world has not yet achieved the final adaptation 

 of this mighty conception to man as we find him. 

 Democracy is still in the fighting stage. 



Only a few years have passed since it first dawned 

 upon a people who had reveled in plenty for a cent- 

 ury that the richest patrimony is not proof against 

 constant and careless waste; that a nation of spend- 

 ers must take thought for its morrow or come to 

 poverty. The first actual conservation work of this 

 government was done in forestry, following the 

 example of European countries. It soon became 

 evident that our mineral resources should receive 

 equal though less urgent care. The supreme im- 

 portance of conserving the most important re- 

 source of all, the wealth of the soil itself, was 

 realized. In an address delivered four years ago 

 this month before the Agricultural Society of this 

 state, I first stated fully the problem that we have 

 to meet and the method of its solution. With their 

 great capacity for assimilating a new and valid 

 thought, the people of this country were soon in- 

 terested. Belief in a comprehensive system of con- 

 servation of all resources has now taken posses- 

 sion of the public mind. What remains to be done 

 is that most difficult of all the tasks of statesman- 

 ship — the application of an accepted principle and 

 making it conform in all its general outlines to 

 the common good. 



To pack the fact into a single statement, the 

 need of the hour and the end to which this con- 

 gress should devote itself is to conserve conserva- 

 tion. It has come into that 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 



