CHAPTER X. THE PRESIDENCY, MAKING AN OLD PARTY PROGRESSIVE.  This was to discover and read out corruption wherever it was found in any of the departments. The first essential was to make it clearly understood that no political or business or social influence of any kind would for one moment be even considered when the honesty of a public official was at issue. It took a little time to get this fact thoroughly drilled into the heads both of the men within the service and of the political leaders without. The feat was accomplished so thoroughly that every effort to interfere in any shape or way with the course of justice was abandoned definitely and for good. Most although not all, of the frauds occurred in connection with the post office department and the land office. It was in the post office department that we first definitely established the rule of conduct which became universal throughout the whole service. Rumors of corruption in the department became rife, and finally I spoke of them to the then First Assistant Postmaster General, afterwards Postmaster General, Robert J. Wynn. He reported to me, after some investigation, that in his belief there was doubtless corruption, but that it was very difficult to get at it, and that the offenders were competent and defiant because of their great political and business backing and the ramifications of their crimes. Talking the matter over with him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry on the investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Postmaster General, now a senator from Kansas, Joseph L. Bristow, who possessed the iron fearlessness needful to front such a situation. Mr. Bristow had perforced seen a good deal of the seamy side of politics and of the extent of the unscrupulousness with which powerful influence was brought to bear to shield defenders. Before undertaking the investigation, he came to see me and said that he did not wish to go into it unless he could be assured that I would stand personally behind him, and no matter where his inquiries led him, would support him and prevent interference with him. I answered that I would certainly do so. He went into the investigation with relentless energy, dogged courage, and keen intelligence. His success was complete, and the extent of his services to the nation are not easily to be exaggerated. He unearthed a really appalling amount of corruption, and he did his work with such absolute thoroughness that the corruption was completely eradicated. We had, of course, the experience usual in all such investigations. At first there was popular incredulity and disbelief that there was much behind the charges, or that much could be unearthed. Then, when the corruption was shown, there followed a yell of anger from all directions, and a period during which any man accused was forthwith held guilty by the public. And violent demands were made by the newspapers for the prosecution not only of the men who could be prosecuted with a fair chance of securing conviction and imprisonment, but of other men whose misconduct had been such as to warrant my removing them from office, but against whom it was not possible to get the kind of evidence which would render likely conviction in a criminal case. The trials were brought against all the officials whom we thought we could convict, and the public complained bitterly that we did not bring further suits. We secured several convictions, including convictions of the most notable offenders. The trials consumed a good deal of time. Public attention was attracted to something else. Indifference succeeded to excitement, and, in some subtle way, the jury seemed to respond to the indifference. One of the worst offenders was acquitted by a jury, whereupon not a few of the same men who had insisted that the government was derelict and not criminally prosecuting every man whose misconduct was established so as to make it necessary to turn him out of office. Now turned round, and inasmuch as the jury had not found this man guilty of crime, demanded that he should be reinstated in office. It is needless to say that the demand was not granted. There were two or three other acquittals of prominent outsiders. Nevertheless, the net result was that the majority of the worst offenders were sent to prison, and their remainder dismissed from the government service if they were public officials, and if they were not public officials, at least so advertised as to render it impossible that they should ever again have dealings with the government. The department was absolutely clean and became one of the very best in the government. Several senators came to see me, Mr. Garfield was present on the occasion, and said that they were glad I was putting a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would avoid all scandal, that if I would make an example of some one man and then let the others quietly resign, it would avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party. They were advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as possible in my answer, but explained that I would have to act with the utmost rigor against the offenders no matter what the effect on the party, and moreover that I did not believe it would hurt the party. It did not hurt the party. It helped the party. A favorite war cry in American political life has always been turn the rascals out. We made it evident that as far as we were concerned, this war cry was pointless, for we turned our own rascals out. There were important and successful land fraud prosecutions in several western states. Probably the most important were the cases prosecuted in Oregon by Francis J. Henney, with the assistance of William J. Burns, a secret service agent who at that time began his career as a great detective. It would be impossible to overstate the services rendered to the cause of decency and honesty by Mishir's Henney and Burns. Mr. Henney was my close and intimate advisor, professionally and non-professionally, not only as regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but in many other matters of vital interest to the Republic. No man in the country has waged the battle for national honesty with greater courage and success, with more wholehearted devotion to the public good, and no man has been more traduced and maligned by the wrongdoing agents and representatives of the great sinister forces of evil. He secured the conviction of various men of high political and financial standing in connection with the Oregon prosecutions. He and Burns behaved with scrupulous fairness and propriety, but their services to the public caused them to incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the public, and after I left office the national administration turned against them. One of the most conspicuous of the men whom they had succeeded in convicting was pardoned by President Taft. In spite of the fact that the presiding judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the evidence amply warranted the conviction and had sentenced the man to imprisonment. As was natural, the one hundred and forty-six land fraud defendants in Oregon, who included the foremost machine political leaders in the state, furnished the backbone of the opposition to me in the presidential contest of 1912. The opposition rallied behind Ma'sure's Taft and La Follet. And although I carried the primaries handsomely, half of the delegates elected from Oregon under the instructions to vote for me, sided with my opponents in the national convention, and as regards some of them I became convinced that the mainspring of their motive lay in the intrigue for securing the pardon of certain of the men whose conviction Heaney had secured. Land fraud and post office cases were not the only ones.  Special assistants of the Attorney General, such as Mr. Frank Kellogg of St. Paul and various first-class federal district attorneys in different parts of the country secured notable results. Mr. Stimson and his assistants, Ma'sure's and the other attorneys, Denison and Frank Furtner in New York, for instance, in connection with the prosecution of the Sugar Trust and of the banker Morse, and of a great metropolitan newspaper for opening its columns to obscene and immoral advertisements. And in St. Louis, Ma'sure's Dyer and Nortone, who, among other services, secured the conviction and imprisonment of Senator Burton of Kansas. And in Chicago, Mr. Sims, who raised his office to the highest pitch of efficiency, secured the conviction of the banker Walsh and of the Beef Trust and first broke through the armor of the Standard Oil Trust. It is not too much to say that these men and others like them worked a complete revolution in the enforcement of the federal laws and made their offices organized legal machines fit and ready to conduct smashing fights for the people's rights and to enforce the laws in aggressive fashion. When I took the presidency, it was a common and bitter saying that a big man, a rich man, could not be put in jail. We put many big and rich men in jail, two United States Senators, for instance, and among others, two great bankers, one in New York and one in Chicago. One of the United States Senators died. The other served his term. One of the bankers was released from prison by executive order after I left office. These were merely individual cases among many others like them. Moreover, we were just as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning and fraud in which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty. Mr. Simpson Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batted on the white slave traffic after July 1908 when by proclamation I announced the adherence of our government to the international agreement for the suppression of the traffic. The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a memorandum made in the case of a negro convicted of the rape of a young negro girl, practically a child. A petition for his pardon had been sent to me. White House Washington D.C. August 8th, 1904. The application for the commutation of sentence of John W. Burley is denied. This man committed the most hideous crime known to our laws and twice before he has committed crimes of a similar though less horrible character. In my judgment there is no justification whatever for paying heed to the allegations that he is not of sound mind, allegations made after the trial and conviction. Nobody would pretend that there has ever been any such degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not committed this crime. Under such circumstances he should certainly be esteemed sane enough to suffer the penalty for his monstrous deed. I have scant sympathy with the plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the consequences of crime when unless that crime had been committed it would have been impossible to persuade any responsible authority to commit him to an asylum as insane. Among the most dangerous criminals and especially among those prone to commit this particular kind of offense there are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be incompatible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence. But these men are never the less responsible for their acts and nothing more tends to encourage crime among such men than the belief that through the plea of insanity or any other method it is possible for them to escape paying the just penalty of their crimes. The crime in question is one to the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that spirit of lawlessness which takes the form in lynching. It is a crime so revolting that the criminal is not entitled to one particle of sympathy from any human being. It is essential that the punishment for it should be not only a certain but as swift as possible. The jury in this case did their duty by recommending the infliction of the death penalty. It is to be regretted that we do not have special provision for more summary dealing with this type of case. The more we do what in us lies to secure certain and swift justice in dealing with these cases the more effectively do we work against the growth of that lynching spirit which is so full of evil omen for this people because it seeks to avenge one infamous crime by the commission of another of equal infamy. The application is denied and the sentence will be carried into effect. Signed Theodore Roosevelt. One of the most curious incidents of lawlessness with which I had to deal affected an entire state. The state of Nevada in the year 1907 was gradually drifting into other governmental impotence and downright anarchy. The people were at heart all right but the forces of evil had been permitted to get the upper hand and for the time being the decent citizens had become helpless to assert themselves either by controlling the greedy corporations on the one hand or repressing the murderous violence of certain lawless labor organizations on the other hand. The governor of the state was a democrat and a southern man and in the abstract a strong believer in the doctrine of states rights but his experience finally convinced him that he could obtain order only through the intervention of the national government and then he went over too far and wished to have the national government do his police work for him. In the Rocky Mountain states there had existed for years what was practically