42 The Mythology of Conservation 



peared soon after World War II in two popular books, William 

 Vogt's Road to Survival and Fairfield Osbom's Our Plundered Planet, 

 both of them infused with Malthusian pessimism, both emphasizing 

 the enormous problem of population growth and the world's limited 

 food supply. Both warned that technology was not enough; resources 

 were not unlimited; the pressure of population itself must be reduced. 

 The increasing emphasis on national security augmented this sense of 

 the limits, rather than of the opportunities of resources, of the need 

 to husband rather than to develop, of the need to stockpile and save. 



I think that one of the reasons why the depth of this change is not 

 fully understood is the prevalence of certain popular misconceptions 

 about conservation in the Theodore Roosevelt era. The view is cur- 

 rent that the Roosevelt conservationists locked up resources because 

 of a fear that supplies might be exhausted, while their successors de- 

 veloped a more intelligent program of wise resource use. This notion, 

 popularized by those who attacked conservation policies, has got into 

 the history books, but in the light of the evidence it must be revised. 



President Theodore Roosevelt, Forester Gifford Pinchot, and Sec- 

 retary of the Interior James R. Garfield withdrew resources from 

 many kinds of land entry, but in almost no cases from all forms of 

 entry. Those water-power sites, for example, that were so important 

 in the BalUnger-Pinchot controversy remained open to entry under 

 the Right-of-Way Act of 1901, the act pertinent to water-power mat- 

 ters. Withdrawals of water-power lands ensured entry only under 

 certain laws, and development only as water-power sites. They did 

 not prevent use, but defined a particular use. They were, in effect, a 

 form of land classification. And so it was with almost every with- 

 drawal during the Roosevelt Administration. As a result of its poli- 

 cies, water power and coal development on the public lands did not 

 stop, but went forward rapidly. In fact, it was the Taft Administra- 

 tion, not that of Roosevelt, which withdrew water power sites from 

 all forms of entry, and it was Secretary of the Interior Richard A. 

 Ballinger who prohibited mineral entries on oil lands, when Garfield 

 had refused to do so on the grounds that it would stop development. 

 The Roosevelt administrators were imbued with a philosophy of de- 

 velopment, not of the need to prevent use. They followed the vision 

 that wise use would provide a resource base for unlimited growth. 



The conservation movement, then, has not progressed in one direc- 



