270 ' UNITED STATES FOREST POLICY 



One thing is certain, at any rate, and that is that if it had not been 

 for the aggressive and persistent efforts of Pinchot, many of the water 

 power resources of the country would now be under control of a few 

 powerful interests, and might present a far more difficult problem than 

 they do. Pinchot's interest extended not only to water power in the 

 national forests, but also to water power development on navigable 

 streams elsewhere. He had a vision of the future importance of elec- 

 tricity in the West. "Let us suppose a man in a western town," he 

 wrote in 1908, "in a region without coal, rising on a cold morning, a 

 few years hence, when invention and enterprise have brought to pass 

 the things which we can already foresee as coming in the application 

 of electricity. He turns on the electric light made from water power ; 

 his breakfast is cooked on an electric stove heated by the power of the 

 streams ; his morning newspaper is printed on a press moved by the 

 electricity from the streams ; he goes to his office in a trolley car moved 

 by electricity from the same source. The desk upon which he writes 

 his letters, the merchandise which he sells, the crops which he raises, 

 will have been brought to him or will be taken to market from him in 

 a freight car moved by electricity. His wife will run her sewing 

 machine or her churn, and factories will turn their shafts and wheels 

 by the same power. In every activity of his life that man and his 

 family and his neighbors will have to pay toll to those who have been 

 able to monopolize the great motive power of electricity made from 

 water power, if that monopoly is allowed to become established."^^ 



WITHDRAWAL OF OTHER RESOURCES 



Hostility to the reservation policy was increased by the temporary 

 withdrawal of lands, not only timber lands, but coal, oil, and gas, 

 power sites, and public watering places. Roosevelt inaugurated the 

 policy of withdrawing land pending the enactment of further legisla- 

 tion for its best use, and considerable areas were thus withdrawn at 

 the time Taft became president. Taft questioned the legality of this 



1915, 123 et seq.: Cong. Bee, 60 Cong. 1 sess., p. 167; 61 Cong. 3 sess., 1856, 3771; 

 62 Cong. 2 sess., 2991, Appendix, 591 et seq. ; 63 Cong. 1 sess., 1974 ; 64 Cong. 1 sess., 

 6388, 6391: No. Am. Review, 191, 472; Apr., 1910. See also the Report of the Com- 

 missioner of Corporations on Water Power Development in the United States, 

 1912; and Senate Doc. 274; 62 Cong, 2 sess. 

 23 Farmers' Bui. 327. 



