4 DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS. 



INFORMING THE PEOPLE, 



i >i r, >i < ' I , ' ' i (> ?i <.) 1 1 (\ i 



Realizing that success depends ultimately upon public support, 

 and knowing that the people were surprisingly ignorant of the 

 extent, variety, magnificence, and economic value of their national 

 parks, I early inaugurated an earnest campaign of public education 

 under the management of Robert Sterling Yard. 



To this end the information circulars wer,e immediately rewritten, 

 reorganized, and distributed under a new and effective plan. Last 

 winter a descriptive booklet entitled " Glimpses of our National 

 Parks " was written by Mr. Yard to meet special educational needs. 

 The astonishing demand that immediately developed for this book 

 assured me that the public was eager for the facts. 



I followed this in the early summer by the publication, with the 

 financial cooperation of 17 western railroads, of Mr. Yard's "Na- 

 tional Parks Portfolio," an elaborately illustrated volume written 

 and designed for the purpose of differentiating the principal national 

 parks and presenting an adequate pictorial representation of each. 

 An edition of about 275,000 of these was distributed over specially 

 compiled lists and reached appreciative hands. Forty-three thousand 

 dollars were contributed by the railroads toward the cost of issuing 

 these portfolios, and this sum represented only a small part of the 

 contributing railroads' total expense in advertising the national parks 

 reached by their respective lines. 



In addition to these important publications many hundreds of 

 photographs were collected from many sources and distributed to 

 magazines and newspapers desiring to publish them, and facts and 

 figures regarding national parks were furnished freely to newspaper 

 and magazine writers who sought them as a result of the rapidly 

 growing public interest inspired by the department. All of this 

 material was freely offered to all writers and periodicals without 

 discrimination, and was followed by an extraordinary increase in the 

 informative periodical literature on the subject. 



A result of this educational campaign of the department, rein- 

 forced as it was by the voluntary activity of newspapers and maga- 

 zines, was the stimulation of a country-wide interest in the parks, 

 which brought a volume of requests for detailed information regard- 

 ing them and a demand by individuals, associations, and schools for 

 photographs, motion pictures, lantern slides, and lectures, which the 

 department of course could not meet. The demand for the loan of 

 motion-picture films and lantern slides particularly has become im- 

 perious. It is increasing rapidly and some means should be provided 

 for supplying the department with an adequate stock of this educa- 

 tional material in order that the people may be taught the purposes 



