278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



stitution were framed, the sense of citizenship still lay dormant in all 

 but a few leading minds, and in some of these soon turned sluggardly 

 for longer slumber; then the legion prodigals were fed with the swine 

 on husks of party welfare rather than the sound corn of public weal 

 until a shadowy " no-man's-land " grew up between citizen and state 

 and a " twilight zone " spread between state and nation. Yet, stirred 

 at last by the waterway movement and a forest policy uniting in the 

 cult of conservation, the people are at last preempting the shadowy 

 middle ground, and thus coming into their own as citizens. Two years 

 ago the governors — the actual sponsors for the welfare of their com- 

 monwealths — felt the stir; they responded vigorously, and now they and 

 their people are moving together against a tyranny of regnant apathy 

 not greatly different from that of his ease-loving and privilege-giving 

 majesty George III. 



Within a few months the congress began to respond to the popular 

 demand by authorizing the publication of the reports of the Inland 

 Waterways Commission and National Conservation Commission and the 

 Proceedings of the Conference of Governors; then the senate created a 

 strong committee on the conservation of natural resources; and within 

 a month this committee reported favorably a bill for the establishment 

 of a " National Commission for the Conservation of Natural Eesources." 

 The report 3 meets the popular movement half way. Declaring that 

 " The measure is designed to conform with various actions, both legis- 

 lative and administrative, growing out of one of the strongest popular 

 movements in the history of our country," the document outlines the 

 movement, summarizes the nature and extent of our natural resources, 

 indicates the leading wastes and the industrial diversions attending 

 development of the resources, and concludes with a plan for action 

 framed to meet the people's will. Even more significant than the body 

 of the report is the appendix; for at last the senate has yielded to the 

 voice of the people sufficiently to print the expressions adopted in great 

 conventions of citizens — among others, the declaration of the Fourth 

 Deep Waterway Convention (adopted in New Orleans November 2 

 last) " comprising duly appointed delegates to the number of 5,000 

 from 44 of the 46 states of the union, including the governors of a 

 majority of the states," which finally turned over a new leaf by recog- 

 nizing and declaring the rights of citizenhood to " demand and direct " 

 action by their representatives — in lieu of the far lesser rights of sub- 

 jecthood to " petition " or " submit " or " respectfully request " or 

 " forever pray " with which Americans have been content for a century 

 — and then nailed down the new leaf by the public pledge of personal 

 honor proper to full citizenship ! Surely if these 5,000 delegates mean 



3 Calendar number 733, Sixty-first Congress, second session, Senate Report 

 No. 826, pp. 1-50; ordered printed June 11, 1910. 