a condition of almost constant war between the wealthy mine owners and the western federation of miners at whose head stood Mishir's Haywood, Pettybone and Moyer who were about that time indicted for the murder of the governor of Idaho. Much that was lawless much that was indefensible had been done by both sides. The legislature of Nevada was in sympathy with or at least was afraid of not expressing sympathy for Mishir's Moyer, Haywood, Pettybone and their associates. The state was practically without any police and the governor had recommended the establishment of a state constabulary along the lines of the Texas Rangers. But the legislature rejected his request. The governor reported to me the conditions as follows. During 1907 the Goldfield Mining District became divided into two hostile camps. Half of the western federation of miners were constantly armed and arms and ammunition were purchased and kept by the union as a body while the mine owners on their side retained large numbers of watchmen and guards who were also armed and always on duty. In addition to these opposing forces there was, as the governor reported, an unusually large number of the violent and criminal element always attracted to a new and booming mining camp. Under such conditions the civil authorities were practically powerless and the governor, being helpless to avert civil war, called on me to keep order. I accordingly threw in a body of regular troops under General Funston. These kept order completely and the governor became so well satisfied that he thought he would like to have them there permanently. This seemed to me unhealthy and on December 28th, 1907 I notified him that while I would do my duty the first need was that the state authorities should do theirs and that the first step towards this was the assembling of the legislature. I concluded my telegram, if within five days from receipt of this telegram you shall have issued the necessary notice to convene the legislature of Nevada I shall continue the troops during a period of three weeks. If when the term of five days has elapsed the notice has not been issued the troops will be immediately returned to their form stations. I had already investigated the situation through a committee composed of the chief of the Bureau of Corporations, Mr. H. K. Smith, the chief of the Bureau of Labor, Mr. C. P. Neal, and the comptroller of the Treasury, Mr. Lawrence Murray. These men I could thoroughly trust and their report which was not over favorable to either side had convinced me that the only permanent way to get good results was to insist on the people of the state themselves grappling with and solving their own troubles. The governor summoned the legislature it met and the constabulary bill was passed. The troops remained in Nevada until time had been given for the state authorities to organize their force so that violence could at once be checked then they were withdrawn. Nor was it only as regards their own internal affairs that I sometimes had to get into active communication with the state authorities. There has always been a strong feeling in California against the immigration of Asiatic laborers, whether these are wage workers or men who occupy until the soil. I believe this is to be fundamentally a sound and proper attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon and yet which can be insisted upon in such a manner and with such courtesy and such sense of mutual fairness and reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any just cause of offense to Asiatic peoples. In the present state of the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples in wholly different stages of civilization or of wholly different types of civilization even although both equally high shall be thrown into intimate contact. This is especially undesirable when there is a difference of both race and standard of living. In California the question became acute in connection with the admission of the Japanese. I then had and now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people. I believe in them. I respect their great qualities. I wish that our American people had many of these qualities. Japanese and American students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in international trade, and the like, can meet on terms of entire equality and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other. But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the business of the land. I think they are entirely right in this position. I would be the first to admit that Japan has the absolute right to declare on what terms foreigners shall be admitted to work in her country or to own land in her country or to become citizens of her country. America has and must insist upon the same right. The people of California were right in insisting that the Japanese should not come thither in mass, that there should be no influx of laborers, of agricultural workers or small tradesmen, in short no mass settlement or immigration. Unfortunately, during the latter part of my term as president, certain unwise and demagogic agitators in California to show their disapproval of the Japanese coming into the state adopted the very foolish procedure of trying to provide by law that the Japanese children should not be allowed to attend the schools with the white children, and offensive and injurious language was used in connection with the proposal. The federal administration promptly took up the matter with the California authorities, and I got into personal touch with them. At my request, the mayor of San Francisco and other leaders in the government came to see me. I explained that the duty of the national government was twofold. In the first place, meet every reasonable wish and every real need of the people in California or any other state in dealing with the people of a foreign power, and in the next place, itself exclusively and fully to exercise the right of dealing with this foreign power. In as much as in the last resort, including that last of our resorts, war, the dealing of necessity had to be between the foreign power and the national government. It was impossible to admit that the doctrine of state sovereignty could be invoked in such a matter. As soon as legislative or other action in any state affects a foreign nation, then the affair becomes one for the nation, and the state should deal with the foreign power purely through the nation. I explained that I was an entire sympathy with the people of California as to the subject of immigration of the Japanese in mass, but that of course I wished to accomplish the object they had in view in the way that would be most courteous and most agreeable to the feelings of the Japanese, that all relations between the two peoples must be those of reciprocal justice, and that it was an intolerable outrage on the part of newspapers and public men to use offensive and insulting language about a high-spirited, sensitive and friendly people, and that such action, as was proposed about the schools, could only have bad effects, and would in no shape or way achieve the purpose that the Californians had in mind. I also explained that I would use every resource of the national government to protect the Japanese in their treaty rights, and would count upon the state authorities backing me up to the limit in such action. In short, I insisted upon the two points, one, that the nation, and not the individual states, must deal with matters of such international significance and must treat foreign nations with entire courtesy and respect, and two, that the nation would at once, and in efficient and satisfactory manner, take action that would meet the needs of California. I both asserted the power of the nation and offered a full remedy for the needs of the state. This is the right and the only right course. The worst possible course in such a case is to fail to insist on the right of the nation, to offer no action of the nation to remedy what is wrong, and yet to try to coax the state not to do what it is mistakenly encouraged to believe it has the power to do, when no other alternative is offered. After a good deal of discussion, we came to an entirely satisfactory conclusion. The obnoxious school legislation was abandoned, and I secured an arrangement with Japan under which the Japanese themselves prevented any immigration to our country of their laboring people. It being distinctly understood that if there was such immigration, the United States would at once pass an exclusion law. It was, of course, infinitely better that the Japanese should stop their own people from coming rather than that we should have to stop them. But it was necessary for us to hold this power in reserve. Unfortunately, after I left office, a most mistaken and ill-advised policy was pursued towards Japan, combining irritation and inefficiency, which culminated in a treaty under which we surrendered this important and necessary right. It was alleged in excuse that the treaty provided for its own abrogation. But, of course, it is infinitely better to have a treaty under which the power to exercise a necessary right is explicitly retained rather than a treaty so drawn that recourse must be had to the extreme step of abrogating if it ever becomes necessary to exercise the right in question. The arrangement we made worked admirably and entirely achieved its purpose. No small part of our success was due to the fact that we succeeded in impressing on the Japanese that we sincerely admired and respected them and desired to treat them with the utmost consideration. I cannot too strongly express my indignation with and abhorrence of reckless public writers and speakers who, with force and vulgar insolence, insult the Japanese people and thereby do the greatest wrong not only to Japan, but to their own country. Such conduct represents that nadir of underbreeding and folly. The Japanese are one of the great nations of the world entitled to stand and standing on a footing of full equality with any nation of Europe or America. I have the hardiest admiration for them. They can teach us their own. It is imminently undesirable that Japanese and Americans should attempt to live together in masses. Any such attempt would be sure to result disastrously and the far-seeing statesmen of both countries should join to prevent it. But this is not because either nation is inferior to the other. It is because they are different. The two peoples represent two civilizations which although in many ways are different. One civilization is as old as the other and in neither case is the line of cultural descent coincident with that of ethnic descent. Unquestionably, the ancestors of the great majority both of the modern Americans and the modern Japanese were barbarians in that remote past which saw the origins of the culture peoples to which the Americans and the Japanese of today severely orient and the occident have been separate and divergent since thousands of years before the Christian era, certainly since that horary held in which the Akkadian predecessors of the Shaladyan Semites held sway in Mesopotamia. An effort to mix together out of hand, the peoples representing the culminating points of two such lines of divergent cultural development would be fraught with peril, and this I repeat because the two are different, not because either is a woman looking to the future will for the present endeavor to keep the two nations from mass contact and intermingling precisely because they wish to keep each in relations of permanent goodwill and friendship with the other. End of Chapter 10 Part 3 Recording by Amanda Hindman, Glen, Mississippi Chapter 10 Part 4 Of Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt This is a recommendation or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Amanda Hindman Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt Chapter 10 The Presidency Making an old party progressive Part 4 Exactly what was done in the particular crisis to which I refer is shown in the following letter which after our policy had been successfully put into execution I sent to the then House Washington February 8th, 1909 Honorable P. A. Stanton Speaker of the Assembly Sacramento, California I trust there will be no misunderstanding of the federal government's attitude We are jealously endeavoring to guard the interests of California and of the entire west in accordance with the desires of our western people By friendly agreement with Japan we are now carrying out a policy which of the Pacific slope is yet compatible not merely with mutual self-respect but with mutual esteem and admiration between the Americans and Japanese The Japanese government is loyally and in good faith doing its part to carry out this policy precisely as the American government is doing. The policy aims at mutuality of obligation and behavior. In accordance with it that travelers students persons engaged in international business men who sojourn for pleasure or study and the like shall have the freest access from one country to the other and shall be sure of the best treatment but that there shall be no settlement en masse by the people of either country in the other. During the last six months under this policy these figures are absolutely accurate and cannot be impeached. In other words if the present policy is consistently followed