Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress at Saint Paul Part 43

Conservation is of particular importance to us, for yet our resources are practically in their virgin state. We heartily join hands with you of our sister States in this great movement, in my opinion due to the work and wisdom of Gifford Pinchot more than any other American citizen.

However, his ideas and earnestness were very fully and heartily appreciated by that foremost American, Theodore Roosevelt, to whom for his great work in inaugurating and fostering Federal Conservation we give honor.

Chief among our resources are the vast variety of agricultural products which grow in great abundance. In the same field may be seen growing enormous yields of corn, cotton, oats, wheat, and alfalfa. No other State can excel Oklahoma in the production of these products. We join the great corn-belt of Illinois and Iowa in singing the song of Whittier--

Heap high the farmer's wintry h.o.a.rd, Heap high the golden corn; No richer gift has autumn poured From out her lavish horn.

Let other lands exulting glean The apple from the pine, The orange from its glossy green, The cl.u.s.ter from the vine.

We better love the hardy gift Our rugged vales bestow, To cheer us when the storm shall drift Our harvest fields with snow.

The following extract is from the First Biennial Report of the Oklahoma State Board of Agriculture:

"Oklahoma is the greatest country on earth, not only because we can grow everything here that can be grown anywhere else in the United States, but because many crops we can grow here are decidedly more profitable than are crops of like character in many other sections of the country."

We join our sister States of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, and others in the endeavor to conserve their vast deposits of coal, not solely from patriotic motives, but also because of our extensive coal, oil, and gas fields, only a small part of which have yet been developed. The supply of timber in the eastern and southeastern portions of our State is worthy of the consideration and protection of the Conservation movement. Particularly rich is our State in its streams of water and its water-power. The princ.i.p.al rivers are the Arkansas, the Grand, the Verdegris, the Canadian, the Cimarron, the Was.h.i.+ta, and the Red, the latter forming the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas. These streams within themselves contain great resources, yet in the virgin state, awaiting but to be developed and utilized by American genius.

I know of no more appropriate way of closing my statement than in the words of Colonel John A. Joyce--

The rolling hills and mountains, Without their forest dress Will soon bring to the Nation Great hunger and distress; And if we do not listen To the scientific strain, The soil of grand Columbia Will be washed away by rain.

Brave nature in her glory Works for animated things, And tells the old, old story Of feeding serfs and kings; But man, obtuse and greedy, Will not listen in his pain To the poor, and weak, and needy, Who must live by sun and rain.

We must save the soil and water, Or a desert there will be For wife, and son, and daughter, In this land of Liberty.

And the Congress of the Nation, Must now listen to the brain Of our scientific sages Who would husband soil and rain.

REPORT FROM OREGON

E. T. ALLEN

_a.s.sistant Secretary Oregon Conservation Commission_

Oregon's chief Conservation advances of late have been the pa.s.sage of progressive water laws, by the effort of the State Conservation Commission, and the progress of private timber owners in the prevention of forest fires. The most urgent task now on hand is to secure more liberal State aid in forest protection.

Immediately following the Conference of Governors at the White House in 1908, Governor Chamberlain appointed for Oregon a Conservation Commission of 15 members. This semi-official Commission was reduced to 7 members, and given statutory standing and a small appropriation, by Act of Legislature filed February 23, 1909. Its work is "To ascertain and make known the natural resources of the State of Oregon, and to cooperate with the National Conservation Commission to the end that the natural resources of the State may be conserved and put to the highest use."

No legislative session has been held since the statutory Commission was appointed. In its earlier form, however, it recommended and secured the pa.s.sage, by the same Legislature which gave it official standing, of a workable law for the development of Carey act projects, and one for complete State control of waters within the State. Both have proved excellent, no defects of importance having developed.

The Oregon water law, in particular, is generally regarded as an example of good State action. It is based on the police power of the State to preserve the public peace and safety of its water users. Under this law, rights to the use of water for power development are limited to a period of 40 years. A simple and expeditious method is provided for determining early water rights, protecting existing rights, and acquiring new rights. Prior rights are determined by a Board of Control consisting of the State Engineer and the division superintendents of the two water divisions into which the State is divided. Established rights are protected by a water master in each district of a division, acting under the direction of the division superintendent. He may make arrests and compel the installment of suitable devices for controlling the use of water. New rights are granted by certificate of the Board of Control, after proof, under a system based on priority of application and beneficial use. Water for irrigation is made appurtenant to the land irrigated. Oregon also has a law providing for a State tax, on a horsepower basis, upon water-power projects.

