1908 



THE GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE 

 AFTERNOON SESSION 



337 



At the opening of the afternoon 

 session, former Governor Pardee, of 

 CaUfornia, addressed the Conference. 

 Dr. Pardee had prepared a paper in 

 advance, but on taking the platform 

 he stated that he had consigned his 

 written remarks to his pocket, and 

 that his talk would be purely extem- 

 poraneous. 



Dr. Pardee stated that on his trip 

 to Washington from California he 

 could not help noticing that the same 

 conditions exist clear across the coun- 

 try; that forests are disappearing, 

 mines are being exhausted, rivers that 

 are naturally great arteries of com- 

 merce are deserted, their surface prac- 

 tically unrippled by the wheels of 

 steamboats, and that none of the states 

 which he crossed on his journey 

 seemed to be taking any steps to cor- 

 rect this condition. He stated that 

 Mr. James J. Hill recently told the 

 country that five billion dollars would 

 be required to put the country's rail- 

 roads into shape to handle all the busi - 

 ness that is offered them, and if the 

 population and the business of the 

 country increases in the future as rap- 

 idly as it has in the past, that five bil- 

 lion dollars will not do the work. And 

 yet, he said, experts say that one half 

 a billion ($500,000,000) will put the 

 waterways and the harbors of the 

 country in a condition to handle the 

 excess of the country's commerce. 



Continuing, Dr. Pardee said : 



"Here before me I see the Governors of 

 almost all the states of the Union. Here in 

 the capital of the Nation sits the Nation's 

 Congress, within reach of your voices, w^ith- 

 in a few^ minutes' walk, within five minutes 

 on the cars, by which you can go and tell 

 these legislators what we desire and what 

 the people of this country ought to have, 

 and must have. (Applause.) I notice the 

 instantaneous applause which greets every 

 reference to the country's inland water- 

 ways, and I take it that you agree with me 

 that, first of all, the waterways should be 

 preserved. In order to do that the forests 

 must be taken care of, and, as you have 

 been told so many times to-day and yester- 

 day, and will be told to-morrow, the care of 

 our forests is the thing upon which all our 



deliberations and all the things we are here 

 to discuss absolutely depend. (Applause.) 



"Here, on the platform, five or six pic- 

 tures will be shown within the next five 

 minutes. These pictures represent the work 

 of the Reclamation Service in the West and 

 Southwest. Out there dams are being built 

 to store the waters of the rivers, so that 

 water may be turned upon the millions of 

 acres of arid and semi-arid lands, where, in 

 time to come, the great civilization of this 

 land, and therefore of the world, will be 

 congregated. There, upon a few irrigated 

 acres, a family of American children may 

 be raised and given the benefit of both coun- 

 try and urban civilization. The time is near 

 when the American people, instead of de- 

 manding t6o acres, will be, and must be„ 

 content with a much smaller acreage; audi 

 it is the work of the Reclamation Service 

 that will bring this about. I am told that 

 the Service has already opened waterwavs. 

 and ditches, which, if joined end to end^ 

 would reach from San Francisco to f/f-nver 

 (Applause.) And yet they have only made- 

 a beginning. (Applause.) 



"Gentlemen, is not the time for talking, 

 gone by? Has not the time arrived wheni 

 the representatives of 80,000,000 people here- 

 assembled shall show to Congress and tO' 

 the people of the country that we must have 

 the things which we are here discussing? 

 (Applause.) That we must have the for- 

 ests renewed, must have the inland water- 

 ways preserved, deepened and made ca- 

 pable of taking care of the country's grow- 

 ing commerce? (Applause). Must have 

 the arid and semi-arid West and Southwest 

 taken care of, for the overflow of the agri- 

 cultural population which is now heading, 

 i am alarmed to say, too much to the cities 

 — must have all these things taken care of 

 in a wise and beneficent way? (Loud ap- 

 plause and cheers.) 



"Perhaps it would be revolutionary; per- 

 haps it might not be the thing to do ; but if 

 I were a governor instead of an ex-gov- 

 ernor, I would suggest that my colleagues 

 from the various states meet with the Com- 

 mittee on Agriculture of the House of Rep- 

 resentatives, and show that Committee, by 

 the 'presence of the Governors of forty-four 

 states, that what this Conference talks about 

 it means, and what it means it wants, and 

 what it wants, it ought to have. (Applause- 

 and cheers.) 



"We have a way of doing things in Cali- 

 fornia. My native city, but two years ago 

 swept by the flames of a great conflagration, 

 lay prostrate in the dust ; but within those 

 two years it has almost rehabilitated itself. 

 Here are forty-four Governors who can 

 take themselves to Congress and by their 

 presence and influence have Congress re- 

 habilitate the natural resources of the coun- 

 try which have been so shamefully laid 

 waste." (Loud applause.) 



