EDITORIAL 



TWO CONVENTIONS 



^^!^HE Tliird National Conservation Congress gave evidence by its composi- 

 L) tion and the seriousness of its woric that the movement it represents is 

 ^^"^ growing to maturity. There was a notable absence of the political clap- 

 trap which seems to be regarded by the daily press as material for space and 

 headlines. Workers and experts were much in evidence in the membership of 

 the congress and the practical problems of conservation were approached with 

 a view to their solution. Great credit is due to President Wallace and his 

 associates on the executive board for giving this direction to the work of a 

 convention which might so easily have been made a vent for the discussion of 

 irrelevant issues. There will be a new interest in the work of the congress 

 because of what was done and what was avoided at Kansas City, and it is 

 safe to say that J. B. White, the next president of the congress, will continue 

 this policy of useful service. 



It is refreshing to have had this congress held without an outbreak of 

 the wordy and useless warfare over state rights. So far as it applies to the 

 problems of conservation, this issue is dead. We do not mean that all the de- 

 tails of the relation between state and nation in dealing with natural re- 

 sources are finally adjusted. There are always likely to be open questions of 

 this kind as new conditions arise. Nevertheless, the state rights idea, as 

 some of our western friends uphold it, is dead, and a prompt recognition of 

 that fact will be greatly to the advantage of the country. Now that we know 

 something of the problem of future population that we have to face, and of the 

 growing scarcity of those natural resources upon which the general prosperity 

 depends, it is unthinkable that the nation will turn over its birthright to states 

 or to groups of individuals. If there are phosphate beds in one state, shall 

 they be handed over to the profit of a group of individuals when the agricul- 

 tural lands of the whole nation are needing this essential element of soil fer- 

 tility to maintain an agriculture that shall feed a great population which cer- 

 tainly will not have its center in that state? This is an illustration which 

 may be extended through the whole list of nonrenewable resources, and the 

 same broad principle covers the renewable resources. 



Certain western men of somewhat narrow vision see only in those things 

 that are within their borders wealth pertaining to the state itself, and they 

 wish to have full control of them. This view is a very natural one, but, as 

 we have said, narrow. The western states wherein this feeling finds expres- 

 sion are the outgrowth of a common heritage of the American people. The 

 interests and destiny of the Pacific coast, the Atlantic seaboard, the central 

 valley, the plains, and the country of the big mountains, are bound together 

 by history, sentiment and intimate business connections. The physiography 

 of the United States unites its people as that of Europe divides the nations. 

 Under these circumstances the solution of our difficulties and of differences as 

 between states or sections lies not in the advocacy of discredited theories of 

 political administration, but in getting together through mutual understand- 

 ing and co-operation upon the common ground of nationality in which each 



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