Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress at Saint Paul Part 26

We as a Nation take just pride in our business successes; we attribute them to the brains we put into our work, to the thoroughness with which we study what we do and what others have done that we may profit by experience. Is it not well for us thoughtfully to inquire whether the histories of any other nations record the handling of their resources on the "get-rich quick" plan, that we may see what has been the outcome?

History is full of such instances; many of them have been pointed out by eminent advocates of this movement. I will therefore not attempt anything but pa.s.sing reference to some of them. Volumes could be written from evidences found in the Valley of the Euphrates and of the Tigris, where stood the great Kingdom of Babylonia, the wonder of the ancient world; in the ruins of Palmyra and Palestine; in the Barbary States, once famed as the granary of Rome but now a howling wilderness, because the Mohammedans who conquered it neglected its natural resources; in the ruins of the Cities of the Sahara, whose crumbling courts bring to mind the words of Omar Khayyam--

They say the lion and the leopard keep The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.

If we look to history for the other side of the picture--for instances where business prosperity has gone on without interruption as long as natural resources have been conserved and intelligently maintained--we find them so well defined as to lead to but one conclusion. This is ill.u.s.trated in Germany where they have maintained the fertility of their soil for centuries. It produces more per acre today than it did many generations ago. Their great forest estates have remained intact; they have cut a crop of timber from them regularly every year, producing an annual income, but the capital--the forest estate--is greater and more valuable today than it was before our country was discovered. Fires have not destroyed their forests. They have long since learned the wisdom of applying, "an ounce of prevention," and fortunately have no "pork-barrel" to stand in the way. (Applause)

And we find in our own history many instances where great business enterprises have sprung promptly from efforts to intelligently develop the resources around us. The State of Illinois was pa.s.sed over by the first settlers as a land of no opportunities. It is today, in productiveness and volume of business, one of the greatest States in the Union. In the States of Utah and Colorado vast areas formerly looked upon as barren and useless wastes, have been, by the intelligent handling of natural resources, made to produce annually wonderful crops of fruit and vegetables, the traffic in which has become a great commercial industry. The development of the Southwest, dependent very largely on one resource--the fertility of its soil--has called into being such l.u.s.ty young giants as Wichita, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and other cities of that type. In the vicinity of Birmingham, a section which before the War was occupied mainly by cotton plantations--wherein there was nothing that could be properly called business--where generations came and pa.s.sed to the Great Beyond and never saw the smoke of a factory or heard the hum of a busy mart of trade, today, with but one generation intervening, we find a live and prosperous modern city, the heart of a great industrial region. The change has come from developing three great natural resources, which up to the close of the War had been allowed to lie idle and unproductive--the forests, the coal and the iron.

Here again we find an example of the business dependence of natural resources one upon the other. The timber from the forests was needed for the mining of the coal, and the coal was needed in the manufactures from the iron ore; and again the forests in the development of means of transportation to the markets of the world.

So there is ample evidence that business activity follows promptly upon the intelligent development of natural resources, and decay with equal certainty follows the neglect or wasteful use of the capital which nature tenders us, and for the intelligent use of which she holds us strictly accountable.

I have frequently been asked by those who know our system of getting reliable information, "How do people over the country feel in regard to Conservation; are they in favor of it in all its aspects, or do they seem to be interested only in certain features?"

As that is a question that has direct bearing on the business of the country, we naturally had made careful inquiry regarding it from Maine to California, and we had learned that the majority of the people do not understand enough about it to hold any real opinion. They have no adequate idea what Conservation means as applied, for instance, by this organization to our natural resources. In spite of exhaustive reports issued by the Government, in spite of scholarly and illuminative articles on the subject, the people generally do not yet understand the real object of Conservation. A busy people in trade do not have time to read Government reports or long speeches on any subject, and of course no one can do justice to even one element of this great subject in a short article. The net result is therefore that there is no general understanding of even the A B C of Conservation such as should be given to the people, such as they would be glad to have, and such as they must have before there is warrant for feeling that the foundation stones of Conservation are so firmly grounded that no transitory wave of agitation on unimportant details can be successfully used to dislodge them.

The majority have not yet grasped the idea that one of the prime objects of this Conservation movement is to preserve the fertility and productiveness of the soil, on which we all depend for our food supply.

They are not aware that already in many parts of this country, where formerly any man who rented farm lands was entirely free to use them with indifference to their future, he is now required by the owners to enter into a written contract which provides just how the land is to be cultivated--how the crops are to be rotated and fertilizers used. The owners of these lands today require their tenants to practice Conservation. (Applause)

The people do not generally understand that when a territory which has been used as a range for cattle is by proclamation withdrawn, as we express it, that does not mean it is no longer to be used for pasturage.

