NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM LEGISLATION 439 



What we are here preparing to do is to fix up the mechanism by 

 which we can enter, occupy, and use a new environment. 



We have some experience of this in our history. I am sure the 

 chairman is acquainted with the work of Mr. Prescott Webb. This 

 provides an extremely interesting example in describing the activities 

 attendant to the settlement of the Great Plains area. Wlien our peo- 

 ple emerged from the forested well-watered area to the Great Plains 

 area, which was unforested and arid, there was required a substantial 

 reorganization and development of new weapons, tools, ideas, and 

 institutions. As a matter of fact, for a period of about 45 years the 

 settlement activity paused along about the 98th meridian while this 

 regrouping and reorganization of ideas and institutions was going on. 



It was during that period from 1840 to 1885 that we founded many 

 new institutions in the Government, such as the land-grant colleges 

 for the purpose, among others, of developing new farm procedures 

 for this new environment. That was the time of the development 

 of the Department of Agriculture, development of the bureaus which 

 led to the formation of the Department of the Interior, and so forth. 



There was required a substantial restructuring of the Government 

 in order to handle the problems associated with conquest and use of the 

 new environment. 



When we came to tackling a new environment again in the lower 

 atmosphere, directly after World War I, we had the tool to do it 

 with — the airplane — but it required a considerable restructuring of 

 Government and the development of new institutions of Government 

 in order to make this tool a means by which we could occupy and use 

 the lower atmosphere. 



Upon this experience was founded the civil air industry which was 

 substantially subsidized for a long period of time by the Federal 

 Government, but is now not only paying its own way but it is a sub- 

 stantial strength of the economy and defense. 



We are in the process of doing the same thing now with nearby 

 space. This is a new environment on the conquest of which we are 

 embarking. This is being done substantially at Federal expense. It 

 required a restructuring of Government to initiate, formation of new 

 institutions, massive subsidies, and so forth. We are still engaged 

 in this enterprise. 



What I propose to you this morning is that what we are now faced 

 with is actually the necessity for doing the same thing again with 

 respect to a new environment, the ocean — the development of the new 

 weapons, tools, ideas, and institutions which will be required for the 

 occupation and use of this new environment. 



I point out that the final conquest of the environment of the Great 

 Plains made us the strongest power on earth by providing the food 

 and the agricultural strength of the comitry. 



I am quite sure that a similar successful occupation and use of the 

 ocean will further strengthen our entire economy and posture in the 

 world, and that is the subject to which I address myself. 



If I might conunent on the question raised a while ago, if in these 

 bills before us the compound word "ocean-use" were substituted for the 

 word "oceanographic" or "oceanography", wherever they occur, you 

 would be closer to what I am talking about, and I think also what 

 almost everybody else is talking about. We are not talking about 

 oceanography as a science in the language of the legislation. 