Oregon has a non-partisan State Board of Forestry, consisting of representatives of the industries and agencies chiefly concerned in forest management and protection; also an excellent forest code, so far as punitive and regulative provisions are concerned. It lacks appropriation or machinery to make this code effective. To secure such provision by the next Legislature is the chief present work of the Commission. The Commission works under the plan of attacking one point at a time, instead of dissipating efforts among all the improvements needed. Water and water-power were felt to be the most urgent, forestry is considered next, and when the forest laws are made satisfactory, other branches of Conservation will receive concentrated effort.

There is also an Oregon Conservation a.s.sociation which, under the same plan, is now chiefly devoted to carrying out the work of the State Board of Forestry for which no appropriation exists. Its secretary is secretary of the State Board, and the funds of the a.s.sociation help to pay postage and clerical help derived by the State.

Under an alliance called the Oregon Forest Fire a.s.sociation, affiliated in turn with the Western Forestry and Conservation a.s.sociation embracing five States from Montana to California, a large number of the private forest owners of Oregon cooperate to secure better protection from forest fires. These owners spend from $50,000 a year upward for patrol and fire-fighting, their employees having authority from the State as fire wardens.

Among the Conservation problems to be taken up next in Oregon are the protection of fisheries, good roads, improvement in technical methods in irrigation and dry-land farming, topographic surveys, and inventories of State resources.

REPORT FROM RHODE ISLAND

HENRY A. BARKER

_Chairman Rhode Island Conservation Commission_

This Conservation Congress has been so very generous with its invitations that it happens that about every organization in which I am interested has been asked to send Delegates. As a result, quite a good lot of them have been so kind as to bestow this honor upon me--most of them prudently waiting until they found out that I was coming anyhow.

For that reason my desk in Providence is adorned with a nice little pile of beautifully engraved cards, each telling me that this City of Saint Paul takes pleasure in extending its hospitality, etc. Along with each of them came other cards to warn me that if I wanted hotel accommodations I had better speak quick. So I spoke with reasonable speed--and eminently satisfactory results; but I am glad I did not have to find accommodations for all of the Delegates that I seem to be.

I want to say, also, that if it gives the cordial City of Saint Paul pleasure to extend this charming invitation, the pleasure is entirely mutual; I am delighted to accept the hospitality.

I am glad that I need not report at this time for anything except the State of Rhode Island, and I am sure you will be. You may ask, "What has Rhode Island to conserve?" In reply I want to tell you that no State in the Union in proportion to its population has so much that needs conserving. Some of our friends from the Far West tell us heartbreaking things about how the Government has reserved or restricted so much of the western area that there isn't enough left to make farms and villages on. I think I heard day before yesterday that in the State where I attended the First Conservation Congress last year there were Government reservations as big as Ma.s.sachusetts and Rhode Island combined--though I should say these wouldn't necessarily look so very big when painted on the map of Was.h.i.+ngton, or seriously hamper the operations of its people.

And we have this sad condition contrasted with that of the happy East where the Government owns no reservations at all; but back in the East we do not realize that this is a good fortune. Never having had any land in our part of New England owned either by the State or by the Nation, we have been somewhat frantically endeavoring to have them secure some for the good of our people, even though it now has to be bought.

Everybody knows how earnestly we wish that the Government might have done for us at the beginning of our settlement just what the Government is able to do, and is doing, for the West today. There isn't any talk of "State rights" in the East. It is a question of the States' necessities.

The Eastern States are all working to their utmost to get the Government to undertake certain enterprises like the Appalachian White Mountain reservations, that are of an interstate character; but each State expects to cooperate for as much of the remaining work as it can.

You will be glad to know that Little Rhody is trying to do its share. It always does its share. It always matches the Government, at least dollar for dollar, on any public improvement work. Just now it is spending a million dollars on the harbor of Providence to match another million that the Government appropriated last year. That is the kind of "State rights" the Government gives it. But not much compared with what the railroads are putting in.

