270 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



tain. No damaging precedent was established On 

 the contrary, the people's will that National Parks 

 should continue exempt from industrial uses was 

 publicly registered. The system had passed its test. 



RULING OUT THE UNFIT 

 Concurrently with this struggle, overlapping 

 it at both ends, demands were made in Congress for 

 creation of local National Parks without any con- 

 sideration of quality or standards. These had 

 swarmed in from the West as far back as 1916. Pa- 

 cific coast communities were specially anxious to 

 have their own home Yosemites for the profit which 

 visiting motorists would bring their farms and 

 shops. It was not difficult to shelve these bills then 

 because Yosemite wasn't so profitable to its neigh- 

 borhood as now, the motor touring tide being in its 

 earliest flood. That it would oversweep the coast 

 from Seattle to Los Angeles was not at that time, 

 fortunately, foreseen. To-day, when it does, new 

 National Parks are no longer believed necessary on 

 the coast because it has become apparent that it is 

 the West itself, not its National Parks, that brings 

 the profit-bearing crowds. In the Southeast, where 

 the fallacy still prevails that the name National Park 

 even unaccompanied by the extraordinary magnif- 

 icence which it connotes will lure prosperous travel, 

 this demand continues. When that fallacy shall dis- 

 sipate, the System's last grave danger will pass. 



Of the lengths to which politics will go in cater- 



