The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [466]
VII
Creating seven federal bird reservations in Florida from February to October 1908 brought Roosevelt unexpected accolades from an up-and-coming political cartoonist: Jay Norwood (“Ding”) Darling. A short résumé of Darling’s life will help us to better understand how Roosevelt influenced a new generation of bird protectionists.
Although Darling was born in Michigan, he grew up in Sioux City, Iowa. As a teenager he often explored the flatlands of Nebraska and South Dakota like a cowlicked Tom Sawyer. He was employed as a cattle herder but had ambitions to earn a college degree. When he went to Yankton College in South Dakota, however, his smart-aleck side got the best of him, and he was kicked out in 1894 after taking the school president Henry Kimball Warren’s horse and buggy on an unauthorized ride. Rebounding, however, was part of Darling’s nature. He developed a fascination for Darwinian biology—an outgrowth of his infatuation with the ecosystems of the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River—and the prowling habits of cougars intrigued him (he and Roosevelt were kindred spirits to Roosevelt in this regard). He learned the Latin taxonomy of the Great Plains creatures, and he enrolled in Beloit College (Wisconsin), where he became the art editor of the yearbook. But he remained mischievous and an incurable class clown, and it didn’t take him long to get suspended for ridiculing faculty members in a series of cartoon strips.89
Darling eventually graduated and was hired as a political cartoonist at the Sioux City Journal. He deeply admired Roosevelt’s Dakota trilogy on hunting, and he rallied to the president’s side in 1900 owing to their shared affinity for preservationism-conservationism. To some people, Darling’s allegiance to Roosevelt was nearly insufferable. His inaugural political cartoon in the Journal, in fact, showed McKinley and T.R. on an elephant, lording it over a broken-down donkey carrying an imbecilic-looking William Jennings Bryan.90 But Darling’s satire was popular, and he was soon snagged by the Des Moines Register and Leader and given creative license. With doglike devotion to all things Rooseveltian, Darling used his carte blanche to promote all aspects of the conservation movement in his cartoon strips.91
When Darling spoofed the developers of his day, he always knew that Roosevelt was cheering him on. In particular, Darling took a deep, personal interest in Roosevelt’s attempts to stop the wanton destruction of bird habitats around America, appreciating that the president seldom hesitated to exercise executive power on behalf of wildlife. To Darling the federal bird reservations were a masterstroke against ignorance and greed. Few Americans even noticed their establishment, but Pine Island, Dry Tortugas, Stump Lake, and Three Arch Rocks became magical places to Darling. A great friendship developed between T.R. and Darling, with conservation as the link.92 Darling relished the fact that it took Congress many decades to fully understand the permanency of Roosevelt’s “I So Declare It” executive orders: and by then it was too late to reverse. Darling also claimed the avian photographs of William L. Finley—particularly his iconic Californian shot images of golden eagles, condors, and great blue heron—as galvanizing influences on his wildlife protection crusade.93
Darling believed that the federal bird reservations, even more than the national parks or national forests, were the enlightened, sensible way to save aviaries. Claiming that President Roosevelt