Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 39 



THE LARGEST NATIONAL TASK. 



From the address of President Roosevelt at the meeting of the Conserva- 

 tion Conference held in Washington, D. C., December 8, 1908. 



I welcome you to Washington and to the work you have gathered to 

 do. No service to the nation in time of peace could be of greater worth 

 than the work which has brought you together. In its essence your task 

 is to make the nation's future as great as its present. That is what 

 the conservation of our resources means. This movement means that 

 we shall not become great in the present at the expense of the future, 

 but that we shall show ourselves truly great in the present by providing 

 for the greatness of our children's children who are to inherit the land 

 after us. It is the largest national task of to-day, and I thank you for 

 making ready to undertake it. 



I am especially glad to welcome the co-operation of the states, 

 through their Conservation Commissions and otherwise. Such co-opera- 

 tion gives earnest of mutual assistance between states and nation, and 

 mutual benefits to follow. Without it the great task of perpetuating 

 the national welfare would succeed, if at all, with difficulty. If states 

 and nation work for it together, all in their several fields, and all 

 joining heartily where the field is common, we are certain of success 

 in advance. We are concerned with the people's rights; if this means 

 national rights, well and good; if it means states' rights, well and good; 

 we are for whatever serves the cause of the people's rights. 



The results of the inventory of resources will be laid before the 

 present conference by the National Conservation Commission. I shall 

 not attempt to review these results further than to say that the more 

 striking facts brought out at the conference last May are amply con- 

 firmed. These facts are sobering. No right-minded citizen would stop 

 the proper use of our resources, but every good American must realize 

 that national improvidence follows the same course and leads to the 

 same end as personal improvidence and no man is a good American 

 if he does not think of future Americans, any more than a man is a 

 good citizen if he does not think of his children's welfare; for there 

 isn 't any man whom we despise more than the man who has a good time 

 himself and whose children pay for it. So with the nation ; that nation 

 is contemptible that riots in abundance by wasting the heritage it should 

 leave to the citizens that are to come afterwards. Needless waste must 

 stop. The time to deride or neglect the statements of experts and the 

 teaching of the facts has gone by. The time to act on what we already 

 know has arrived. Common prudence, common sense, and common 

 business principles are applicable to national affairs just as they are to 

 private affairs, and the time has come to apply them in dealing with 

 the foundations of our prosperity. 



