The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [428]
One of Roosevelt’s strongest conservationist statements was a long letter he wrote on June 7, 1907, to Secretary of the Agriculture James Wilson. Obviously composed with posterity in mind, Roosevelt abandoned his usual cheerleading on behalf of “America the beautiful” in favor of a sober-minded analysis of the importance of protected forests for national security. “If the people of the states of the Great Plains, of the mountains, and of the Pacific slope wish for their states a great permanent growth in posterity they will stand for the policy of the administration,” Roosevelt wrote, disgusted that a Public Lands Convention was being organized in Colorado to overturn his policies. “If they stand for the policy of the makers of this program, they should clearly realize that it is a policy of skinning the land, chiefly in the temporary interest of a few huge corporations of great wealth, and to the utter impairment of its resources so far as the future is concerned. It is absolutely necessary to ascertain in practiced fashion the best methods of reforestation, and only the National Government can do this successfully.”15
II
Criticism of Roosevelt’s national forests of March 2 wasn’t confined to California, Washington, and Oregon. Newspapers in the grazing states of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana also slammed into Roosevelt. Many editors considered the large-scale withdrawal of timber and coal lands completely unacceptable. Inequity was involved because the federal government had grabbed western forestlands while leaving eastern forests in private hands. Demands were made for nullification. An editor of Denver Field and Farm fumed that one-fourth of Colorado was now a national forest: soon, decent Coloradans wouldn’t even have land left to bury the dead. The Centennial (Wyoming) Post of March 30 suggested that after March 2, an old cowboy song needed a new verse:
Bury me not on the range
Where the taxed cattle are roaming
And the mangy coyotes yelp and bark
And the wind in the pines is moaning
On the reserve please bury me not
For I never would then be free;
A forest ranger would dig me up
In order to collect his fee!16
Roosevelt’s forest conservationism brought him a lot of hate mail during the spring of 1907. Everybody west of the 100th meridian—which drops from the Manitoba–North Dakota border through Greater Bismarck and straight down to the streets of Laredo—seemed to have a quarrel with him. The White House mailroom grew leery of any letter postmarked Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, or California. The hugeness of what Roosevelt was doing seemed to be the principal concern. Roosevelt claimed that he was only stopping shifty businessmen, trust titans, and oil hogs from despoiling the national landscape, and that he was surprised when Wall Street called him a “wild-eyed revolutionist.” This was disingenuous on his part. Various captains of industry had pleaded with him to ease up on his apparent rancor toward railroads and oil. But Roosevelt refused to capitulate. With muckrakers cheering him on, Roosevelt enjoyed being a wilderness warrior. In his letters, he expressed a somewhat overstated preference for hiking Rock Creek Park to study fauna rather than dealing with unscrupulous robber barons. “The grounds are now putting on their dress of spring,” Roosevelt wrote to Kermit about the White House lawns. “The blossom trees are in bloom; perhaps the most beautiful spot at the moment is round the north fountain with the White Magnolia, the pink of the flowering peach, and the yellow of the forsythia.