Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [310]
Applause again surged, acting as a drumroll to his next, thematic sentence: “The Constitution of the United States thus grew in large part out of the necessity for united action in the wise use of our natural resources.”
He proceeded to catalog the irresponsibility with which Americans, over more than a century and a quarter, had successively abused water, mineral, and forest resources, leading to the loss of more than half the nation’s original timber, and signs of exhaustion already visible in iron and coal reserves. The pristine waterway scheme of the Founding Fathers was now neglected, underused, and ill managed. The “soils of unexampled fertility” that had greeted pioneer farmers were leaching away through ignorance, “washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation.” Again, he harped on the need for “foresight,” and again was applauded as his use of the word became rhythmic: “We have to, as a nation, exercise foresight … and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future!”
It was the duty of the Governors’ Conference, he said, to formulate a national philosophy of conservation based on efficient use of finite resources and scientific management of renewable ones. For himself, he vowed to continue working through the Inland Waterways Commission, which he took pride in having created (“I had to prosecute the work by myself”) and which, if Congress persisted in depriving it of funds, he would perpetuate by executive means.
This won him his loudest ovation yet, hardly quieter than the one that followed his praise of Gifford Pinchot’s initiative in making conservation a national priority. Then he won bursts of laughter by quoting a recent opinion by Justice Holmes (gazing at him from only a few feet away) in favor of the right of “the State as quasi sovereign” to prevent private property owners from despoiling a waterway, even though “there are benefits from a great river that might escape a lawyer’s notice.”
“I have simply quoted,” Roosevelt said, as the audience guffawed.
He concluded with another invocation of conservation as morality, and sat down amid cheers.
Rules were announced for orderly conduct of the conference’s discussion sessions, set to begin after lunch. Experts presenting overlong statements would be subjected to the discipline of bells; governors would have chair powers; the proceedings of the conference would be recorded and published in full; a Committee on Resolutions should be organized and authorized to formulate general conclusions.
The hands of the East Room clock now stood at five minutes past noon. “Gentlemen,” Roosevelt called out, “I shall now have the pleasure of meeting you personally as you pass through the Blue Room.”
HE STAYED WITH them through Andrew Carnegie’s postprandial paper on the conservation of ore. Then, having tried, and failed, to get William Jennings Bryan to speak extempore, he gracefully withdrew, explaining, “I have a good deal to do.” A good deal of that good deal apparently demanded his presence on the White House tennis court, but he was conscientious thereafter in opening each session and hearing each opening paper.
The conference broke up on the afternoon of 15 May, after a “garden party” for attendees and their wives, hosted by Edith Roosevelt and hastily relocated indoors when rain descended. The governors issued a concluding declaration that upheld everything the President had said about the interrelationship of civilization and conservation, and conservation and morality, and morality and duty. They urged the “continuation and extension” of the Administration’s current forest and water policies, recommended the enactment of laws against wasteful practices in mines and heavy industry, and resoundingly agreed that “this conservation of our natural resources is a subject of transcendent importance, which should engage unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States, and the People in earnest cooperation.”
THUS EMPOWERED,