376 
servation  has  facts  upon  which  to  base  his  argument.  As  a re- 
sult, the  word  with  which  in  the  old  days  he  was  always  halted, 
namely  '‘inexhaustible”  has  disappeared  from  the  vocabulary  of 
the  opponents  of  the  policy. 
Thus  you  see  that  the  movement  for  which  this  meeting  stands 
and  in  the  practical  application  of  which  the  Territory  of  Hawaii 
has  made  great  advances,  is  not  one  of  sudden  nor  of  particularly 
recent  growth.  The  Federal  Bureaus  have  been  patiently  pre- 
paring for  that  time,  when  evidence  should  exist  that  would  en- 
able the  irresistible  logic  of  the  movement  to  be  asserted,  and 
when  a champion  should  arise  to  whom  the  people  should  listen. 
The  man  and  the  hour  arrived  in  Roosevelt’s  administration  and 
the  effective  champion  appeared  in  Gifford  Pinchot,  with  his 
broad  grasp,  his  earnest  practical  idealism  and  his  charming  per- 
sonality. 
With  the  contemporaneous  appearance  of  all  these  favorable 
factors  the  movement  suddenly  blossomed  out  like  the  cereus,  in 
a night  as  it  were,  and  the  nation  woke  up  to  a realization  that  a 
great  movement  was  under  way. 
Now  that  realization  of  the  wisdom  of  the  policy  and  of  the 
need  of  action  has  been  forced  upon  the  nation,  the  time  for 
definite  constructive  policies,  and  for  legislation  is  here.  This 
does  not  mean  that  the  stock  taking  period  is  past.  The  census  of 
our  existing  resources  is  not  by  any  means  complete  and  must 
be  continued,  and  it  does  not  mean  either  that  there  has  been  no 
conservation  legislation.  There  are  initial  laws  among  our  fed- 
eral statutes,  and  you  have  territorial  enactments  that  give  force  to 
the  movement.  In  short,  the  periods  of  the  propaganda  and  of 
action,  legislative  and  executive,  overlap ; nevertheless,  that  period 
upon  which  we  have  just  entered  is  essentially  one  of  translating 
into  law,  those  conservation  policies  which  are  sufficiently  fully 
tested  to  justify  this  action.  There  is  danger  in  this  movement, 
as  in  any  movement  that  has  becomte  popular,  that  its  unwise 
friends  may  bring  about  the  passage  of  premature  or  of  ill-con- 
sidered laws  that  may  retard  instead  of  advancing  the  funda- 
mental idea  of  conservation,  namely,  the  maximum  possible  bene- 
ficial use  of  all  resources,  now  and  in  the  future,  or  as  it  has  been 
recently  well  expressed,  "the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  num- 
ber, for  the  longest  time.”  It  opposes  undue  sacrifice  of  the 
future  for  the  present,  but  it  does  not,  as  some  of  its  opponents 
maintain,  advocate  undue  sacrifice  of  the  present  for  the  future. 
It  always  opposes  needless  waste. 
The  work  Mr.  Leighton  and  I are  beginning  here  by  invita- 
tion of  your  Governor  and  other  Territorial  officials,  has  to  do 
with  the  stock-taking  phase  of  one  branch  of  Conservation  work, 
namely,  Conservation  of  the  Water  Resources.  As  all  arid  or 
sem'i-arid  sections  increase  in  population,  there  comes  a time 
when  the  mounting  value  of  agricultural  land  brings  about  a keen 
