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Sierra Club Bulletin. 



NATIONAL PARKS. 



Bureau of National Parks. 

 (From the President's Message to Congress, February 2, 1912.) 



"I earnestly recommend the establishment of a Bureau of 

 National Parks. Such legislation is essential to the proper man- 

 agement of those wondrous manifestations of nature, so startling 

 and so beautiful that everyone recognizes the obligations of the 

 Government to preserve them for the edification and recreation of 

 the people. The Yellowstone Park, the Yosemite, the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado, the Glacier National Park, and the Mount 

 Rainier National Park and others furnish appropriate instances. 

 In only one case have we made anything like adequate prepara- 

 tion for the use of a park by the public. That case is the Yellow- 

 stone National Park. Every consideration of patriotism and the 

 love of nature and of beauty and of art requires us to expend 

 money enough to bring all these natural wonders within easy 

 reach of our people. The first step in that direction is the estab- 

 lishment of a responsible bureau, which shall take upon itself the 

 burden of supervising the parks and of making recommendations 

 as to the best method of improving their accessibility and use- 

 fulness." 



Address of President Taft at the Meeting of the American 

 Civic Association, at the New Willard, Wash- 

 ington, D. C, December 13, 191 1. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: It costs a good deal of money to run a 

 government, and the first ambition of anyone responsible for a 

 government is economy — at least it ought to be. Therefore, the 

 proposition to add a bureau or a department sends goose flesh 

 all over the body of anyone who has any sort of responsibility 

 in respect to the finances of the government, for it means another 

 nucleus for the increase of governmental expenses. Yet a modern 

 government, in order to be what it ought to be, must spend 

 money. Utility involves expense. 



Now, we have in the United States a great many natural won- 

 ders, and, in that lazy way we have in our government of first 

 taking up one thing and then another, we have set aside a number 

 of national parks, of forest reservations, covering what ought to 

 be national parks, and what are called "national monuments." 