The formal establishment of a Conservation Commission was almost the very last act of the Rhode Island Legislature at its special session, only about two weeks ago. We didn't expect, of course, to be quite so much up to date, or so early in any new field, as our brethren in Montana for example, though we have had a Conservation Commission, rather informally appointed by the Governor, ever since that notable gathering of the Governors at Was.h.i.+ngton, and work that such a commission would naturally do has been going on, under other names, longer than I can remember.

The aim of the new Commission is to secure the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of politics. I do not know what the political affiliations of its members are, or if they have any, and I do not believe the Legislature knows. It is made up of ex officio members, to bring into efficient cooperation several well-established departments that have long dealt with some phase or other of Conservation. The head of the Bureau of Industrial Statistics, which is conducting a State survey of natural resources, including soil a.n.a.lysis; the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture; the Director of the Experiment Station of the State College; the State Forester; and the Secretary of the Metropolitan Park Commission--these departments will now contribute their efforts to a common purpose. The State Forestry Department, with advice from the National Forest Service, has been getting some very up to date forest laws pa.s.sed, and the Park Commission has made a visible beginning to secure for public use and preservation some necessary recreation places for the over-crowding population of the Providence "Metropolitan District," which has about four-fifths of the population within about four-fifths of the area of the Twin Cities combined.

The State College, a.s.sisted by the U. S. Bureau of Soils, has been showing such farmers as care to take notice that southern New England is a very different sort of place agriculturally than it has been the habit to suppose, and that at least three ears of corn may be made to grow, where, previously, one went to the dogs--or the hogs. The very fact that there are more ever-hungry mouths to feed and more manufactures to the square inch in southern New England than there are anywhere else makes this necessary. We must care for every drop of water that falls on our hillsides. The cities need it; the manufacturers need it (and can use it first); the great bleacheries--that furnish about all the textiles that all of you use and wear--need all they can have; and the people need the lakesides and the river banks for recreation as in the past.

At present our markets get most of their "fine Rhode Island turkeys"

from Vermont and their "new-laid eggs" from beyond the Mississippi. A large part of the Rhode Island greenings and Ma.s.sachusetts Baldwin apples come from Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton, though not because they refuse to grow in their native habitat. But much of the soil must have put back into it those elements which previous unscientific generations robbed it of. And here is an amusing paradox: With a population growing in density faster than in any other State of the Union, and with more markets just around the corner, there are, nevertheless, more acres of forest-covered lands and more acres of unutilized lands in Rhode Island than there were 50 years ago--and more in proportion than in almost any other State in the Union.

Well, that's where Rhode Island comes in, in this Conservation movement; and it has come in none too soon. If it had only had a wise and paternal Government to help it administer and develop its natural resources a century ago, the cost of living would be less today for every one of its inhabitants.

Rhode Island has awakened to vital things, but even if it had only an indirect interest in Conservation it would still feel that it owed its moral influence to the country as a whole, and that it is not a separate selfish little two-cent republic all by its lonesome, but a part of a great Nation that prefers to be governed from Was.h.i.+ngton rather than from Wall Street: a Nation whose prosperity and power and glory need the cooperation and loyalty of every one of its citizens.

REPORT FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

E. J. WATSON

_Commissioner of Agriculture_

_Chairman State Conservation Commission_

South Carolina Commission's full report delayed, so report briefly by wire. Active work has been done. A preliminary forest survey has been made, and a complete measure for conservation of forests and protection against forest fires has been introduced in the General a.s.sembly and will be pushed during the coming session. Active steps have been taken toward drainage and reclamation of coastal lands, and a measure to provide for a complete system under the direction of the State Commission is now being prepared for introduction in the Legislature in January next. Conservation of human resources has been greatly advanced in the past two years, following the enactment of complete factory inspection laws. No State is giving more attention to conservation of all her resources at this time than is South Carolina. I am heartily in sympathy with everything making for Conservation, and greatly regret I cannot be with you at the Congress.

REPORT FROM SOUTH DAKOTA

DOANE ROBINSON

_Secretary Conservation Commission of South Dakota_

The South Dakota Conservation Commission, consisting of Senator Robert J. Gamble (Chairman), Eben W. Martin, Samuel H. Lea, O. C. Dokken, and Doane Robinson (Secretary), was appointed by Governor Coe I. Crawford in August, 1908, and has been continued by Governor Vessey.