The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [486]
Reading the Proceedings of the Conference of Governors is quite telling, in a number of ways. Andrew Carnegie spun out dozens of statistics about iron ore and copper production, and he ended his address with praise for President Roosevelt’s Reclamation Service but not a peep about national monuments or forests. Geologists offered charts of riches still in the ground. The new governor of California, George C. Pardee, spoke about clear-cutting redwood forests so as to export timber, not of saving stands like those preserved in Muir Woods and Mariposa Grove. Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York praised Roosevelt for his work in Albany in 1900 to preserve the Adirondacks, and Governor James O. Davidson of Wisconsin bragged about the pine, hemlock, oak, and maple of the Dells, even though the Dells had been brutalized by overcommercialization. But these were oratorical exceptions to the norm. Most of the presentations at the governors’ conference came from technocrats who were terrified by the prospect of America’s vanishing natural resources.
There were some eruptions of anti-Roosevelt sentiment during the conference. Examples, in fact, were plentiful. Although Governor Edwin C. Norris of Montana effectively used humor to attenuate the sharpness of his speech, he strongly objected to federal land grabs for national monuments and forests. Montana needed Reclamation Service projects, but not the Lewis and Clark National Monument—absolutely not! Grumbling that he was tired of misinformed easterners claiming that Montana was nothing but “chill icebergs, cold weather, and blizzards,” Norris launched into a measured denunciation of the Forest Service. To begin with, he knew that some reserves were necessary for the watershed. But why was Montana, more than any other state, bearing the brunt of federal land seizures? Why were New Yorkers and Yalies so willing to declare acreage in Montana federal property—21 million acres, in fact—while holding back their own tree parks in places like the Berkshires, Adirondacks, and White Mountains? Norris supplied his own answer: President Roosevelt was treating Montana as little more than a protectorate because Montanans had little recourse on the federal level. “I would suggest, Mr. Secretary of the Interior, that there be no more [forest reserves]”, Governor Norris concluded with quiet indignation. “We have sufficient.”59
Everybody who attended the conference, including Norris, ended up with wonderful stories to tell. Although Muir was worried that Pinchot would try to own the resource management movement, he had no quarrel with Roosevelt’s developing a national dialogue on conservation. Roosevelt himself was clearly in his element at the conference, using his characteristic political shrewdness to mentally assess the men surrounding him. The president cut a stylish figure in a tailor-made suit and hat, looking as elegant as the best man at a wedding. In his memoir, Fighting the Insects, the entomologist L. O. Howard, known as Roosevelt’s “exterminator” at the USDA, recalled with a mixture of fondness and amazement the personal welcome he received from the president at the conference. “I found myself in line immediately behind Dr. C. Hart Merriam, the animal and bird man,” Howard recalled. “Immediately in front of him was William J. Bryan. As we reached the President, Mr. Bryan, in a pompous and somewhat condescending way (at least it seemed so to me), said ‘Mr. President, I congratulate you, sir, on having started this conservation movement, which, in my opinion,