and works as well in the future as it is now working all difficulties and causes of friction will disappear while at the same time each nation will retain its self-respect and the goodwill of the other but such a bill as this school bill accomplishes literally all in addition the united states government would be obliged immediately to take action in the federal courts to test such legislation as we hold it to be clearly a violation of the treaty. On this point I refer you to the numerous decisions of the united states supreme court in regard to state laws which violate treaty obligations of the united states. The legislation would accomplish nothing beneficial and would certainly cause some mischief with the minimum of efficiency in achieving the real object which the people of the pacific slope have at heart with the minimum of friction and trouble while the misguided men who advocate such action as this against which I protest are following a policy which combines the very minimum of efficiency with the maximum of insult and which while totally failing to achieve any real result and achieve what it is now achieving then through the further action of the president and congress it can be made entirely efficient. I am sure that the sound judgment of the people of California will support you Mr. Speaker in your effort. Let me repeat that at present we are actually doing the very thing which the people of California wish to be done and to upset the arrangement under which this is being done effectively during the last six months is no longer working successfully then there would be ground for grievance and for the reversal by the national government of its present policy but at present the policy is working well and until it works badly it would be a grave misfortune to change it and when changed it can only be changed effectively by the national government in foreign affairs the principle from which we never deviated was to have the nation behave toward other nations precisely as a strong, honorable and upright man behaves in dealing with his fellow men there is no such thing as international law in the sense that there is municipal law or law within a nation within the nation there is always a competent officer whose duty it is to carry out this judgment by force if necessary in international law there is no judge unless the parties in interest agree that one shall be constituted and there is no policeman to carry out the judges orders inconsequence as yet each nation must depend upon itself for its own protection the frightful calamities that have befallen china solely because she has pretended to patriotic purpose and yet to fail to insist that the united states shall keep in a condition of ability if necessary to assert its rights with a strong hand it is folly of the criminal type for the nation not to keep up its navy not to fortify its vital strategic points and not to provide an adequate army for its needs on the other hand it is wicked for the nation to fail in either justice courtesy or consideration when dealing with state when i became president and continued to serve under me until his death and his and my views as to the attitude that the nation should take in foreign affairs were identical both as regards our duty to be able to protect ourselves against the strong and as regards our duty always to act not only justly but generously toward the week john hay was one of the most delightful of companions and foreign affairs coincided absolutely but as was natural enough in domestic matters he felt much more conservative than he did in the days when as a young man he was private secretary to the great radical democratic leader of the of the 60s Abraham Lincoln he was fond of jesting with me about my supposedly dangerous tendencies in favor of labor against capital when i was inaugurated on march 4th 1905 i wore a ring this ring was on my finger when the chief justice administered to me the oath of allegiance to the united states i often thereafter told john hay that when i wore such a ring on such an occasion i bound myself more than ever to treat the constitution after the manner of Abraham Lincoln as a document which put human rights above property rights when the two conflicted the last christmas john hay was alive he sent me the manuscript christmas eve 1904 dear theodore in your quality of viking this Norse saga should belong to you and in your character of enemy of property this miss of william morris will appeal to you wishing you a merry christmas and many happy years i am yours affectionately john hay in internal affairs i cannot say that i entered the presidency with any deliberately planned and far reaching scheme of social betterment convictions and i was on the look out for every opportunity of realizing those convictions i was bent upon making the government the most efficient possible instrument in helping the people of the united states to better themselves in every way politically socially and industrially i believed with all my heart in real and thorough going democracy and i wished to make this democracy industrial as well as political although i had therefore in national rights and states rights just exactly to the degree in which they severely secured popular rights i believed in invoking the national power with absolute freedom for every national need and i believed that the constitution should be treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment and not as a straight jacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth in his various beliefs i was content to wait and see what method might be necessary in each given case as it arose and i was certain that the cases would arise fast enough as the time for the presidential nomination of 1904 junior it became evident that i was strong with the rank and file of the party but that there was much opposition to me among many of the big political leaders and especially among many of the wall street men was to be done with complete secrecy but such secrets are very hard to keep i spittily knew all about it and took my measures accordingly the big men in question who possessed much power so long as they could work under cover or so long as they were merely throwing their weight one way or the other between forces fairly evenly balanced were quite helpless when fighting in the open by themselves i never found out that anything practical was even attempted by most of the men who took part the head of one big business corporation attempted to start an effort to control the delegations from new jersey north carolina and certain gulf states against me the head of a great railway system made preparations for a more ambitious effort looking towards the control of the delegations from Iowa Kansas Nebraska Colorado and california against me he was a very powerful man financially but his power politically or the situation itself whereas i did he could not have secured a delegate against me from Iowa Nebraska or Kansas in colorado and california he could have made a fight but even there i think he would have been completely beaten however long before the time for the convention came around it was recognized that it was hopeless to make any opposition to my nomination the effort and the metropolitan newspapers of largest circulation were against me in new york city 15 out of every 16 copies of papers issued were hostile to me i won by a popular majority of about 2 million and a half and in the electoral college carried 330 votes against 136 it was by far the largest popular majority ever hitherto given any presidential candidate my opponents had the intention to use the office of president to perpetuate myself in power i did not say anything on the subject prior to the election as i did not wish to say anything that could be construed into a promise offered as a consideration in order to secure votes but on election night after the returns were in i issued the following statement the wise custom for my choice of the exact phrasology used was two fold in the first place many of my supporters were insisting that as i had served only 3 and a half years of my first term coming in from the vice presidency when president mckinley was killed i had really had only one elective term so that the third term custom did not apply to me and i wished to repudiate the suggestion i believed then and i believe now the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome and therefore i was determined to regard its substance refusing to quibble over the words usually employed to express it on the other hand i did not wish simply and specifically to say that i would not be a candidate for the nomination of 1908 because if i had specified the year when i would not be a candidate it would have been widely accepted as meaning that i intended to be a candidate some other year and i had no such intention and had no idea that i would ever be a candidate so i asked me if i intended to apply my prohibition to 1912 and i answered that i was not thinking of 1912 nor of 1920 nor of 1940 and that i must decline to say anything whatever except what appeared in my statement the presidency is a great office and the power of the president can be effectively used to secure a renomination especially if the president has the support of certain great political and wholesome principle of continuing an office so long as he is willing to serve an incumbent who has proved capable is not applicable to the presidency therefore the american people have wisely established a custom against allowing any man to hold that office for more than two consecutive terms but every shred of power which a president exercises while an office banishes absolutely when he has once left office an ex-president stands precisely for an article more power to secure a nomination or election than if he had never held the office at all indeed he probably has less because of the very fact that he has held the office therefore the reasoning on which the anti-third term is based has no application whatever to an ex-president and no application whatever to anything except a formula and like all formulas a potential source of mischievous confusion having this in mind I regarded the customers applying practically if not just as much to a president who had been seven and a half years in office as to one who had been eight years in office and therefore in the teeth of a practically unanimous demand from my own party that I accept another nomination and the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be ratified at the polls that had to me in 1908 on the other hand it had no application whatever to any human being save where it was invoked in the case of a man desiring a third consecutive term having given such substantial proof of my own regard for the custom I deemed it a duty to add this comment on it I believe that it is well to have a custom of this kind to be generally observed but that it would be very unwise to have it definitely hardened into a constitutional prohibition a man should stay in office 12 consecutive years as president but most certainly the American people are fit to take care of themselves and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying ordinance they should not bind themselves never to take action which under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great interest to take it is obviously of the last importance to the safety of a democracy that in time of real peril it should be able to command the service in the highest position where the service rendered will be most valuable it would be a benighted policy in such event to disqualify absolutely from the highest office a man who while holding it had actually shown the highest capacity to exercise its powers with the utmost effect for the public defense if for instance a tremendous crisis occurred at the end of the second term of a man like Lincoln as such a crisis occurred at the end of the second term it would continue to use the services of the one man whom they knew and did not merely guess could carry them through the crisis the third term tradition has no value whatever except as it applies to a third consecutive term while it is well to keep it as a custom it would be a mark both of weakness and unwisdom for the family that was always a great favorite of mine it pictured an old fellow with chin whiskers a farmer in his shirt sleeves with his boots off sitting before the fire reading the president's message on his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up by the dozen in Joe Ferris's store at Midora in the days when I probably been in the Civil War in his youth he had worked hard ever since he left the army he had been a good husband and father he had brought up his boys and girls to work he did not wish to do injustice to anyone else but he wanted justice done to himself and to others like him and I was bound to secure that justice for him if it lay in shortly before the national convention of 1904 spoke of me as follows president Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the national republican convention of 1904 is an assured thing he makes no concealment of his conviction and it is unreservedly shared by his friends we think president Roosevelt is right there are strong and convincing reasons why the president should feel that it is a skill and undeniable success the president