1 82 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



April 



these are ex-President Grover Cleve- 

 land, William Jennings Bryan, An- 

 drew Carnegie, who will be able to 

 discuss the ore supply and lake traf- 

 fic, James J. Hill, who is an authority 

 on the relation of railroads and water 

 navigation, and John Mitchell, who 

 can contribute information on the coal 

 situation and the labor aspects of the 

 questions. 



A Meeting to The President outlined 

 be Famcus ^-j^g scope and purpose of 

 in History ^, V ' . ' . . 



the conference m his m- 



vitation to the Governors, published 

 in Forestry and Irrigatiox for De- 

 cember last, and emphasized the im- 

 portance of the subject in the follow- 

 ing words : 



"There is no other question now be- 

 fore the Nation of equal gravity with 

 the question of the conservation of our 

 natural resources; and it is the plain 

 <luty of us who, for the moment, are 

 responsible, to take inventory of the 

 natural resources whicli have been 

 handed down to us. to forecast the 

 needs of the future, and so handle the 

 great sources of our prosperity as not 

 to destroy in advance all hope of the 

 prosperity of our descendants. * * * 



"Facts, which I cannot gainsay, 

 force me to believe that conservation 

 of our natural resources is the most 

 weighty question now before the peo- 

 ple of the United States. If this be 

 so, the proposed conference, which is 

 the first of its kind, will be among the 

 most important gatherings in our his- 

 tory in its effect upon the welfare of 

 all our people." 



ForaPrac- All the sessions of the 



tical Work- conference will be held 



ing Basis . ,, u- ^ • -c» * 



m the historic East 



Room of the White House, where so 

 many other important scenes in Amer- 

 ican history have been enacted ; and 

 it is likely that President Roosevelt 

 will not only open the conference, but 

 will preside over all its deliberations. 



It will be a conference in the truest 

 sense of the word, with the single pur- 

 pose of getting down to a practical 

 working basis at once. To that end 



there will be an absence of set papers, 

 though in order to open the discus- 

 sions, a few recognized authorities 

 will present brief descriptions of ex- 

 isting facts and conditions. It is 

 hoped that plans may be so formu- 

 lated that there will be immediate and 

 concerted action on the part of the dif- 

 ferent States toward the conservation 

 of natural resources, the fundament- 

 ally vital problem, according to the 

 President, before the people of the 

 United States to-day. 



Some 



Vicious 



Bills 



In his waterways mes- 

 sage of February 26 the 

 President sounds the 

 following warning note : 



'^\mong these monopolies, as thv. 

 report of the Commission points out, 

 there is no other which threatens, or 

 has ever threatened, such intolerable 

 interference with the daily life of the 

 people as the consolidation of com- 

 panies controlling water power. J 

 call your special attention to the at 

 tempt of the power corporations, 

 through bills introduced at the present 

 session, to escape from the possibility 

 of government regulation in the in- 

 terests of the people. These bills arc 

 intended to enable the corporations ti- 

 take possession in perpetuity of Na- 

 tional forest lands for the purposes ol 

 their business, where and as the) 

 please, wholly without compensation 

 to the public. Yet the effect of grant- 

 ing such privileges, taken together 

 with rights already acquired under 

 State laws, would be to give away 

 properties of enormous value. 

 Through lack of foresight we have 

 formed the habit of granting, without 

 compensation, extremely valuable 

 rights amounting to monopolies on 

 navigable streams and on the public 

 domain. The repurchase at great ex- 

 pense of water rights thus carelessly 

 given away without return has al- 

 ready begun in the East, and before 

 long will be necessary in the West 

 also. No rights involving water 

 power should be granted to any cor- 

 porations in perpetuity, but only for 



