* ^ f IttMIKlf ' 



NEW YORK 



BOTANICAL 



GARDEN 



Vol. XIV 



SEPTEMBER, 1908 



No. 9 



THE CULT OF CONSERVATION 



By W J McGEE, LL.D,, Erosion Expert, U, S. Bureau of Soils 

 Member National Conservation Commission, Secretary of the U, S, Inland Waterways Commission 



QO 



ANEW Patriotism has appeared. 

 It was born of Enlightenment 

 inspired by International Comity. 

 Fittingly, it first saw light in the land 

 in which Enlightenment found birth in 

 the principle of equal rights of all men 

 to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 

 piness ; yet its field of future activity 

 is the world. Its object is the conser- 

 vation of national resources ; its end 

 the perpetration of People and States 

 and the exaltation of Humanity. The key- 

 note of its cry unto the spirits of men 

 is The Greatest Good to the Great- 

 est Number for the Longest Time. 

 The house of this Nation was founded 

 on Land. The Fathers saw no value, 

 no means of enrichment in purse or en- 

 largement of character in aught else ; 

 even their sons and their sons' sons 

 sowed maxims and sang ballads assur- 

 ing all the world that "Uncle Sam is 

 rich enough to give us all a farm." 

 Iron was a luxury from Sweden, steel 

 a sybaritic morsel from Sheffield ; coal 

 was unknown, except as laboriously 

 burned from willow as a dentifrice, or 

 aspen for the furnace ; petroleum and 



rock-gas were beyond dreams ; forests 

 were obstructions to settlement, the 

 haunt of savages and beasts, and nigh 

 unto a public evil. Every day was 

 Arbor Day on which a youth won praise 

 not by planting but by felling a tree — 

 unless perchance the tree were a cherry 

 and the chronicler of its fall a hero- 

 worshipful Weems. Apart from men 

 and their homes and fields, but a single 

 resource was noted, and that merely as 

 appurtenant to the land — i. e., the estua- 

 ries and streams used mainly for car- 

 riage and over-sea commerce ; which 

 appurtenance happily inspired a Water- 

 ways Commission, yielded a Constitu- 

 tion, and established a Nation in a man- 

 ner none foresaw save possibly Wash- 

 ington. 



To the Fatners the Land, with its in- 

 cidentally appurtenant water, was 

 enough ; they wanted little more — and 

 none too much of that! George Rog- 

 ers Clark and Benjamin Franklin were 

 viewed askance because they brought 

 into the infant country more territory 

 beyond the mountains than the strip for 

 which the Fathers fought along-shore, 



469 