has disarmed all his enemies every weapon they had new or old has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable Roosevelt arsenal why should people wonder that Mr. Brian clings to silver has not Mr. Roosevelt absorbed and sequestered every vestige of the Kansas city platform that had a shred of practical value but the voters pretend for one moment that Mr. Brian could have conceived much less enforced any such pursuit of the trust as that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue will Mr. Brian himself intimate that the federal courts would have turned to his projects the friendly countenance which they have lent to the trust in bringing wealth to its knees and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest streams of Brian's campaign orators he has outdone them all and how utterly the president has routed the pretensions of Brian and of the whole democratic court in respect to organized labor how empty were all their professions their moutings and their howlings in the face of the simple short hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Brian could have visited upon in a century he is the leader of the labor unions of the united states Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above the constitution because for him they are the American people this last I need hardly say is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation Senator LaFollet when I was leaving the presidency in March 1909 wrote as follows Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully he has ruled his party to a large extent against its will he has played a large part in the world's work for the past seven years the activities of his remarkably forcible personality have been so manifold that it will be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race he is said to think and its rapid and successful carrying forward the making of peace between Russia and Japan and the sing around the world of the fleet these are important things but many will be slow to think them his greatest services the Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in operation and the matter of organizing this work seems to be fine but no one can say whether this project will be a gigantic success and carried through sometime soon as historic periods go anyhow the peace of Portsmouth was a great thing to be responsible for and Roosevelt's good offices undoubtedly saved a great and bloody battle in Manchuria but the war was fought out and the parties ready to quit and there is reason to think that it was only when this situation was arrived at that the good offices of the President of the United States were more or less indirectly invited to reform Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we please it worked out well but none of these things it will seem to many can compare with some of Roosevelt's other achievements perhaps he is loathed to take credit as a reformer for he is prone to spell the word with question marks and to speak despairingly of reform but for all that this contender of reformers made reform respectable and well known conceded to be useful he has preached from the White House many doctrines but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithien stinging phrase the square deal the task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world and of giving the nation a slogan in a phrase is greater than the man who performed it is likely to think and then there is the great and statesman like movement for the conservation rosevelt so energetically through himself at a time when the nation as a whole knew not that we were ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as we can this is probably the greatest thing rosevelt did undoubtedly this globe is the capital stock of the race it is just so much coal and oil and gas this may be economized or wasted the same thing is true of phosphates and other mineral resources the forest have been destroyed they must be restored our soils are being depleted they must be built up and conserved these questions are not of this day only or of this generation they belong all to the future their consideration requires that high moral tone which regards the earth as the home of a posterity to whom we owe a sacred duty this immense idea rosevelt with high statesmanship dend into the ears by that it attracted the attention of the neighboring nations of the continent and will so spread and intensify that we will soon see the world's conferences devoted to it nothing can be greater or finer than this it is so great and so fine that when the historian of the future shall speak of theodore rosevelt he is likely to say that he did many notable world movement for staying terrestrial waste and saving for the human race the things upon which and upon which alone a great and peaceful and progressive and happy race life can be founded what statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a view and for a purpose more lofty end of chapter 10 recording by Amanda rosevelt this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org autobiography of theodore rosevelt chapter 11 the natural resources of the nation part 1 when governor of new york as i have already described i had been in consultation with gilford and fh newell and had shaped my recommendations about forestry largely in accordance with their suggestions like other men who had thought about the national future at all i had been growing more and more concerned over the destruction of the forests while i had lived in the west i had come to realize the vital need of irrigation to the country and i had been both amused and irritated by the attitude of eastern men to determine the river of the nations power to develop a squat ok and the river rosevelt and florida engineer under Major Powell, and, unlike Powell, he appreciated the need of saving the forests and the soil as well as the need of irrigation. Between Powell and Newell came, as director of the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, who, after the Reclamation Act was passed, by his force, pertinacity, and tact, succeeded in putting the Act into effect in the best possible manner. Dr. Francis G. Newlands of Nevada fought hard for the cause of Reclamation in Congress. He attempted to get his State to act and, when that proved hopeless, to get the Nation to act, and was ably assisted by Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep interest in irrigation matters. Dr. W. J. McGee was one of the leaders in all the later stages of the movement. But Guilford Pinchot was the man to whom the Nation owes most for what has been accomplished, as regards the preservation of the natural resources of our country. He led, and indeed during its most vital period, embodied, the fight for the preservation through the use of our forests. He played one of the leading parts in the effort to make the National Government the chief instrument in developing the irrigation of the arid West. He was the foremost leader in the great struggle to coordinate all our social and governmental forces in the effort to secure the adoption of a rational and far-seeing policy for securing the conservation of all our national resources. He was already in the government service as head of the Forestry Bureau when I became president. He continued throughout my term not only as the head of the Forest Service, but as the moving and directing spirit in most of the conservation work, and as counselor and assistant on most of the other work connected with the internal affairs of the country. Taking into account the varied nature of the work you did, its vital importance to the Nation and the fact that as regards much of it, he was practically breaking new ground, and taking into account also his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests of the plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I believe it is but just to say that among the many, many public officials who, under my administrations, rendered literally invaluable services to the people of the United States, he, on the whole, stood first. A few months after I left the presidency, he was removed from office by President Taft. The first work I took up when I became president was the work of reclamation. Shortly after I had come to Washington after the assassination of President McKinley, while staying at the house of my sister, Ms. Coles, before going into the White House, Newell and Pinchot called upon me and laid before me their plans for national irrigation of the arid lands of the West, and for the consolidation of the forest work of the government in the Bureau of Forestry. At that time, a narrowly legalistic point of view towards natural resources obtained in the departments and controlled the governmental administrative machinery. Through the General Land Office and other government bureaus, the public resources were being handled and disposed of in accordance with the small considerations of petty legal formalities. Instead of for the large purposes of constructive development and the habit of deciding, whenever possible, in favor of private interests against the public welfare was firmly fixed. It was as little customary to favor the bona fide settler and home builder, as against a strict construction of the law, as it was to use the law in thwarting the operations of the land grabbers. A technical compliance with the letter of the law was all that was required. The idea that our national resources were inexhaustible still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of national welfare and national efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the west was still a matter for private enterprise alone, and our magnificent river system with its superb possibility for public usefulness was dealt with by the national government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork barrel problems whose only real interest was in their effect on the re-election or defeat of a congressman here and there, a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains. The place of the farmer in the national economy was still regarded solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still remained wholly outside the recognition of the government. All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and administered in one department, and all the foresters in government employ were in another department. Forests and foresters had nothing whatever to do with each other. The national forests in the west, then called forest reserves, were wholly inadequate in area to meet the purpose for which they were created, while the need for forest protection in the east had not yet begun to enter the public mind. That was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me. I was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry, and, after listening to my two guests, I asked them to prepare material on the subject for me to use in my first message to Congress of December 3, 1901. This message laid the foundation for the development of irrigation and forestry during the next seven and one-half years. It set forth the new attitude towards the natural resources in the words, the forest and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the United States. On the day when the message was read, a committee of Western senators and congressmen was organized to prepare a reclamation bill in accordance with the recommendations. By far the most effective of the senators in drafting and pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and others at several conferences and revised in important particulars. My act of interference was necessary to prevent it from being made unworkable by an undue insistence upon state rights in accordance with the efforts of Mr. Mondell and other congressmen, who consistently fought for local and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole. On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It set aside the proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming the waste areas of the arid west by irrigating lands otherwise worthless and thus creating new homes upon the land. The money so appropriated was to be repaid to the government by the settlers and to be used again as a revolving fund continuously available for the work. The impatience of the Western people to see immediate results from the Reclamation Act was so great that red tape was discarded and the work was pushed forward at a rate previously unknown in governmental affairs. Later, as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of alleged illegality and haste which are so easy to make after results had been accomplished and the need for the measures without which nothing could have been done has gone by. These criticisms were in character precisely the same as that made about the acquisition of Panama, the settlement of the anthracite coal strike, the suits against the big trusts, the stopping of the panic of 1907 by the action of the executive concerning the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, and, in short, about most of the best work done during my administration. With the Reclamation work, as with much other work under me, the men in charge were given to understand that they must get into the water if they would learn to swim, and, furthermore, they learned to know that if they acted honestly