Conservation does not aim to suspend use--its object is to perpetuate usefulness in full measure this year, and every year to come. (Applause)

A farmer who owns a pasture--large or small--and rents it for stock grazing, takes due care to cover in his agreement the number of head and the length of time they are to be kept on his land. He makes sure that his pasture is not to be so abused in any one season as to ruin it for the future. He cares for his own land as it is the province of the Forest Service to care for the public land entrusted to their supervision. He practices Conservation because he cannot afford to do otherwise.

It is not widely known that instead of wis.h.i.+ng to keep settlers out of the National Forests, inducements are given to get people to settle within their boundaries; homesteaders are free to pasture their domestic stock within the reservation and to cut from the forests the timber they require for building houses, barns and fences. It is not generally understood that making a forest reservation does not mean that no more timber is to be cut there for market; on the contrary, its prime object is to insure continued cutting and selling of it for all time. It is not widely known that the revenue from timber cutting on the public forest lands amounts already to a million dollars a year, and the annual revenue from the pastures puts another million into the public treasury--and that this is only a beginning; or that meanwhile this kind of revenue-making regulation also affects the regularity of water supply through our rivers and streams--a most vital question as has been shown by many able exponents of Conservation.

When this Nation of business people understands that Conservation is simply another term for business management of the people's capital, the pressure of public opinion will be so strong behind this movement as to brook no interference or delay in the pa.s.sage and enforcement of the laws needed to begin at once a business administration.

How to spread more widely a correct understanding of such facts is today a most important problem. How shall we reach the people who have not yet been reached, and who in all probability will not be reached by anything published in the usual way?

I have a suggestion to make which I ask you Delegates to take to the Governors who appointed you to attend this Congress; that is, that each Governor summon to his Capitol for consultation, say six of the leading business men of the State, selecting those who in their own business have, by successful use of modern advertising, demonstrated that they have learned from experience how to reach the individual and tell him something they want him to know. Knowing how to do that is just as much a matter of education and experience as are the methods of the Forester or of the politician who is a "past master" at the game. Give the people of your State the benefit of this experience. It can be had for the asking. The business men can be depended on to help whenever called upon. They will be particularly ready in this matter which, in proportion as it is successful, will make for good trade and stable business conditions; and the Conservation of our natural resources stands for more stable business conditions year after year, in that it tends to reduce the chances of losing our new wealth in crops just when it seems to be practically sure.

Ask such a group of successful advertisers to formulate a scheme of reaching the public generally with the kind of information they want and should have about Conservation. Enlist the cooperation of the army of commercial travelers within the State--there are no more loyal American citizens anywhere, none who can do more in such a campaign, none who will more gladly lend a hand when once they are advised along proper lines, and know how great a factor the Conservation of our natural resources can be in the upbuilding of business and, through it, the general prosperity of our people.

Ask this business council to formulate ways of making known not only the facts about forests and water supply, and the importance of these facts to every individual man, woman and child in the Nation, but why we in the United States average 13-1/2 bushels of wheat per acre, instead of 23-1/2 bushels, as they do in Germany, and 30-9/10 bushels in Great Britain; how this is making homestead lands scarce, and prices high, because we only get half the amount of crops we should get from the land we have under cultivation. When we find our production less to the acre each succeeding year and more mouths to feed, it is time everybody knew why.

Tell them in the simplest and most direct manner possible what is meant by the "pork barrel" in politics--how it is being used to r.e.t.a.r.d the proper development of our natural resources, and why therefore it stands in the way of the Nation's progress. Let them know why we all have reason to thank G.o.d that we have in the White House a President who does not let politics silence his tongue on that subject or swerve him from his determination to stop this waste of the Nation's funds. (Applause)

Write up a short story of what Reclamation has done and can do in relieving the situation by opening up to us millions of acres of land which can and will add greatly to our food and meat supply; tell them what has already been accomplished and the progress that is still being made by reclamation work, to the great benefit of the people. Explain in a simple manner that hand in hand with the profitable development of our natural resources must go the development of our great waterways and railroads--that there can be no general prosperity without railroad prosperity; that our railroads and waterways are the connecting links which make our natural resources available, and that the practical value of our natural resources depends largely on the efficiency of our transportation service. (Applause)

Point out to them the lessons which we should get from cases of individual effort along the lines of modern methods in farming; how, for instance, Mr Claude Hollingsworth, near Colfax, Was.h.i.+ngton, raised this year 45 bushels of wheat to the acre, averaging 62 pounds to the bushel, and of barley 72-1/3 bushels to the acre, when his neighbors, with the same conditions of soil, climate, and rainfall, averaged only half as much; or in South Carolina, where Mr E. McI. Williamson has, by the proper application of fertilizers, modern methods, and little additional expense, increased his production of corn from 15 bushels per acre to an average of nearly 60 bushels, and of cotton from less than half a bale to an average of a bale per acre. Such examples are most convincing, and will do much to arouse interest in the practical value of Conservation.

