NATIONAL CONSERVATION CONGRESS 



Dr. Frank L. McVey, President of 

 the University of North Dakota, dis- 

 cussed the important subject of rational 

 taxation of resources. The discussion 

 of this paper was led by Captain John 

 B. White, of Kansas City, chairman of 

 the executive committee of the Na- 

 tional Conservation Congress. 



Remarks were also made at this ses- 



sion by Mrs. George O. Welch, of Fer 

 gus Falls, Minnesota, recording secre 

 tary of the American Federation o 

 Women's Clubs ; Mrs. Hoyle Tomkies 

 of Shreveport, Louisiana, president o 

 the Woman's National River and Har 

 bor Congress ; Mrs. G. B. Sneath, o 

 Tiffin, Ohio, and Mrs. J. C. Howard, o 

 Duluth, Minnesota. 



COUNTRY LIFE AND THE FARM 



The opening address of the Wednes- 

 day afternoon session was by President 

 Edwin Boone Craighead, of Tulane 

 University, on the subject, "Making our 

 People Count." 



The reception accorded James J. Hill, 

 who w y as the next speaker of the after- 

 noon, showed his popularity in his own 

 state. But the position taken by Mr. 

 Hill in his address was not the ortho- 

 dox position of the congress. Indeed, 

 he seemed to give aid and comfort to 

 the state rights advocates of the north- 

 west. He covered some of the ground 

 made familiar in other recent addresses 

 by him, denouncing the growth of ex- 

 travagance in the country, advocating 

 intensive farming for the purpose of in- 

 creasing crop production and prevent- 

 ing the exhaustion of the soil. He 

 found the earliest conservation work in 

 this country to be in the field of forestry. 

 He declared that the end to which this 

 congress should devote itself is to con- 

 serve conservation, adding "it has come 

 into that great peril which no great 

 truth escapes- the danger that lurks in 

 the house of its friends. It has been 

 used to forward that serious error of 

 policy, the extension of the powers and 

 activities of the national government at 

 the expense of those of the states." He 

 then criticised the work of the Recla- 

 mation Service on the ground that the 

 government machine is too big and too 

 distant and that it is therefore slow in 

 operation. He charged that it was 

 more expensive than private enterprise. 

 He argued that coal and other mines 

 must be worked on a large scale to 

 make their operation commercially pos- 

 sible. He criticized the locking up of 



the forest land of the West in nationa 

 forests and said that the whole Wes 

 rightfully protests against the with 

 drawal of water power sites and thei 

 leasing for the profit and at the pleas 

 ure of the federal government. L 



President James I. Hill of the Great Northern Railway 



order to show the inability of the na 

 tional government to properly manage 

 its land, Mr. Hill alluded to some of the 

 extravagances and scandals in connec 

 tion with the public lands, but failed tc 

 call attention to the fact that these were 

 promoted by the local interests tha' 

 were dominant in the several states. He 

 urged the need of conservation of the 

 soil, and presented statistics at consid- 

 erable length to show that the favorable 

 balance of our trade in food stuffs wa; 

 disappearing. He denounced the tarifl 

 as a great enemy of conservation. He: 

 came back to the state rights issue, de- 

 claring that "experience proves that re- 

 sources are not only best administered 