and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility, I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other case, in the end, the boldness of the action fully justified itself. Every item of the whole great plan of Reclamation now in effect was undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the spring of 1909, the work was an assured success, and the government had become fully committed to its continuance. The work of Reclamation was at first under the United States Geological Survey, of which Charles D. Walcott was at that time director. In the spring of 1908, the United States Reclamation Service was established to carry it on under the direction of Frederick Hayes Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Newell's single-minded devotion to this great task, the construct of imagination which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and high character through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built up a model service. All of these have made him a model servant. The final proof of his merit is supplied by the character and records of the men who later assailed him. Although the gross expenditure of the Reclamation Act is not yet as large as that for the Panama Canal, the engineering obstacles to be overcome have been almost as great, and the political impediments many times greater. The Reclamation work had to be carried on at widely separated points, remote from railroads under the most difficult pioneer conditions. The 28 projects begun in the years 1902 to 1906 contemplated the irrigation of more than 3 million acres and the watering of more than 30,000 farms. Many of the dams required for this huge task are higher than any previously built anywhere in the world. They feed mainline canals over 7,000 miles in total length and involve minor constructions such as culverts and bridges, tens of thousands in number. What the Reclamation Act has done for the country is by no means limited to its material accomplishments. This act and the results flowing from it have helped powerfully to prove to the nation that it can handle its own resources and exercise direct and business-like control over them. The population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the arid West, while comparatively small when compared with that in the more closely inhabited East, has been a most effective contribution to the national life. For it has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West, making for the stability of the institutions upon which the welfare of the whole country rests. It has substituted actual homemakers who have settled on the lands with their families for huge migratory bands of sheep herded by the hired shepherds of the absentee owners. The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service and on Mr. Newell arise in large part if not altogether from an organized effort to repudiate the obligations of the settlers to repay the government for what it has expended to reclaim the land. The repudiation of any debt can always find supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support not only of certain men among the settlers who hope to be relieved of paying what they owe, but also of a variety of unscrupulous politicians, some highly placed. It is unlikely that their efforts to deprive the West of the revolving irrigation fund will succeed in doing anything but discrediting these politicians in the sight of all honest men. Then in the spring of 1911 I visited the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona and opened the reservoir. I made a short speech to the assembled people. Among other things I said to the engineers present that, in the name of all good citizens, I thank them for their admirable work, as efficient as it was honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of public service. As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces of those of the force who were present, and thought of similar men in the service in higher positions who were absent, and who were no less responsible for the work done, I felt the foreboding that they would never receive any real recognition for their achievements, and, only half humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit or any satisfaction, except their own knowledge that they had done well a first class job, for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would be to investigate them. Well, a year later a congressional committee actually did investigate them. The investigation was instigated by some unscrupulous local politicians, and by some settlers who wished to be relieved from paying their just obligations, and the members of the committee joined in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public servants as the government has ever had, an attack made on them solely because they were honorable and efficient and loyal to the interests both of the government and the settlers. When I became president, the Bureau of Forestry, since 1905 the United States Forest Service, was a small but growing organization under Guilford Pinchot, occupied mainly with laying the foundation of American forestry by scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of forestry on private lands. It contained all the trained foresters in the government service, but had charge of no public timberlands whatsoever. The government forest reserves of that day were in the care of a division in the General Land Office, under the management of clerks wholly without knowledge of forestry, few, if any of whom, had ever seen a foot of the timberlands for which they were responsible. Thus, the reserves were neither well protected nor well used. There were no foresters among the men who had charge of the national forests, and no government forests in charge of the government foresters. In my first message to Congress, I strongly recommended the consolidation of the forest work in the hands of the trained men of the Bureau of Forestry. This recommendation was repeated in other messages, but Congress did not give effect to it until three years later. In the meantime, by thorough study of the western public timberlands, the groundwork was laid for responsibilities which were to fall upon the Bureau of Forestry when the care of the national forests came to be transferred to it. It was evident that trained American foresters would be needed in considerable numbers, and a forest school was established at Yale to supply them. In 1901, at my suggestion as president, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Hitchcock, made a formal request for technical advice from the Bureau of Forestry in handling the national forests, and an extensive examination of their conditions and needs was accordingly taken up. The same year, a study was begun of the proposed Appalachian National Forest, the plan of which, already formulated at the time, has since been carried out. A year later, experimental planning on the national forests was also begun, and studies preparatory to the application of practical forestry to the Indian reserves were undertaken. In 1903, so rapidly did the public work of the Bureau of Forestry increase that the examination of lands for new forest reserves was added to the study of those already created. The forest lands of the various states were studied, and cooperation with several of them in the examination and handling of their forest lands was undertaken. While these practical tasks were pushed forward, a technical knowledge of American forests was rapidly accumulated. The special knowledge gained was made public in printed bulletins, and at the same time the Bureau undertook, through the newspaper and periodical press, to make all the people of the United States acquainted with the needs and the purpose of practical forestry. It is doubtful whether there has ever been elsewhere under the government such effective publicity, publicity purely in the interest of the people at so low a cost. Before the educational work of the Forest Service was stopped by the Taft administration, it was securing the publication of facts about forestry and 50 million copies of newspapers a month at a total expense of $6,000 a year. Not one cent has ever been paid by the Forest Service to any publication of any kind for the printing of this material. It was given out freely and published without cost because it was news. Without this publicity the Forest Service could not have survived the attacks made upon it by the representative of the great special interests in Congress, nor could forestry in America have made the rapid progress it has. The result of all the work outlined above was to bring together in the Bureau of Forestry by the end of 1904 the only body of forest experts under the government and practically all of the first-hand information about public forest which was then in existence. In 1905 the obvious and foolishness of continuing to separate the foresters in the forests reinforced by the actions of the First National Forest Congress held in Washington brought about the act of February 1st 1905 which transferred the forests from the care of the Interior Department to the Department of Agriculture which resulted in the creation of the present United States Forest Service. The men upon whom the responsibility of handling some 60 million acres of national forest land was thrown were ready for the work both in the office and in the field because they had been preparing for it for more than five years without delay they proceeded under the leadership of Pinchot to apply to the new work the principles they had already formulated one of these was to open all the resources of the national forests to regulated use another was that of putting every part of the land to that use in which it would best serve the public following this principle the act of June 11th 1906 was drawn and its passage was secured from Congress this law throws open to settlement all lands in the national forest that is found on examination to be chiefly valuable for agriculture hitherto all such land had been closed to the settler the principles thus formulated and applied may be summed up in the statement that the rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh private rights and must be given its first consideration until that time in dealing with the national forests and the public lands generally private rights had almost uniformly been allowed to overbalance public rights the change we made was right and was vitally necessary but of course it created bitter opposition from private interests one of the principles whose application was the source of much hostility was this it is better for the government to help a poor man to make a living for his family then to help a rich man make more profit for his company this principle was too sound to be fought openly it is the kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in words but we translated the words into deeds and when they found that this was the case many rich men especially sheep owners were stirred to hostility and they used the congressmen they controlled to assault us getting most aid from certain demagogues who were equally glad improperly to denounce rich men in public and improperly to serve them in private the forest service established and enforced regulations which favored the settler as against the large stock owner required that necessary reductions in stock grazed on any national forest should bear first on the big man before the few head of the small man upon which the living of his family depended were reduced and made grazing in the national forests a help instead of a hindrance to permanent settlement as a result the small settlers and their families became on the whole the best friends the forest service has although in places their ignorance was played upon by the demagogues to influence them against the policy that was primarily for their own interest and of chapter eleven part one chapter eleven part two of autobiography of theodore roosevelt this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org autobiography of theodore roosevelt chapter eleven the natural resources of the nation part two another principle which led to the bitterest antagonism of all was this whoever except a bona fide settler takes public property for private profit should pay for what he gets in the effort to apply this principle the forest service obtained a decision from the attorney general that it was legal to make men who grazed sheep and cattle on the national forests pay for what they got accordingly in the summer of nineteen oh six for the first time such a charge was made and in the face of the bitterest opposition it was collected up to the time the national forests were put under the charge of the forest service the interior department had made no effort to establish public regulation and control of water powers upon the transfer the service immediately began its fight to handle the power resources of the national forests so as to prevent speculation and monopoly and to yield the fair return to the government on may first nineteen oh six an act was passed granting the use of certain power sites in southern california to the Edison electric power company which act at the suggestion of the service limited the period of the permit to forty years and required the payment of an annual rental by