The conservation of the National health deserves to be emphasized even when we have under consideration this general subject from purely a business standpoint. When we consider that tuberculosis alone costs the people of the State of New York over $200,000,000 per year, and that it is a preventable disease, and that that $200,000,000 might be used as capital to give to millions of people profitable and wholesome occupation, the relation of the health movement to the business interests of the country is self-evident.

Of course, this suggestion is based upon entire confidence in the cooperation of the daily press--I have no doubt about that whatever. The newspapers and magazines are not only most potent factors in spreading enlightenment, but they can always be depended on to take enthusiastic hold of any movement that is honestly and disinterestedly for the general good. (Applause)

This whole subject of Conservation is fundamentally a business proposition--a question of managing the people's business with the same care and foresight that we put into private business--a question of using the Nation's capital in a way that will produce a regular, steady and proper income year after year, and at the same time so safeguard the princ.i.p.al that the people of these United States may go on in business indefinitely.

History tells of many peoples who have spent their capital and disappeared from the face of the earth. Let us so organize this Nation's business that it may go on down the centuries as history's exception to the general rule of rise and fall (applause). As we point with pride, honor and grat.i.tude to the signers of our Declaration of Independence and the makers of our Const.i.tution, so may the coming generations of Americans, having in mind the fates of other peoples, look back with grat.i.tude to us and have occasion to exclaim "See what would also have been our lot had it not been for the foresight and business judgment of our ancestors of the Twentieth Century--worthy successors of the great men who founded this Government of the people by the people and for the people, not only for their own time, but for all time." (Applause)

President BAKER--Ladies and Gentlemen: Nothing is more important to Conservation than education; and I have the honor now to introduce the Commissioner of Education, Dr Elmer Ellsworth Brown, who will address you on "Education and Conservation."

Commissioner BROWN--Mr President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Every uplift and reform comes back to education. It is uplift carried to the sticking point. It is reform continually going on. In speaking of the educational aspect of Conservation, I am not concerned with anything merely incidental or subordinate, but have to do with a matter as large and vital as any upon which the success of the Conservation movement depends.

It must be admitted on the other hand that education has much to get from the Conservation movement as well as much to give. The schools are learners as well as teachers. To support and further Conservation they will need to learn Conservation facts and doctrines. This Congress and American education are aiming at the same thing in the end--the betterment of American life. What shall it profit to conserve everything else on earth if we fail to conserve the spirit and fiber of our citizens, young and old? That is a view in which Conservationists and educators are fully agreed.

Now, what is our educational establishment, as it stands over against the body of our material resources? It is a group of State school systems, having in the aggregate a certain National character. We cannot insist too strongly that education is primarily a concern of the States.

This group of State school systems represents a combination of public and private agencies, for our State inst.i.tutions are supplemented by many inst.i.tutions privately supported and controlled. It represents an extraordinary unity as between elementary education and the higher education, as between the democracy of the lower schools and the science of the universities. It represents, moreover, in all of its grades, an everlasting devotion to intellectual and moral values, as having to do with enlightened citizens.h.i.+p. This is the educational establishment that faces the needs and aspirations with which the Conservation Congress is concerned. There are three or four ways in which I should like to speak of the great work of that establishment as related to your own great work:

1. In the first place, there is the fact that our scholastic education is facing about and turning its attention toward industry and industrial life. This is a new movement in which all States and sections are taking part. It is a change which is attended with the gravest difficulty. No one who is not familiar with the actual administration of schools and colleges can guess how hard a thing it is to introduce a new practice of teaching and make it successful at the hands of many teachers in widely different communities. Yet our educational leaders have addressed themselves to this task with courage and enthusiasm. In 25 States provision is now made for teaching agriculture in public schools. Such provision takes the form of agricultural high schools in Alabama, Ma.s.sachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia, and in several other widely scattered States. In the best of these schools, there is arising a new interest in all that relates to the soil and the life on the farm. It is no uncommon thing to have cla.s.s work interrupted by visits from neighboring farmers, who consult the expert teachers regarding drainage and fertilizers and the care of their horses and cows. The boys try out at school the seed corn they are to plant on the home farm, and the girls learn at school to raise poultry and vegetables and make from them appetizing dishes for home consumption. Large provision has been made for consolidated rural schools, and in Minnesota lands are added for instruction in the practice of farming. Oklahoma requires the teaching of agriculture in all public schools, with the cooperation of the normal schools and the agricultural college. This new instruction is spreading in unexpected ways. Columbia University, in the heart of New York City, has begun to offer courses in agriculture, taking up this work where it left it off early in the nineteenth century. And an agricultural conference has been held at Bryn Mawr College. After that what more is there to be said! (Applause)

