58 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



the conservation movement," Gifford Pinchot used to say, "is that no- 

 body can reasonably say he is against conserving our resources." In 

 its initial stages conservation sv^ept the country. The idea behind the 

 word was applied in a steadily broadening field, and a multitude of 

 causes hastened to inscribe on their banners the new motto and to 

 array their forces with the gathering hosts. It was neither expected 

 nor desired that conservation should be as a shibboleth, to distinguish 

 the true believers from their real opponents. To say that it became 

 all things to all men would be nearer the truth. The present volume 

 illustrates the fact that, after ten years of warfare over the conserva- 

 tion issues, the word had an ambiguous significance even before Messrs. 

 Hoover and Garfield had seized it to consecrate saving at the breakfast 

 table, heatless Mondays, gasless Sundays, and lightless nights for the 

 winning of the war. 



The ambiguity arises from the fact that the essence of the idea com- 

 monly supposed to be denoted by the word is waste. When the his- 

 tory of the United States from the opening of the twentieth century to 

 the opening of the war with Germany comes to be written, it will be 

 found that a truer denotation is monopoly. Conservation challenged 

 the right of capital to control the development of the country in its own 

 interest. It did so on the ground that important interests of the public 

 were being sacrificed, and that it was both right and necessary for the 

 nation to protect the interests of the public. The arch-foe which it 

 attacked was not unthrift, but big business ; but the bill of indictment 

 which it brought against big business was on the grounds both novel 

 and practical. Big business was already under indictment at the bar 

 of public opinion on many charges — that it owned the Government, 

 made the laws, ran the courts ; crushed or stifled competition ; oppressed 

 the wage-earner ; concentrated wealth ; promoted inequality ; sapped the 

 foundations of American democracy and its ideals of individual free- 

 dom, economic independence, reasonable comfort, and equal opportu- 

 nity for all. The answers to these indictments were mostly in the 

 form of a confession and avoidance. If social injustice resulted from 

 the operations of big business, the fault lay not with big business, but 

 was inherent in the nature of things, unless you wished to make things 

 worse by prohibiting efificiency. Big business made for economy, thrift, 

 the increase of wealth, and hence in the long run for the best interests 

 of all concerned. But the conservationists — that is, the real ones — 

 cried, "No." 



The goal of conservation was more than the prevention of waste, the 

 safeguarding of resources against unnecessary impairment or destruc- 