the company the same conditions which were thereafter adopted by the service as the basis for all permits for power development then began a vigorous fight against the position of the service by the water power interests the right to charge for water power development was however sustained by the attorney general in nineteen oh seven the area of the national forest was increased by presidential proclamation more than forty three million acres the plant necessary for the full use of the forests such as roads trails and telephone lines began to be provided on a large scale the interchange of field and office men so as to prevent antagonism between them which is so destructive to efficiency in most great businesses was established as a permanent policy and the really effective management of the enormous area of the national forests began to be secured with all this activity in the field the progress of technical forestry and popular education was not neglected in nineteen oh seven for example sixty one publications on various phases of forestry with the total of more than a million copies were issued as against three publications with the total of eighty two thousand copies in nineteen oh one by this time also the opposition of the servants of the special interests in congress to the forest service had become strongly developed and more time appeared to be spent in the yearly attacks upon it during the passage of the appropriation bills then on all other government bureaus put together every year the forest service had to fight for its life one incident in these attacks is worth recording while the agricultural appropriation bill was passing through the senate in nineteen oh seven senator fulton of oregon secured an amendment providing that the president could not set aside any national forests in the six northwestern states this meant retaining some sixteen million of acres to be exploited by land grabbers and by the representatives of the great special interests at the expense of the public interest but for four years the forest service had been gathering field notes as to what forests ought to be set aside in these states and so was prepared to act it was equally undesirable to veto the whole agricultural bill and design it with this amendment effective accordingly a plan to create the necessary national forest in these states before the agricultural bill could be passed and signed was laid before me by mister pen show i approved it the necessary papers were immediately prepared i signed the last proclamation a couple of days before by my signature the bill became law and when the friends of the special interests in the senate got their amendment through and woke up they discovered that sixteen million acres of timberland had been saved for the people by putting them in the national forests before the land grabbers could get at them the opponents of the forest service turned hand springs in the wrath and dire where their threats against the executive but the threats could not be carried out and were really only a tribute to the efficiency of our action by nineteen oh eight the fire prevention work of the forest service had become so successful that eighty six percent of the fires that did occur were held down to an area of five acres or less and the timber sales which yielded sixty thousand dollars in nineteen oh five and in nineteen oh eight produced eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the same year in addition to the work of the national forests the responsibility for the proper handling of indian timberlands was laid upon the forest service where it remained with great benefit to the indians until it was withdrawn as a part of the attack on the conservation policy made after i left office by march fourth nineteen oh nine nearly half a million acres of agricultural land in the national forests had been open to settlement under the act of june eleventh nineteen oh six the business management of the forest service became so excellent thanks to the remarkable executive capacity of the associate forester over ten w price removed after i left office that it was declared by a well-known firm of business organizers to compare favorably with the best managed of the great private corporations an opinion which was confirmed by the report of a congressional investigation and by the report of the presidential committee on department method the area of the national forests had increased from forty three to one hundred and ninety four million acres the force from about five hundred to more than three thousand there was saved for public use in the national forests more government timberland during the seven and a half years prior to march fourth nineteen oh nine then during all previous and succeeding years put together the idea that the executive is the steward of the public welfare was first formulated and given practical effect in the forest service by its law officer george woodruff the laws were often insufficient and it became well-known possible to get them amended in the public interest when once the representatives of privilege in congress grasp the fact that i would sign no amendment that contained anything not in the public interest it was necessary to use what law was already in existence and then further to supplement it by executive action the practice of examining every claim to public land before passing it in a private ownership offers a good example of the policy in question this practice which has since become general was first applied in the national forests enormous areas of valuable public timberland were thereby saved from fraudulent acquisition more than two hundred and fifty thousand acres were thus saved in a single case this theory of stewardship in the interest of the public was well illustrated by the establishment of a water power policy until the forest service changed the plan water powers on the navigable streams on the public domain and in the national forests were given away for nothing and substantially without question to whoever asked for them at last under the principle that public property should be paid for and should not be permanently granted away when such permanent grant is avoidable the forest service established a policy of regulating the use of power in the national forests in the public interest and making a charge for value received this was the beginning of the water power policy now substantially accepted by the public and doubtless soon to be enacted into law but there was at the outset violent opposition to it on the part of the water power companies and such representatives of their views in congress as missus tony and bead many bills were introduced in congress aimed in one way or another at relieving the power companies of control and payment when these bills reached me i refuse to sign them and the injury to the public interest which would follow their passage was brought sharply to public attention in my message of february twenty six nineteen oh eight the bills made no further progress under the same principle of stewardship railroads and other corporations which applied for and were given rights in the national forests were regulated in the use of those rights in short the public resources in charge of the forest service were handled frankly and openly for the public welfare under the clear cut and clearly set forth principles that the public rights come first and private interests second the natural result of this new attitude was the assertion in every forum by the representatives of special interests that the forest service was exceeding its legal powers and thwarting the intention of congress suits were begun wherever the chance arose it is worth recording that in spite of the novelty and complexity of the legal questions it had to face no court of last resort had ever decided against the forest service this statement includes the two unanimous decisions by the supreme court of the united states in its administration of the national forests the forest service found that valuable coal lands were in danger of passing into private ownership without adequate money returns to the government and without safeguard against monopoly and that existing legislation was insufficient to prevent this when this condition was brought to my attention i withdrew all forms of entry about sixty eight million acres of coal land in the united states including alaska the refusal of congress to act in the public interest was solely responsible for keeping these lands from entry the conservation movement was a direct outgrowth of the forest movement it was nothing more than the application to our other natural resources of the principles which had been worked out in connection with the forests without the basis of public sentiment which had been built up for the protection of the forests and without the example of public foresight in the protection of this one of the great natural resources the conservation movement would have been impossible the first formal step was the creation of the inland waterways commission appointed on march fourteenth nineteen oh seven in my letter appointing the commission i called attention to the value of our streams as a great natural resource and to the need for a progressive plan for their development and control and said it is not possible to properly frame so large a plan as this for the control of our rivers without taking account of the orderly development of other national resources therefore i ask that the inland waterways commission shall consider the relations of the streams to the use of all great permanent national resources and their conservation for making and maintaining of prosperous homes over a year later writing on the report of the commission i said the preliminary report of the inland waterways commission was excellent in every way it outlines a general plan of waterway improvement which when adopted will give assurance that the improvements will yield practical results in the way of increased navigation and water transportation in every essential feature the plan recommended by the commission is new in the principle of coordinating all uses of the waters and treating each water system as a unit in the principle of correlating water traffic with rail and other land traffic in the principle of expert initiation of projects in accordance with commercial foresight and the needs of a growing country and in the principle of cooperation between the states and the federal government in the administration and use of waterways etc the general plan proposed by the commission is new and at the same time saying and simple the plan deserves unqualified support i regret that it has not yet been adopted by congress but i am confident that ultimately it will be adopted the most striking incident in the history of the commission was the trip down the mississippi river in october nineteen oh seven when as president of the united states i was the chief guest this excursion with the meetings which were held in the wide public attention it attracted gave the development of our inland waterways a new standing in public estimation during the trip a letter was prepared and presented to me asking me to summon a conference on the conservation of natural resources my intention to call such a conference was publicly announced at a great meeting at minthes tennessee in the november following i wrote to each of the governors of the several states and to the presidents of the various important national societies concerned with national resources inviting them to attend the conference which took place may thirteen to may fifteen nineteen oh eight in the east room of the white house it is doubtful weather except in time of war any new idea of like importance has ever been presented to a nation and accepted by it with such effectiveness and rapidity as was the case with this conservation movement when it was introduced to the american people by the conference of governors the first result was the unanimous declaration of the governors of all the states and territories upon the subject of the conservation a document which ought to be hung in every schoolhouse throughout the land a further result was the appointment of thirty six state conservation commissions on june eight nineteen oh eight of the national conservation commission the task of this commission was to prepare an inventory the first ever made for any nation of all the natural resources which underlay its property the making of this inventory was made possible by an executive order which place the resources of the government departments at the command of the commission and made possible the organization of subsidiary committees by which the actual facts for the inventory were prepared and digested gilford pen show was made chairman of the commission the report of the national conservation commission was not only the first inventory of our resources but was unique in the history of government in the amount and variety of information brought together it was completed in six months it laid squarely before the american people the essential facts regarding our natural resources when facts were greatly needed as the basis for constructive action this report was presented to the joint conservation congress in december at which there were present governors of twenty states representatives of twenty