NEWS AND NOTES 



583 



pressed a conviction "that tlio work of these 

 bnreaus has been to the interest of the small 

 landowner and settler." 



This resolution is equivalent to a personal 

 indorsement of Chief Forester Gifford Pin- 

 chot and Director Newell, for they have long 

 been at the head of the two bureaus under 

 consideration, and the selfish and unworthy 

 attacks that have been made upon the Forest 

 Service and the reclamation work have taken 

 on the form of personal reflections upon them. 



The congress could, with propriety, ap- 

 prove the results of their efforts, because 

 these have extended over many years, and 

 the achievements are before the people for in- 

 spection. 



The congress, on the other hand, wilh 

 equal propriety, refrained from an indorse- 

 ment of the record and policies of Secretary 

 Rallinger of the Interior Department, for the 

 reason that Mr. Ballinger has only entered 

 upon his duties, and it is not at all clear 

 what his policies are or what they will be. 

 So far, they give evidence of a strong re- 

 actionary tendency and corresponding lack 

 of sympathy with the conservation policies 

 of Roosevelt and President Taft. 



The Spokesiiiaii-Reviezv hopes that Secre- 

 tary Ballinger will fall in line and administer 

 the Interior Department along the broad, 

 general lines laid down by Secretary Gar- 

 field, his predecessor, but an expression of 

 approval now of his acts or policies would 

 be premature and unwarranted. — Spokesman- 

 Rcviciv, Spokane, August 14, 1909. 



&' «? )^ 



Pinchotism and the Power Trust 



Nobody in Congress discovered the en- 

 coachments of the power trust on the natural 

 water-power rights of the country, but the 

 discovery was made by Mr. Pinhcot, or in 

 his bureau. Nobody in Congress raised a 

 protest against the lavish gifts of public 

 water rights to private corporations, uncon- 

 ditionally, perpetually and without compen- 

 sation to the public for the wealth surrender- 

 ed. Give, give, give has been the demand 

 for a period of years, and Congress amiably 

 gave. There seems to have been nobody of 

 consequence or influence there to raise the 

 point that this is the public property, that 

 it is wealth, that its future value is immense. 

 Congress simply followed its custom of 

 yielding compliance to the representations of 

 great capital that it was for the best interest 

 of the public, of you and the rest of us, to 

 give away wealth to enterprising finan- 

 ciers, who would proceed to administer the 

 property so that everybody would be pros- 

 perous. In consequence of the dunderheaded- 

 ness of Congress in pursuing its favorite 

 theory that public prosperity can be brought 

 about best by public exploitation, the people 

 have been made to surrender an amount of 

 wealth that is almost beyond caicnl;ilion nnd 

 a power trust has been built up, headed by 

 J. P. Morgan, which exceeds in its ability 

 to bleed the consumers any other trust that 

 has ever been conceived bv the thrifty pro 



6 



moting syndicates of Wall Street. Mr. Pin- 

 chot's speech, the Spokane dispatch says, 

 was greeted with the "wildest applause" 

 given any speaker of the Irrigation Congress, 

 indicating that if Congress has been fast 

 asleep, the country is awake.— ro/>ry^a Capital. 



«? «? 'JSr' 



The "Water'power Trust" 



The so-called power trust, which is credit- 

 ed with such great activities in the public 

 domain section of the country, is reported to 

 be a New Jersey corporation, with a capital- 

 ization of over $10,000,000. 



If it should prove true that this corporation 

 is operating illegally by means of "dummy" 

 entries to get control of all valuable water- 

 power sites situated upon public land opened 

 for settlement, it would be the duty of New 

 Jersey to take all legal steps to thwart these 

 activities. Corporations which are organized 

 under the laws of this state should not pass 

 entirely from under its control. Corpora- 

 tions are creations of the state and owe their 

 personality to articles of incorporation which 

 are binding upon them. When they seek to 

 violate the laws of the Federal Government 

 they are exceeding the powers granted in 

 their charters and are violating their pledges 

 to this state. However desirable it is that 

 New Jersey should be hospitable to corpora- 

 tions which operate chiefly in other states, 

 the privilege should not be granted under 

 conditions wdiich should not leave ample con- 

 trol in the hands of this state. — Elizabeth 

 (N. J.) Journal, August 16, 1909. 



Mr, Pinchot's Fight 



That is a game fight that Chief Forester 

 Pinchot is making to protect the water-power 

 of the country from being monopolized by a 

 great trust. During the administration of 

 President Roosevelt it became evident that 

 certain powerful capitalistic interests were 

 quietly planning to obtain control of the 

 most eligible sites for water-power through- 

 out the country, and in pursuance of that 

 plan the public lands near the headwaters 

 of important western rivers were being grad- 

 ually passed into private hands. 



For the purpose of thwarting that, the 

 President withdrew large areas of the public 

 hnds from entry and placed them in the 

 class of forest reservations, under the law 

 authorizing the conservation of natural re- 

 sources. Secretary Ballinger, of the Inte- 

 rior Department, has recently withdrawn a 

 number of these lands so set aside, and it is 

 given out that a powerful trust lobby will 

 be on hand when Congress opens in Decem- 

 ber to put through a law ratifying the with- 

 drawal of these lands and the opening of 

 them to private ownership. 



Against these things Mr. Pinchot has op- 

 posed strenuous objections, as a result of 

 which the relations between the Chief For- 

 ester and the head of the Interior Depart- 

 ment have been greatly strained. * * * 



