BROADER BASES FOR CHOICE 

 THE NEXT KEY MOVE 



^ Gilbert F. White 



Wherever resources conservation and development is discussed the 

 final and sometimes interminable topic is who should do what — what 

 organizations should be devised or strengthened to help us achieve 

 our aims in resources development. In this final paper of the series, 

 my contribution cannot be that of one deep in administration of re- 

 sources activities or who delves into the political mysteries; it is, 

 rather, that of a person who is trying to see and understand the im- 

 pression of human organization upon the American landscape of 

 rock, soil, water, vegetation, and people. 



The aims of the American people concerning that landscape have 



GILBERT F. WHITE is Chairman of the Department of Geography at 

 the University of Chicago. His career has to a rare degree combined scholarly 

 with administrative and service activities, particularly in the field of v^'ater 

 resources. For the ten years prior to 1956 he was President of Haverford Col- 

 lege. During and preceding this period he was directly concerned with water 

 resources, first in the 1930's with the National Resources Board and the 

 National Resources Planning Board, and later with the Bureau of the Budget. 

 The war years saw him in France administering relief for the American 

 Friends Service Committee, of which he was appointed assistant executive sec- 

 retary. In 1948, while President of Haverford, he served as a member of the 

 committee on natural resources of the Hoover Commission, and again in 1950 

 served as Vice Chairman of the President's Water Resources Policy Commis- 

 sion. Lately, during 1956-57, he was Chairman of the United Nations Panel on 

 Integrated River Basin Development. Besides numerous government reports, 

 Mr. White is the author of Human Adjustment to Floods. He was born in 

 Chicago in 1911, and received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1942. 



205 