two state conservation commissions and representatives of sixty national organizations previously represented at the white house conference the report was unanimously approved and transmitted to me january eleventh nineteen oh nine on january twenty second nineteen oh nine i transmitted the report of the national conservation commission to congress with a special message in which it was accurately described as one of the most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the american people the joint conservation congress of december nineteen oh eight suggested to me the practicability of holding a north american conservation congress i selected gilford pen show to convey this invitation in person to lord gray governor general of canada and to sir wilfrid lawyer and to president de as of mexico giving reason for my action in the letter in which this invitation was conveyed the fact that it is evident that natural resources are not limited by boundary lines which separate nations and that the need for conserving them upon this continent is as wide as the area upon which they exist in response to this invitation which included the colony of newfoundland the commissioners assembled in the white house on february eighteen nineteen oh nine the american commissioners were gilford pen show robert bacon and james are garfield after a session continuing through five days the conference united in a declaration of principles and suggested to the president of the united states that all nations should be invited to join together in the conference on the subject of world resources and their inventory conservation and wide utilization end quote accordingly on february nineteenth nineteen oh nine robert bacon secretary of state addressed to forty five nations a letter of invitation to send delegates to a conference to be held at the hay at such date to be found convenient there to meet and consult like the delegates of other countries with a view of considering a general plan for an inventory of the natural resources of the world and to devising a uniform scheme for the expression of the result of such inventory to the end that there may be a general understanding and appreciation of the world supply of the material elements which underlie the development of civilization and the welfare of the peoples of the earth end quote after i left the white house the project lapsed and chapter eleven part two chapter eleven part three of autobiography of theodore roosevelt this is a liber vox recording all liber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liber vox dot org autobiography of theodore roosevelt chapter eleven the natural resources of the nation part three throughout the early part of my administration the public land policy was chiefly directed to the defense of the public lands against fraud and theft secretary hitchcock's efforts along this line resulted in the oregon land fraud cases which led to the conviction of senator mitchell and which made francis j henry known to the american people as one of their best and most effective servants these land fraud prosecutions under mr henry together with the study of the public lands which preceded the passage of the reclamation act in nineteen oh two and the investigation of the land titles in the national forests by the forest service all combined to create a clearer understanding of the need of land law reform and thus led to the appointment of the public lands commission this commission appointed by me on october twenty second nineteen oh three was directed to report to the president upon the condition operation and effect of the present land laws and to recommend such changes as are needed to affect the largest practicable disposition of the public lands to the actual settlers who will build permanent homes upon them and to secure in performance the fullest and most effective use of the resources of the public lands it proceeded without loss of time to make a personal study on the ground of public land problems throughout the west to confer with the governors and other public men most concerned and to assemble the information concerning the public lands the laws and decisions which govern them and the methods of defeating or evading those laws which was already in existence but which remained unformulated in the records of the general land office and in the mind of its employees the public lands commission made its first preliminary report on march seven nineteen oh four it found quote that the present land laws do not fit the conditions of the remaining public lands in quote and recommended specific changes to meet the public needs a year later the second report of the commission recommended still further changes and said quote the fundamental fact that characterizes the situation under the present land laws is this that the number of patents issued is increasing out of all proportion to the number of new homes and quote this report laid the foundation of the movement for government control of the open range and included by far the most complete statement ever made of the disposition of the public domain among the most difficult topics considered by the public lands commission was that of the mineral land laws this subject was referred by the commission to the american institute of mining engineers which reported upon it through a committee this committee made the very important recommendation among others quote that the government of the united states should retain title to all minerals including coal and oil in the lands of unceded territory and least the same to individuals or corporations at a fixed rental and quote the necessity for this action has since come to be very generally recognized another recommendation since partly carried into effect was for the separation of the surface and the minerals in the land containing coal and oil our land laws have of recent years proved ineffective yet the land laws themselves have not been so much to blame as the lax unintelligent and often corrupt administration of these laws the appointment on march four nineteen oh seven of james r garfield as secretary of the interior led to a new era of the interpretation and enforcement of the laws governing the public lands his administration of the interior department was beyond comparison the best we have ever had it was based primarily on the conception that it is as much the duty of public land officials to help the honest settler get title to his claim as it is to prevent the looting of the public lands the essential fact about public land frauds is not merely that public property is stolen but that every claim fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making of a home or a livelihood by an honest man as the study of the public land laws preceded and their administration improved a public land policy was formulated in which the saving of the resources on the public domain for public use became the leading principle there followed the withdrawal of coal and says already described of oil lands and phosphate lands and finally just at the end of the administration of water power sites on the public domain these withdrawals were made by the executive in order to afford to congress the necessary opportunity to pass wise laws dealing with their use and disposal and the great crooked special interests fought them with incredible bitterness among the men of this nation interested in the vital problems affecting the welfare of the ordinary hardworking men and women of the nation there is none whose interest has been more intense and more holy free from taint of thought of self than that of thomas watson of georgia while president i often discussed with him the conditions of women on the small farms and on the frontier the hardship of their lives as compared with those of the men and the need for taking their welfare into consideration in whatever was done for the improvement of life on the land i also went over the matter with c s barrett of georgia a leader in the southern farmers movement and with other men such as henry wallace dean lh bailey of cornell and kenyon butterfield one man from whose advice i especially profited was not an american but an irish man sir whores plunkett in various conversations he described to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm life which had been accomplished by the agricultural organization society of ireland of which he was the founder and the controlling force and he discussed the application of similar methods to the improvement of farm life in the united states in the spring of nineteen oh eight at my request plunkett conferred on the subject with garfield and pen show and the latter suggested to him the appointment of a commission on county life as a means for directing the attention of the nation to the problems of the farm and for securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions of life in the open country after long discussion a plan for a county life commission was laid before me and approved the appointment of the commission followed in august nineteen oh eight in the letter of the appointment the reasons for creating the commission were set forth as follows quote i doubt if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount of attention given by the government both federal and state to agricultural matters but practically the whole of this effort has hitherto been directed towards increasing the production of crops our attention has been concentrated almost exclusively on getting better farming in the beginning this was unquestionably the right thing to do the farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to support himself and his family but when this has been secured the effort for better farming should cease to stand alone and should be accompanied by the effort for better business and better living on the farm it is at least as important that the farmer should get the largest possible return in money comfort and social advantages from the crops he grows as that he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he farms agriculture is not the whole of country life the great rural interests are human interests and good crops are of little value to the farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm end quote the commission of country life did work of capital importance by means of a widely circulated set of questions the commission informed itself upon the status of country life throughout the nation it stripped through the east south and west brought it into contact with large numbers of practical farmers and their wives secured for the commissioners a most valuable body of first-hand information and laid the foundation for the remarkable awakening of interest in country life which has since taken place throughout the nation one of the most illuminating and incidentally one of the most interesting and amusing series of answers sent to the commission was from a farmer in Missouri he stated that he had a wife and eleven living children he and his wife being each fifty two years old and that they owned five hundred and twenty acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads he had himself done well and his views as to why many of his neighbors had done lust well are entitled to consideration these views are expressed in terse and vigorous English they cannot always be quoted in full he states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages that the schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the farm because they allow them to get an idea in their heads that city life is better and that to remedy this practical farming should be taught to the question whether the farmers and their wives in his neighborhood are satisfactorily organized he answers quote oh there is a little one horse grange gang in our locality and every darned one thinks they ought to be a king and quote to the question are the renters of farms in your neighborhood making a satisfactory living he answers quote because they move about so much hunting a better job and quote to the question is the supply of farm labor in your neighborhood satisfactory the answer is quote because the people have gone out of the baby business and quote and when asked as to the remedy he answers quote give a pension to every mother who gives birth to seven living boys on american soil and quote to the question are the conditions surrounding hired labor on the farm in your neighborhood satisfactory to the hired men he answers quote yes unless he is a drunken cuss and quote adding that he would like to blow up the still houses and root out whiskey and beer to the question are the sanitary conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory he answers quote too careless about chicken yards and the like and poorly covered wells in one well on a neighbor's farm i counted seven snakes in the wall of the well and they use the water daily his wife is dead now and he is looking for another and quote he ends by stating that the most important single thing to be done for the betterment of country life is quote good roads and quote but in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the individual equation of the man or woman like the rest of the commissions described in this chapter the country life commission cost the government not one cent but laid before the president and the country