NATIONAL MONUMENTS SYSTEM 295 



each other should have produced so excellent a 

 combined group as this, so really a system, so nearly 

 well balanced, containing so little, comparatively, 

 that is unworthy, is little short of astonishing. Nev- 

 ertheless Secretary Work's belief that some should 

 be turned over to state and local control is sound, 

 and the joint administration which some day unques- 

 tionably will develop and carry on all together as a 

 single group will find perhaps a number unsuitable 

 for the well-studied balanced system that this should 

 become eventually. 



Suggestions for National Monuments come from 

 many sources, usually perhaps from government sci- 

 entists and officials travelling federal lands on busi- 

 ness. Sometimes they come from universities and 

 scientific institutions, or from organizations inter- 

 ested in federal land development. Most sugges- 

 tions originate in local sources ; of these, few get by 

 the many interested official watchers unless backed 

 by the kind of sentiment which appeals through poli- 

 tics. It is from the latter source of influence, in 

 these days of super-motoring and local enterprise in 

 self-advertisement, that grave danger is likely to 

 come. Just as now the National Parks System is im- 

 perilled by the craze in the South for National Parks 

 of any kind so long as they carry the supposedly 

 money-coining name ; so, failing them, National Mon- 

 uments will come more and more into local demand. 



Another very dangerous tendency is to con- 

 sider National Monument making an intermediate 



