THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Dynamic Geographer* 



By FRANK BUFF1NGTON VROOMAN, F. R. G. S, 

 INTRODUCTORY 



NO INTELLIGENT geographer nearly ninety millions of people whom 



or economist will be satisfied he essayed to give a "square deal," were 



with mere catalogues or classifi- the great geographical problems to be 



cations of facts, that so many trees have solved for generations unborn. Here 



been planted, so many dams have was unavoidable confusion and waste, 



been built, so many canals have been Here was possible unlimited powder and 



digged, or that so many cornfields have use. Here was a great people bereft 



allowed so much bacon to be added to of certain utilities in raw materials and 



the world's common store of good. It natural resources, some of which were 



is imperative that we connect a conti- going to natural waste, and some of 



nental rearrangement with the funda- which, with criminal recklessness, were 



mental principles underlying the prog- being stripped and appropriated by the 



ress made. In other words, the eco- land-skinner. In the scientific divisions 



nomic geography of the L T nited States of the departments of government were 



cannot be intelligently studied apart thousands of experts and scientific men 



from the political geography of the collecting information more or less valu- 



United States. able, but haphazard, concerning land 



In reviewing the Roosevelt adminis- and water and forest supplies, but no- 



tration, one is startled by the array of where appeared the universal mind to 



practical results achieved for the com- synthesize and utilize all for one con- 



mon good, and no less by the impetus structive national purpose, 



and universality of the movement The first American President who 



among the people toward the idea of a \vas practical statesman, ethical philoso- 



new democracy. There is a chance that pher, and scientific geographer, elected 



American destiny may be fulfilled on to office at the close of a period (which 



rational instead of fortuitous lines. Mr. he closed) of arid mediocrity, when few 



Roosevelt's work has been laid on geo- public men were aware of an issue other 



graphical foundations, carried on in an than the tariff or graft this man has 



ethical spirit, and conservatively within blazed new trails for American destiny, 



constitutional limits. This is a great work to have achieved 



The future historian will date a new to have cut a hemisphere in two and 



era in American history from him. joined two oceans into one ; to have be- 



American politics can never again be gun the habilitation of what Mr. Walter 



the arid waste it was before it was wa- Page would call an "unkempt conti- 



tered by Mr. Roosevelt's irrigation nent ;" to have laid scientific foundations 



ditches. Facing problems no less than for quintupling the commercial and eco- 



continental, he made a political issue of nomic capacity of the million and a half 



a national economy. Over and above square miles of the fertilest land on 



the administration of the affairs of earth, lying in the basin of the Missis- 



*Based on a lecture delivered to the School of Geography, Oxford University, March 

 8. 1909, and published by Henry Froude, Oxford University Press, London. 



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