a massive information so accurate and so vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things as they are and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the reactionaries the report of the country life commission was transmitted to congress by me on february ninth nineteen oh nine in the accompanying message i asked for twenty five thousand dollars to print and circulate the report and to prepare for publication the immense amount of valuable material collected by the commission but still unpublished the reply made by congress was not only a refusal to appropriate the money but a positive prohibition against continuing the work the tony amendment to the sundry civil bill forbade the president to appoint any further commissions unless specifically authorized by congress to do so had this prohibition been enacted earlier and complied with it would have prevented the appointment of the six roosevelt commissions but i would not have complied with it mister tony one of the most effective representatives of the cause of special privilege and against public interest to be found in the house was later in conjunction with senator hail and others able to induce my successor to accept their view as what was almost my last official act i replied to congress that if i did not believe the tony amendment to be unconstitutional i would veto the sundry civil bill which contained it and that if i were remaining in office i would refuse to obey it the memorandum ran in part the chief object of this provision however is to prevent the executive repeating what it has done within the last year in connection with the conservation commission and the country life commission it is for the people of the country to decide whether or not they believe in the work done by the conservation commission and by the country life commission if they believe in improving our waterways in preventing the waste of soil in preserving the forests in thrifty use of the mineral resources of the country for the nation as a whole rather than merely for private monopolies in working for the betterment of the condition of the men and women who live on the farms then they will unstintedly condemn the action of every man who is in any way responsible for inserting this provision and will support those members of the legislative branch who opposed its adoption i would not sign the bill at all if i thought the provision entirely effective but the congress cannot prevent the president from seeking advice any future president can do as i have done and ask disinterested men who desire to serve the people to give this service free to the people through these commissions my successor the president elect in a letter to the senate committee on appropriations asked for the continuance and support of the conservation commission the conservation commission was appointed at the request of the governors of over forty states and almost all of these states have since appointed commissions to cooperate with the national commission nearly all the great national organizations concerned with natural resources have been hardly cooperating with the commission with all these facts before it the congress has refused to pass a law to continue and provide for the commission and now it passes a law with the purpose of preventing the executive from continuing the commission at all the executive therefore must now either abandon the work and reject the cooperation of the states or else must continue the work personally and through executive officers whom he may select for that purpose the chamber of commerce in spokane washington a singularly energetic and far-seeing organization itself published a report which congress has thus discreditably refused to publish the work of the bureau of corporations under herbert knock smith formed an important part of the conservation movement almost from the beginning mister smith was a member of the inland waterways commission and of the national conservation commission and his bureau prepared material of importance for the reports of both the investigation of standing timber in the united states by the bureau of corporations furnished for the first time a positive knowledge of the facts over nine hundred counties in timbered regions were covered by the bureau and the work took five years the most important facts ascertained were that forty years ago three-fourths of the standing timber in the united states was publicly owned while at the date of the report four-fifths of the timber in the country was in private hands the concentration of private ownership had developed to such an amazing extent that about two hundred holders owned nearly one half of all privately owned timber in the united states and of this the three greatest holders the southern pacific railway the northern pacific railway and the warehouser timber company held over ten percent of this work mister smith says it was important indeed to know the fact so that we could take proper action towards saving the timber still left to the public but a far more important was the light that this history and the history of our other resources throws on the basic attitude tradition and governmental beliefs of the american people the whole standpoint of the people towards the proper aim of government towards the relation of property to the citizen and the relation of property to the government were brought out first by this conservation work the work of the bureau of corporations as to water power was equally striking in addition to bringing the concentration of water power control first prominently to public attention through material furnished for my message in my veto of the james river dam bill the work of the bureau show that ten great interests and their allies held nearly sixty percent of the developed water power in the united states says commissioner smith perhaps the most important thing in the whole work was its clear demonstration of the fact that the only effective place to control water power in the public domain is at the power sites that as to powers now owned by the public it is absolutely essential that the public shall retain title the only way in which the public can get back to itself the margin of natural advantage in the water power site is to rent that site at a rental which added to the cost of power production there will make the total cost of water power about the same as fuel power and then let the two sell at the same price the price of fuel power of the fight of the water power men for state rights at the saint paul conservation congress in september nineteen oh nine commissioner smith says it was the first open sign of the shift of the special interests to the democratic party for a logical political reason namely because of the availability of the state's rights idea for the purposes of the large corporations it marked openly the turn of the tide mister smith brought to the attention of the inland waterways commission the overshadowing importance to waterways of their relation with railroad lines the fact that the book of the traffic is long-distance traffic that it cannot pass over the whole distance by water while it can go anywhere by rail and that therefore the power of the rail lines to pro-rate or not to pro-rate with water lines really determines the practical value of a river channel the controlling value of the terminals and the fact that out of fifty of our leading ports over half the active water frontage in twenty one ports was controlled by the railroads was also brought to the commission's attention and reports of great value were prepared both for the inland waterways commission and for the national conservation commission in addition to developing the basic facts about the available timber supply about waterways water power and iron ore mister smith helped to develop and drive into the public conscience the idea that the people ought to retain title to our national resources and handle them by the leasing system the things accomplished that have been enumerated above were of immediate consequence to the economic well-being of our people in addition to certain things that were done of which the economic bearing was more remote but which bore directly upon our welfare because they add to the beauty of living and therefore to the joy of life securing a great artist st. godin's to give us the most beautiful coinage since the decay of hellenistic grease was one such act in this case i had the power myself to direct the meant to employ st. godin's the first and most beautiful of his coins were issued in thousands before congress assembled or could intervene and a great and permanent improvement was made in the beauty of the coinage in the same way on the advice and suggestion of frank malay we got some really capital metals by sculptors of the first rank similarly the new buildings in washington were erected in place in proper relation to one another on plans provided by the best architects and landscape architects i also pointed a fine arts council an unpaid body of the best architects painters and sculptors in the country to advise the government as to the erection and decoration of all new buildings the pork barrel senators in congressman felt for this body in instinctive and perhaps from their standpoint a natural hostility and my successor a couple of months after taking office revoke the appointment and disbanded the council even more important was the taking of steps to preserve from destruction beautiful and wonderful wild creatures whose existence was threatened by greed and wantonness during the seven and a half years closing on march fourth nineteen oh nine more was accomplished for the protection of wildlife in the united states then during all the previous years except only the creation of yellowstone national park the record includes the creation of five national parks crater lake origan wind cave south dakota flat oklahoma silly hill north dakota and mesa verde colorado for big game refuges in oklahoma arizona montana and washington fifty one bird reservations and the enactment of laws for the protection of wildlife in alaska the district of columbia and on national bird reserves these measures may be briefly enumerated as follows the enactment of the first game laws for the territory of alaska in nineteen oh two and nineteen oh eight resulting in the regulation of the export of heads and trophies of big game and putting an end to the slaughter of deer for hides along the southern coast of the territory the securing in nineteen oh two of the first appropriation for the preservation of buffalo and the establishment in the yellowstone national park of the first and now the largest herd of buffalo belonging to the government the passage of the act of january twenty fourth nineteen oh five creating the wichita game preserves the first of the national game preserves in nineteen oh seven twelve thousand acres of this preserve were enclosed with a woven wire fence for the reception of the herd of fifteen buffalo donated by the new york zoological society the passage of the act of june twenty nine nineteen oh six providing for the establishment of the grand canyon game preserve of arizona now comprising one million four hundred and ninety two thousand nine hundred and twenty eight acres the passage of the national monuments act of june eight nineteen oh six under which a number of objects of scientific interest have been preserved for all time among the monuments created are near woods pinnacles national monument in california and the mount olympus national monument washington which form important refuges for gain the passage of the act of june thirty nineteen oh six regulating shooting in the district of columbia and making three fours of the environs of the national capital within the district in effect a national refuge the passage of the act of may twenty three nineteen oh eight providing for the establishment of the national bison range in montana this range comprises about eighteen thousand acres of land formerly in the flathead indian reservation on which is now established a herd of eighty buffalo a nucleus of which was donated to the government by the american bison society the issue of the order protecting the birds on the nair brahra military reservation nebraska in nineteen oh eight making this entire reservation in effect of bird reservation the establishment by executive order between march fourteen nineteen oh three and march four nineteen oh nine of fifty one national bird reservations distributed in seventeen states and territories from porta rica to hawaii and alaska the creation of these reservations at once placed the united states in the front rank in the world work of bird protection among these reservations are the celebrated pelican island rookery in indian river florida the mosquito inlet reservation florida the northern most home of the manatee the extensive marshes bordering klamath and malua lakes in oregon formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market and the ruthless destruction of plume birds for the millinery trade the tortugas key florida where in connection with the carnegie institute experiments have been made on the homing instincts of birds and the great bird colonies on leisand and sister inlets in hawaii some of the greatest colonies of seabirds in the world end of chapter eleven