National Parks. 



283 



We have said to ourselves "Those cannot get away. We have 

 surrounded them by a law which makes them necessarily gov- 

 ernment property forever and we will wait in our own good time to 

 make them useful as parks to the people of the country. Since 

 the Interior Department is the 'lumber room' of the government, 

 into which we put everything that we don't know how to classify 

 and don't know what to do with, we will just put them under the 

 Secretary of the Interior." That is the condition of the national 

 parks to-day. 



Those of you who have first been in the Yellowstone Park and 

 admired its beauties and thought of the ability of the army 

 engineers to construct such roads as there are there, and then 

 have gone on to the Yosemite and have seen its beauties and 

 found the roads not quite so good, and then have gone to the 

 Grand Cafion and found a place where you could bury the Yel- 

 lowstone Park and the Yosemite and never know that they were 

 there, and found no roads at all, except a railroad that was built 

 at great expense and probably at great loss to the side of the canon, 

 and only a trail called the "Bright Angel Trail" down into the 

 canon, down which they would not let me go because they were 

 afraid the mules could not carry me, — you will understand that 

 something needs to be done in respect to those parks if we all are 

 to enjoy them, 



I am in favor of equaHty of opportunity, and I resent an 

 exclusion from the enjoyment of the wonders of the world that 

 it only needs a little money to remove. 



Now the course that was taken in respect to the Yellowstone 

 Park ought to be taken in respect to all of our parks. If we are 

 going to have national parks, we ought to make them available 

 to the people, and we ought to build the roads, expensive as they 

 may be, in order that those parks may become what they are 

 intended to be when Congress creates them. And we cannot do 

 that, we cannot carry them on effectively, unless we have a bureau 

 which is itself distinctly charged with the responsibihty for their 

 management and for their building up. 



When the Secretary of the Interior, therefore, asked me to 

 come here and told me the subject of the meeting to-night, I was 

 glad to come. It is going to add to the expense of the Interior 

 Department, and it is going to swell those estimates, but it is es- 

 sential that we should use what the Lord has given us in this 

 way, and make it available for all the people. We have the 

 money. It is not going to take enough to exhaust the treasury. 

 It is a proper expense, a necessary expense. Let us have the 

 bureau. 



