THE NORTH AMERICAN CONSERVATION CONFERENCE 163 



new idea of conservation and were 

 willing and eager to cooperate with the 

 United States and Canada in the solu- 

 tion of conservation problems. 



Mr. Clifford Sifton, of the Canadian 

 delegation, followed. He pointed out 

 that, largely as a result of the conser- 

 vation movement in the United States, 

 special permanent committees on the 

 different resources had been appointed 

 in the Canadian Parliament. He hoped 

 for the establishment of a permanent 

 conservation bureau. Canada, he said, 

 was looking to the investigations being 

 made in the United States in hopes 

 that her scientists might profit by their 

 results. In this way the evils which 

 were experienced in one country might 

 be avoided by the others. One fruit of 

 the conservation movement could not 

 fail to be a better economic develop- 

 ment of the resources of North 

 America. 



Following Mr. Sifton, Mr. Miguel A. 

 de Quevedo, of the Mexican delegation, 

 addressed the conference in French. He 

 said that for some time Mexico had 

 been watching with acute interest the 

 great conservation movement that had 

 been made a live, practical issue by 

 President Roosevelt. He regarded it 

 not only as a great economic question, 

 but as vital to the life of the country. 

 He applauded all that the administra- 

 tion had done along this line and ap- 

 preciated the fact that yet more could 

 be done by National cooperation. 



Senator Newlands, introduced by 

 Mr. Pinchot as "the Father of the 

 Reclamation Act," thereupon addressed 

 the conference. He laid stress upon 

 the value of the work done by special 

 commissions, and deprecated the criti- 

 cism of them by Congress. He was 

 convinced that Congress would change 

 its attitude toward such commissions 

 and come to realize that they repre- 

 sented merely a necessary specializa- 

 tion of work. Our successes in the in- 

 dustrial world were due, he maintained, 

 to the fact that experts were employed 

 to run industrial enterprises. The com- 

 missions prepared the way for neces- 

 sary legislation by doing the expert 



work for which Congress had no time. 

 He considered the conservation of nat- 

 ural resources the most important ques- 

 tion of the day, and trusted that the 

 press would lend its support toward 

 forming the vigorous public opinion 

 without which the required laws could 

 not be passed. 



Mr. Charles L. Pack, of the National 

 Conservation Commission, was the last 

 of the speakers. He recalled the esti- 

 mates made twenty-five or thirty years 

 ago of the timber then remaining in the 

 United States. It was thought at that 

 time, he said, that the forests would 

 last for another two or three hundred 

 years. Now it was well understood 

 that the virgin supplies would be gone 

 in thirty or forty years. He declared 

 that the greatest present obstacle in the 

 way of forestry was cheap stumpage, 

 for as long as stumpage continued to 

 be cheap, the forest would be carelessly 

 used. For this reason he believed in 

 the retention of a tariff on lumber. 



The conference then adjourned till 

 the afternoon. 



WORLDWIDE CONSERVATION 



At the afternoon session a proposal 

 to embrace all nations in the conserva- 

 tion movement by means of an inter- 

 national conference on world resources 

 at The Hague, next September, was 

 broached, in the form of a suggestion 

 from the conference to the President. 

 The following statement upon this sub- 

 ject was subsequently issued by the 

 Secretary of State: 



There is now assembled in Washington, 

 in response to the invitation of the Presi- 

 dent, a conference of representatives of the 

 United States, of Mexico, and of the Do 

 minion of Canada, to meet the representa- 

 tives of the United States of America for 

 the purpose of considering the common in- 

 terests of the three countries in the conser- 

 vation of their natural resources. The cor- 

 diality with which the neighboring govern- 

 ments accepted the invitation is no less an 

 augury of the success of this important 

 movement than is the disposition already 

 shown by the conference to recognize the 

 magnitude of the question before them. While 

 recognizing the imperative necessity for the 

 development and use of the great resources 

 upon which the civilization and prosperity 