But there is still a good deal more. Much might be said about the new trade schools in the cities, and the new instruction in household arts for girls; but I pa.s.s these matters by and go back to the farm. What is especially interesting is the freedom with which new modes of teaching have been adopted. Corn contests, potato trains, demonstration farms--our old manuals of teaching knew nothing of these things. Then there is all manner of summer schools, short winter courses, farmers'

inst.i.tutes, and an a.s.sortment of other teaching devices. The University of Idaho is employing three field men, a horticulturist, a dairyman, and an irrigation and potato specialist, and is sending regular schools of agriculture about the State on wheels. In Virginia and three or four other States supervisors of rural schools have been appointed. They are making a close study of the resources, industries, and social needs of typical sections of their States, and are lending new life to the effort to make the schools more directly serviceable.

One of the earlier developments of this movement, and one that comes into peculiarly close relations with the Conservation campaign, is the setting apart of a day in each year for planting trees. Nebraska is looked upon as the original center of this movement. A recent report shows the planting of 20,000 trees in a single year in Minnesota, in connection with the Arbor Day celebration in this State (applause). The observance has received a fresh impetus in more than twenty of the States from the publication by the State education offices of attractive manuals offering suggestions regarding the celebration.

The leaders of the new movement in our schools have called for a redirection of rural education. Such a redirection is actually taking place. So much has been begun that it would be easy to believe that the work is done. There are many who suppose that this new education is already in the saddle and is moving triumphantly forward. But that is a mistake. Great changes in education are not brought about so easily.

There is a long campaign and a hard campaign before us if the desired ends are to be attained. State superintendents of public instruction, those who are training teachers in colleges and normal schools, and all who are engaged in this work in supervisory and teaching positions, will need for a long time to come the moral backing and the material support which this influential body can command. That is what they should have without reserve and without stint. (Applause)

The lack of well-prepared teachers of these subjects is one of the most serious difficulties the new movement has encountered. A recent report shows about seventy State normal schools offering regular instruction in agriculture. The Nelson Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriation Act of 1907 provided Federal funds for the training of teachers in the land-grant colleges. At least thirty of these colleges are now offering such instruction. But this work, too, is only begun.

2. And this suggests the second thing that I wish to say. The new movement is making a new demand for men in the business of teaching--strong men, technically trained for their work. If education is to help Conservation, the teaching profession must be enabled to compete with the industries in attracting and holding such men. We are considering both ends of our educational system, the scientific end in the universities and the popular end in the schools. A man who has enough knowledge and skill to train others for an industrial occupation has enough to give him a place in the industry itself. And the industry pays a great deal better than the teaching. It is not necessary that the income of teachers and that of industrial leaders should be equalized.

Many men will continue to teach because they prefer to teach. But when the disparity becomes too great, many good teachers, in fairness to themselves and to their families, must give up the struggle and go over into the more lucrative employments. This is what has been going on in recent years. With a rapidly growing population and an increasing body of teachers, we have fewer men engaged in teaching than we had five years ago. We need opportunities in the teaching profession that will attract strong men to face the work before us (applause). I have the highest regard for the work of our women teachers; but both men and women are needed to give us a well balanced public education, and I welcome the alliance of the schools with the Conservation movement, because of the new demand it makes for competent men in the schools.

Let me point out some of the places in our scholastic organization where strong men are needed, for Conservation purposes as well as for educational purposes. It is generally understood that men of the largest caliber are in demand as presidents of technical colleges and universities. It should be equally obvious that such men are needed as State superintendents of public instruction. We have such men, and have had many such in the office of State superintendent--but in many of the States that office cannot attract men as do our college presidencies, because of the short term of service and other limitations with which it is hedged about. We need broad men and strong men as instructors in the technical departments of our higher inst.i.tutions. Those who deal with our National resources industriously can know but little of the personal strain and sacrifice with which other men have stuck to their task of dealing with these same resources educationally. In our secondary and elementary education there is not only need of specially trained men as teachers, but there is need in particular of specially trained supervisors.

