8 McGEE MEMORIAL MEETING 



or the movements of the air which bring fresh supplies of oxygen to 

 the body because of occasional destructive storms. But he did mean 

 to convey the idea that each farmer and each land owner has a duty 

 to himself, to posterity, and to the country to protect our lands and 

 our fields and waterways from destructive erosion, as it is the duty of 

 builders to take all reasonable precautions in the construction of 

 dams and buildings and ships, in the care of abutting properties, to 

 enable them to withstand floods and storms. He would not have the 

 soil with its cover, whose function it is to conserve and regulate 

 the rainfall and act as a spillway, so ignorantly handled that the dam 

 itself would give way with undue and unnecessary loss of life-giving 

 matter and of property interests. 



He was not misled by the popular cry of soil exhaustion or soil 

 robbery as indicating a fundamental and permanent impairment of 

 soil material, which he knew better than any of us can not be accom- 

 plished by human agencies. He knew that on the whole crop yields 

 are increasing through more intelligent use, but he did deplore the 

 <enormous amount of useless and misdirected energy of the individual 

 in methods of handling the soil and in improper crop adaptation, 

 which amounts to gross abuse and present impairment of the produc- 

 tive powers. Again it was not the material he was worried about, 

 but the methods of utilizing it. 



He believed that erosion and leaching, if properly used and con- 

 trolled, would work for the benefit of mankind, just as he believed 

 that the intelligent use of the soil improves the soil for the special 

 needs of mankind. He was a great conservationist through methods 

 of using natural material rather than through saving the material 

 itself. He was not one to wrap his talent in a napkin and at the 

 end say "I was afraid and went and hid my talent in the earth; lo, 

 there thou hast that is thine." 



Doctor McGee's attitude as I have sketched it should be that of 

 all true conservationists. It is the strongest impression I have of 

 Doctor McGee's purpose and work, to conserve, through control and 

 proper development, the natural forces and materials of the nation 

 by the people and for the people by proper use and not by disuse 

 and his great mind and his wise counsel was so potent a factor among 

 us, his associates, as to earn for him the greeting used by the Master 



