of which was transmitted to the public by means of monthly bulletins, weekly newspaper talks, and oral addresses. Educational leaflets showing the methods of prevention of all of the different diseases were distributed in large numbers throughout the commonwealth, and a scheme of education was organized, giving to the public through some 900 newspapers all of the facts gleaned by careful study.

A traveling tuberculosis and sanitary exhibit is sent to all the large centers of population throughout the state, papers are prepared and read before scientific societies, charitable organizations, boards of trade, civic clubs, teachers’ institutes and the various bodies interested in saving human life. Lantern slides are furnished ministers and educators to promote the public health interest, and not only does the state do this important educational work, but through its dispensaries a very important sociological work is carried on, which not only protects those in their homes against tuberculosis and secures much needed charitable aid, but assists in protecting against every disease due to unsanitary conditions.

The department is preparing to comply with the new school code and make medical inspection of all school children in districts of the fourth class. This one agency must have a far-reaching influence in conserving health.

Quoting from a recent published report of the department, a few of the things that have been accomplished may thus be referred to:

From June 1, 1907, to August 1, 1911, 5,819 patients have been
admitted to the State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis at Mont Alto.
Many of these patients have been discharged with the disease
arrested; hundreds have been benefited and have gone back to
their homes disciples of fresh air and right methods of living;
many more whose cases were too far advanced to hope for much
aid have been made comfortable and happy and provided with a
good home where they would not be a source of danger to others.

From July 22, 1907, when the first dispensary was opened, to
June 30, 1911, 41,792 poor tuberculosis sufferers received
skilled medical aid and the attention of trained nurses which
the department’s 115 dispensaries provide.

The death rate from tuberculosis in Pennsylvania had fallen
from 134 to 119.6 per one hundred thousand of population
in five years, this meaning a saving of one thousand lives
annually.

From October, 1905, when the state began its free distribution
of diphtheria antitoxin among the poor, to the end of December,
1910, 27,318 cases of diphtheria, mostly little children,
were treated for cure, with diphtheria antitoxin. We know by
statistics that without antitoxin forty-two out of every 100
of these children, or 11,476 in all, would probably have died;
but with the aid of antitoxin furnished by the department, only
2,324 died, and the death rate among these little sufferers was
reduced to eight and five-tenths per cent. Diphtheria antitoxin
was given for immunizing purposes to 20,294 cases. The computed
saving of child life resulting from the free distribution of
antitoxin since 1905 is 9,152.

Throughout Pennsylvania the streams are slowly becoming freed
of pollution: not so slowly either, when records show that up
to August 1, 1911, 34,481 private sources of stream pollution
have been abated upon notice from the department, not to speak
of the thousands more that have been stopped through the moral
influence of this work. Eighty-nine modern sewage disposal
plants either have been built or are in process of construction
as approved by the department. Two hundred and eighty-four
municipalities and private sewerage corporations are building
comprehensive sewerage systems in accordance with plans for
such work, details of which must be approved by the department.
Already eighty-six modern filtration plants have been approved
and begun accordingly.

And what of typhoid fever in view of all this work for pure
water? In 1906, 56.5 out of every 100,000 people died from this
disease; in 1907, 50.3; in 1908, 34.4; in 1909, 23.4, and in
1910, 25.7. That is, there are now living 2,448 inhabitants of
Pennsylvania who, had the death rate of 1906 prevailed in 1910,
would have died from typhoid fever.

In 1906 the death rate from all causes, per 1000 population,
was 16.5; in 1908, it had dropped to 15.7; and in 1910 to 15.6.
At first glance this saving of life may not seem a remarkable
diminution, but with Pennsylvania’s 7,655,000 population, is a
great gain. This appears when one figures precisely what this
slight numerical drop means in the actual saving of lives. Had
the rate of 1906 prevailed in 1908, some 6,000 more people
would have died than actually succumbed. Had this same rate
applied in 1910 instead of the decreased rate recorded by the
Department of Health, just 6,889 men, women and children now
living and presumably in average health and spirits would have
died. In other words, these matter-or-fact statistics, when
interpreted in their real relation to the welfare and happiness
of the state, mean the saving to the state of 20,000 lives in
three years.

And the fight is only fairly well begun.

In the semi-official summary I have just read, the subject of “a purified water supply” was treated in a single paragraph, as a subordinate part of the general work of the State Health Department for the conservation of human life. If an apology is due for what appears a straying from my main topic, the declaration of purposes of the Pennsylvania state branch, I am ready to make the apology; but I cannot believe any excuse is needed for giving to conservation of life and health an importance far ahead of all other conservation.