NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 



581 



Dr. Frank L. McVey, President of 

 the University of North Dakota, dis- 

 cussed the important subject of rational 

 taxation of resources. The discussion 

 of this paper was led by Captain John 

 B. White, of Kansas City, chairman of 

 the executive committee of the Na- 

 tional Conservation Congress. 



Remarks were also made at this ses- 



sion by Mrs. George O. Welch, of Fer- 

 gus Falls, Minnesota, recording secre- 

 tary of the American Federation of 

 Women's Clubs; Mrs. Hoyle Tomkies, 

 of Shreveport. Louisiana, president of 

 the Woman's National River and Har- 

 bor Congress ; Mrs. G. B. Sneath, of 

 Tiffin, Ohio, and Mrs. J. C. Howard, of 

 Duluth, Minnesota. 



COUNTRY LIFE AND THE FARM 



The opening address of the Wednes- 

 day afternoon session was by President 

 Eclwin Boone Craighead, of Tulane 

 University, on the subject, "Making our 

 People Count." 



The reception accorded James J. Hill, 

 who was the next speaker of the after- 

 noon, showed his popularity in his own 

 state. But the position taken by Mr. 

 Hill in his address was not the ortho- 

 dox position of the congress. Indeed, 

 he seemed to give aid and comfort to 

 the state rights advocates of the north- 

 west. He covered some of the ground 

 made familiar in other recent addresses 

 by him, denouncing the growth of ex- 

 travagance in the country, advocating 

 intensive farming for the purpose of in- 

 creasing crop production and prevent- 

 ing the exhaustion of the soil. He 

 found the earliest conservation work in 

 this country to be in the field of forestry. 

 He declared that the end to which this 

 congress should devote itself is to con- 

 serve conservation, adding "it has come 

 into that great peril which no great 

 truth escapes- — the danger that lurks in 

 the house of its friends. It has been 

 used to forward that serious error of 

 policy, the extension of the powers and 

 activities of the national government at 

 the expense of those of the states." He 

 then criticised the work of the Recla- 

 mation Service on the ground that the 

 government machine is too big and too 

 distant and that it is therefore slow in 

 operation. He charged that it was 

 more expensive than private enterprise. 

 He argued that coal and other mines 

 must be worked on a large scale to 

 make their operation commercially pos- 

 sible. He criticized the locking up of 



the forest land of the West in national 

 forests and said that the whole West 

 rightfully protests against the with- 

 drawal of water power sites and their 

 leasing for the profit and at the pleas- 

 ure of the federal government. In 



President lames I. Hill of the Great Northern Railway 



order to show the inability of the na- 

 tional government to properly manage 

 its land, Mr. Hill alluded to some of the 

 extravagances and scandals in connec- 

 tion wifh the public lands, but failed to 

 call attention to the fact that these were 

 promoted by the local interests that 

 were dominant in the several states. He 

 urged the need of conservation of the 

 soil, and presented statistics at consid- 

 erable length to show that the favorable 

 balance of our trade in food stuiTs was 

 disappearing. He denounced the tariff 

 as a great enemy of conservation. He 

 came back to the state rights issue, de- 

 claring that "experience proves that re- 

 sources are not only best administered 



