ERNEST S. GRIFFITH 21 



its illumination of the influence of structure on policy. Its recommen- 

 dation that a Department of Natural Resources be established has to 

 date marked the high point in integrating thought. The Water Re- 

 sources and Power Task Force of the Second Hoover Commission 

 was most useful in its devastating attack upon the estimating and 

 accounting practices of certain of the public agencies. Its conclusions 

 in the direction of return to private operation got nowhere, perhaps 

 because of the widespread, almost intuitive feeling on the part of 

 many people that there was merit in retention (and implicit competi- 

 tion) of both public and private enterprise, with each type having 

 continually to justify itself. 



Mention has already been made of the Materials Policy (Paley) 

 Commission (1952). There were also the Water Pohcy Commission 

 of 1950-51 and the Cabinet Advisory Committee's Report of 1955 

 in the water resources field. Both alike called for a tie-in with local 

 units; both saw problems in river basin and multiple-use terms; both 

 called for a national board of review; but the earlier report was the 

 stronger in terms of formulation of a national policy. It also was but- 

 tressed by elaborate research in the extent and nature of our water 

 resources and the detail of our conflicting water laws. During these 

 same years the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee spon- 

 sored a number of studies co-ordinated by the Legislative Reference 

 Service, which, though abortive in achieving their total concept, did 

 make a considerable contribution in highlighting the potentials of 

 ground- water management. In 1953, under Ford Foundation financ- 

 ing, Resources for the Future sponsored a notable conference which 

 dramatized the many-faceted nature of the conservation problem, and 

 set forth a program of research frontiers still to conquer. These stud- 

 ies and others only a degree less significant were hkewise signs of our 

 national maturity of approach. 



In retrospect, it is clear that certain persistent strands have marked 

 these fifty years in conservation. The distribution of light and shade 

 between them has varied, but little that is actually new has entered. 



There has been ever present the dilemma between future use and 

 present consumption. It first showed itself in the plundering of the 

 nation's forests; but these were renewable and this battle is almost won 

 — not by locking up the forests, but by their sustained use. Next it 



