EDITORIALS 



9 



Hands off During the past months we have faced the most critical situa- 

 THE Parks ! tion that has ever arisen in the history of our national parks. 



First special interests made a determined attempt, with the so- 

 called Smith Bill, to invade the Yellowstone National Park and submerge eight 

 thousand acres in the beautiful Falls River basin. By clever handling, the bill 

 was railroaded through the Senate and. was on the unanimous consent calendar 

 of the House before the friends of the parks got wind of the situation and 

 checked its career by a hearing before the House Rules Committee. It is in 

 good part due to the vigorous and instant response of a large proportion of our 

 members who sent their protests to Congress that this bill may now be regarded 

 as dead. 



An even more dangerous project to dam Yellowstone Lake for the benefit of 

 local irrigation and power interests in Montana is still before Congress in a 

 new bill introduced by Senator Walsh of Montana. At a public hearing af- 

 forded its promoters last summer by Secretary Payne it was freely admitted 

 that their reason for desiring to place the dam in the park instead of outside, 

 where a much greater volume of water could be impounded, is to save them- 

 selves the expense of buying a dam-site. It was apparently something of a 

 shock for them to be asked by Secretary Payne whether they had ever thought 

 of the fact that national parks had been established for all the people of the 

 United States, and for posterity, and not for the exclusive benefit of residents 

 in the Yellowstone Valley. It is a disheartening and disquieting fact that self- 

 ish groups who wish to invade the parks for private ends can always find poli- 

 ticians ready to assist them. The only thing that makes an impression upon 

 such persons is a united and aggressive public sentiment demanding that the 

 parks be preserved exactly as nature made them, and that no commercial inter- 

 est be permitted to enter them for any purpose whatsoever. This demand was 

 made unequivocally and unanimously at the recent National Conference on 

 Parks held at Des Moines. 



Interested parties are endeavoring to propagate the false impression that 

 most commercial opportunities for water power are now locked up in the parks, 

 and that it is necessary to open them up for exploitation. The truth is that our 

 parks constitute only four per cent of the national forests, and less than two per 

 cent of the remaining public lands, and that more than ninety per cent of the 

 water-power opportunities in these public land areas remain undeveloped. It 

 is not need, but greed, that turns the eyes of park invaders, municipal as well 

 as others, toward the waters of our mountain sanctuaries, for there they hope 

 to get free from a complaisant government what elsewhere they would have 

 honestly to pay for. In any case, the water does not remain in the parks, but 

 can be utilized after it comes out. According to one of the greatest irriga- 

 tion experts in the country, the storage opportunities outside are so great and 