I was in Vermont not many days ago, and there I saw one result of a new law, which provides for the employment of union district superintendents of schools, at a respectable minimum salary. The State superintendent had called together these local superintendents in their annual conference. There were nearly forty of them, where three years before there was not one. Rather young men they were for the most part, though well-seasoned in the responsibilities of teaching. College graduates, alert and ambitious, they gave themselves over to the business which had brought them together, with a heartiness that was vastly encouraging.

Other States have made provisions for a similar staff of supervisory officers. New York is one of the latest to take such action. The great States of the West, in which the county is a common unit of school supervision, need in their counties traveling supervisors of special subjects, particularly those relating to the practical business of life on the farm. Such supervisors can become veritable evangelists, bringers of good news concerning the things which make our National resources interesting and full of hope.

3. I have spoken of the new movement toward industrial education in our several States. I have tried to show that this movement is making only gradual headway against great difficulties, but that it can become a strong reinforcement of Conservation and of other public interests _if given a fair chance_. Now, in the third place it should be said that the Federal Government is concerned with giving it a fair chance. We have no National system of school administration. We do not want such a system.

No one seriously proposes to relieve the States of their powers and responsibilities in this matter. But how can the Nation be indifferent to the very stuff out of which it is made? While we have no National system of schools, we have and we are bound to have a National program of education.

It is no new thing that I am proposing. I would simply propose that the program blocked out and entered upon many years ago should be carried out and made as useful as possible. This National program is a simple one. In the earlier days it consisted in the granting of lands for educational purposes. Within the past half-century two additions to this earlier plan have been made. The first of these was the establishment of a central office of information, the Federal Bureau of Education; the second was the annual appropriation of Federal funds for inst.i.tutions serving a special and urgent National need--the acts for the further support of the land-grant colleges.

Stated now in other words, our whole American scheme of public educational management consists of these four parts: First, the independent school and university systems of the several States, aided by grants of public lands and supplemented by privately managed inst.i.tutions; second, the free cooperation of the States in educational matters of common interest; third, a Federal education office, aiding the States by its information service and furthering their cooperation; and finally, the distribution of Federal funds, under the supervision of the Bureau of Education.

Let me say a few words concerning that part of this plan with which I have personally the most to do. It is the business of the Federal Bureau to survey the whole field of American education, and make the best things contagious throughout that field. In such a subject as industrial education, it is to study our present needs in the large, and to set before our people the best examples of the successful meeting of such needs in this and in foreign lands. It is to promote unity of effort, by enabling every part of the country to profit at once by whatever has been well done in any other part of the world. As regards such a subject as the Conservation of our National resources, it is to take the broad view which concerns education in all the States, and to further the common treatment of that subject as related to the geography, the history, and the industries of the American people. Such work as this it is now doing in a preliminary and fragmentary way; but it needs more men--expert and informing men--to make of its educational contagion the really large and transforming thing that these times demand. Give us the men, and we will give the help. When the Nation has made its program, it cannot afford to carry it out on less than a National scale. (Applause)

I have said that our National program already involves a measure of direct Federal aid to education in the States. There is every reason why such aid should be reserved as a last resort. But as a last resort, it has its place in our program. It is doubtful whether the industrial education which the Nation now requires can be adequately carried out without an increase of such Federal partic.i.p.ation. But the point to be especially emphasized is this: Any such extension of Federal aid should be based on an accurate knowledge of the needs, and should be made in such ways as will strengthen and not weaken the educational systems of the States. For these reasons, a general investigation of the subject of industrial education in all sections of the country is one of the next things that should be undertaken by the Education Bureau. Such an inquiry has already been recommended from the office of the Secretary of the Interior. It has been urgently requested by the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education. Our neighbors of the Dominion of Canada already have a strong commission engaged in a similar inquiry. I earnestly hope that this Congress will call upon the Congress of the United States to inst.i.tute such an inquiry at the earliest practicable date, and provide for carrying it on in a manner commensurate with the importance of the subject.

When I speak of our National program in education, it is with warmth and conviction. No nation can come to its greatest, industrially and politically, save as it comes to its greatest in education. We have in our American form of governmental relations the basis for the n.o.blest educational structure that any nation has ever erected. In full loyalty to the true relations of State and Nation, we have only to go forward doing generously the things which may rightly be done, in order to have an infinitely varied yet gloriously united educational organization, in which our democracy, our science, and our nationality shall all of them come to their best.

4. Fourthly and finally, what kind of education is it that the new needs call for? I cannot leave the subject without saying a few words on that theme.