484 CONSERVATION 



sippi and the Great Lakes ; to have tion gave it also a poHtical character, 



snatched an area the size of New York I say geographical because these policies 



State from the sage brush and rattle- w^ere intimately connected with the na- 



snake, and an area four times as large tional resources of the earth, either in 



from the land-skinner, and presented their production or transportation ; and 



them to the American people without ethical because he constantly refused to 



the eventual cost of a brass farthing; consider them except with reference to 



to have widened the sphere of the State, the common good. It wall be seen, when 



changed the definition of the word "pol- his account is made up, that Mr. Roose- 



itics," laid democracy on ethical founda- velt is one of the few "applied geogra- 



tions, and made it possible to speak of phers," to use a phrase Doctor Keltic has 



politics and ethics in the same breath made his own, who has taken geography 



without an apology. This, I say, was a seriously, scientifically and politically, 



great work, and but a part of the actual and has put the resources of a great na- 



achievement during three-quarters of tion behind it to further the interests of 



the first decade of the new century, due mankind. 



to the intelligence and initiative and de- He was the first President who dared 



termination of one man. to attempt the solution of the vital geo- 



Mr. Roosevelt was able to accomplish graphical problems presented by the 

 this work because he knew it was the territory occupied by the United States 

 kind of thing which would never get in their largest and completest bearings 

 done of itself ; because he applied the by the wisest and most conservative 

 scientific knowledge and political re- political methods. He saw that these 

 sources of the Nation to the task ; be- problems would never solve themselves, 

 cause he had intelligence enough to The gospel of individualism carried no 

 know that progress is rational and not message of salvation. And if any voice 

 fortuitous. Here was one political came crying from the wilderness, it 

 geographer who happened to have the was that the problems of the wilder- 

 political resources of a nation behind ness must be solved by a national pol- 

 him, and what is more to the point, who icy grounded on the certainties of sci- 

 happened to have the intelligence to syn- entific foundations, with no guesswork, 

 thesize those resources and organize no haphazard, no laissez-faire, but by 

 them into a national program and pur- a far-sighted and constructive state- 

 pose. In these acts he expressed a faith craft. 



in the people more potent than that of There are long periods of American 



any exponent of individualism from Jef- history in which successive presiden- 



ferson to Bryan. Here is a pledge of tial administrations have been fruitless, 



faith in national self-government. Here and in which the country has made no 



is a scientific outline for constructive advances, except such as It was impos- 



and ethical democracy on the basis that sible for such a country to keep from 



the whole people can govern, and does making. Until now, the twentieth cen- 



govern, itself. He has done more than tury, the man had not appeared capable 



any other American to bring the public of scientifically and intelligently inves- 



to self-consciousness, and perhaps to tigating his data, and so able to state 



self-sufficiency. his problems, and then offering such 



No man in the Western Hemisphere wise solutions, as he has done, in so 



ever dealt so deadly a blow to a political masterly a fashion, for those very prob- 



fetish as when Mr. Roosevelt laid his lems which everybody else before him 



big stick on the doctrine of laissez- seemed to have overlooked. 



faire. It is, of course, hardly necessary to 



It is a very interesting fact that say here that I am keeping in mind 

 almost every great policy Mr. other kinds and sets of problems which 

 Roosevelt has ever advocated has have been bravely met and wisely mas- 

 had both an ethical and a geograph- tered in their day. But this does not 

 ical-economic character. The combina- keep me from saying also that the work 



