12 Main Lines of Thought and Action 



Committees, against the Executive OflEice as a whole, against Congress 

 as a whole — but not conspirators against each other under normal 

 circumstances. The fragmentation has a deeper meaning than merely 

 the fragmentation in the Executive Branch or the fragmentation in 

 Congress. It is a fragmentation of clienteles whose separate needs and 

 separate pressures have resulted in the creation first of laws, and then 

 of bureaus through the laws, to give effect to their respective policies. 



Yet from time to time a national policy even in a substantial sector 

 does in fact emerge out of conflict, experience, research, and discus- 

 sion. It is this which characterizes periods of Congressional ascend- 

 ancy such as the era from 1920 to 1933. In minor matters, adminis- 

 trative and legislative, local or special interests may prevail; in the 

 great landmarks in forest, power, land, river development, mines, the 

 public interest has usually prevailed — but it has prevailed in great 

 measure by taking into account the vitality and the social contribution 

 of the private interests. 



The strength of the public and national aspects of the conservation 

 movement was tested more than once in these years. Hoover, for 

 example, announced a plan to transfer grazing and some forest lands 

 to the states. The plan was killed by Congress in 1931-32. The West 

 itself was divided. The bill for the Hoover Dam was signed in 1928, 

 in spite of the opposition of private power interests. These had been 

 able to delay the project, but not permanently block it. The Muscle 

 Shoals resolution of 1931 affirmed the principle of public ownership. 



Yet there was no real foreshadowing of the rebirth of conservation 

 that was to mark the middle thirties. In retrospect one can see the 

 forces gathering, not the least influential being the frustrations of the 

 depression, the iUogic of a system of unco-ordinated individual enter- 

 prise that left millions stranded in unemployment, that foreclosed 

 farms, that made a mockery of the umegulated land use of a heedless 

 age. 



Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been chairman of the Committee 

 on Forestry in the New York State Senate. During these years, he was 

 greatly influenced by Gifford Pinchot, whose forest protection bill he 

 introduced in 1912. Pinchot had dramatized to Roosevelt the need 

 for forests to preserve watersheds and the land from erosion. Roose- 

 velt had thought in terms of conservation on his Hyde Park estate. 



