PARK AND C EM ET ERY. 
744 
sented to i'ou, and those I am yet to 
present, are all of them planned to show 
forth the beauty of the land. Never a 
service have I seen or heard of that 
failed to use to the utmost the trees 
and the plants, the grass and the flow- 
ers that stand for our native land. Play- 
grounds are sometimes, perforce, on 
limited city spaces, but always there is 
at least the attempt to get the blue of 
the sky opened to the boys and girls. 
Into the brick and concrete heart of the 
city the park brings a little of the prime- 
val outdoors, and here grows best the 
love of country which sees with adora- 
tion the waving stars and stripes. 
So I hold that in safeguarding and 
stimulating the essential virtue of pat- 
riotism the beauty of the American 
park stands forth as most of all worth 
while. I urge that as an antidote to 
the teachings of social disorder, as a 
counter-irritant to the saloon, as a re- 
lentless foe to the slum, the American 
park idea in the playground is most 
completely justified. 
It is but a step across the country 
and the state park to the national park. 
There come, increasingly in these work- 
filled American days, times when the 
tired spirit seeks a wider space for 
change and rest than any city, or indeed, 
any state can provide. The deep forest 
of the Sierras call, the snow-capped 
peaks of the Rockies beckon. The roar 
of Niagara can drown the buzz of the 
ticker. Old Faithful’s gleaming column 
of spray shuts off the balance sheet. El 
Capitan makes puny the capital of any 
state, or of the nation. The camp 
under the oaks of the Hetch-Hetchy 
Valley, near the ripple of the Tuo- 
lumne, restores vigor, uplifts the 
wearied spirit. What cathedral of 
man’s building shows forth the pow- 
er of God unto health of soul as 
does the Grand Canyon of the Color- 
ado? The Glacier wonderland of the 
Northwest gives us lessons on the 
building of the continent, and the giant 
sequoias of the Pacific Slope teach us of 
our own littleness. 
These national parks, then, are our 
larger playgrounds. Everything that 
the limited scope of the city park can 
do as quick aid to the citizen, they are 
ready to do more thoroughly, on a 
greater scale. 
To the vast open spaces, the sight of 
great mountains, the opportunity to live 
a mile or more higher up they add pos- 
sibilities of real life in the open just 
touched upon as yet, even though more 
than three thousand horses this year 
drew their owners on camping trips in- 
to the Yellowstone alone. 
The national playgrounds, too, can, if 
they are held inviolable, preserve for 
us, as no minor possessions can, our 
unique scenic wonders, our great nat- 
ural mysteries. The spouting geyser 
basins and marvelous hot springs of 
the Yosemite, the ancient homes of the 
cliff-dwellers of the Mesa Verde, the 
ice marvels of the Montana glaciers, the 
towering temples amid the big trees of 
the Sierras — how long would they last 
unharmed and free to all the people if 
the hand of the federal government was 
withdrawn from them? Ask harassed, 
harnessed Niagara — dependent right now 
for its scenic life upon the will of this 
Congress — after, indeed. Congress alone 
has saved it until now from state neg- 
lect ! 
The nation now has, it should be said, 
vast and admirably handled national 
forests, potential with profit for all the 
people. But there must be no confusion 
between the differing functions of the 
forests and the parks. 
The primary function of the national 
parks is to maintain in healthful effi- 
ciency the lives of the people who must 
use that lumber. The forests are the 
nation’s reserve wood-lots. The parks 
are the nation’s reserve for the mainte- 
nance of individual patriotism and fed- 
eral solidarity. The true ideal of their 
maintenance does not run parallel to 
the making of the most timber, or the 
most pasturage, or the most water pow- 
er. 
Our national parks are young. They 
are yet undeveloped to any considerable 
extent. Their value to the nation is po- 
tential more than instant, simply be- 
cause they are not, as a whole, yet 
known to our people. The nearest east 
of them is fifteen hundred miles west 
of the country’s center of population in 
Indiana. Our people yet cross three 
thousand miles of salt water to see less 
impressive scenery, less striking won- 
ders, less Inspiring majesty in canyon, 
waterfall and geyser, than they have not 
seen at home, because the way to Eu- 
rope has been made broad, comfortable 
and “fashionable!” 
In 1910, barely two hundred thousand 
visitors were reported to our thirteen 
national parks and our twenty-eight na- 
tional monuments, but all the east- 
bound Atlantic greyhounds were crowd- 
ed to their capacity. We have not yet 
begun to use the national parks ; we have 
not commenced to attract to them a 
share of the golden travel tide which is 
said to have taken from America to 
Europe $350,000,000 in 1910. 
Indeed, we are not ready for visitors 
in our national parks. We have, as yet, 
no national park system. The parks 
have just happened; they are not the 
result of such an overlooking of the 
national domain as would, and ought to, 
resulted in a co-ordinated system. There 
is no adequately organized control of the 
national parks. With 41 national parks 
and monuments, aggregating an area 
larger than two sovereign states, and 
containing priceless glories of scenery 
and wonders of nature, we do not have 
as efficient a provision for administra- 
tion as is possessed by many a city of 
but 50,000 inhabitants for its hun- 
dred or so acres! In a lamentable num- 
ber of cases, the adminstration consists 
solely in the posting of a few muslin 
warning notices ! 
Nowhere in official Washington can 
inquirer find an office of the national 
parks, or a desk devoted solely to their 
management. By passing around through 
three departments, and consulting clerks 
who have taken on the extra work of 
doing what they can for the nation’s 
playgrounds, it is possible to come at a 
little information. 
This is no one’s fault. Uncle Sam 
has simply not waked up about his pre- 
cious parks. He has not thrown over 
them the mantle of any complete legal 
protection — only the Yellowstone has 
any adequate legal status, and the Yo- 
semite is technically a forest reserve. 
Selfish and greedy assaults have been 
made upon the parks, and it is under a 
legal “joker” that San Francisco is now 
seeking to take to herself without hav- 
ing in ten years shown any adequate 
engineering reason for the assault, near- 
ly half of the Yosemite. Three years 
ago several of us combined to scotch 
and kill four vicious legislative snakes 
under which any one might have con- 
demned at $2.50 per acre the Great 
Falls of the Yellowstone, or even en- 
tered upon a national cemetery for the 
production of electric power at the 
same price for the land ! 
Now there is light, and a determina- 
tion to do as well for the nation as any 
little city does for itself. The Great 
Father of the nation, who honors us 
tonight by his presence, has been the 
unswerving friend of the nation’s scen- 
ic possessions. He has consistently 
stood for the people’s interests in Niag- 
ara; he now stands for their interest 
in the nation’s parks. 
His Secretary of the Interior, the pre- 
siding officer of the evening, has ap- 
plied his great constructive ability to 
the national park problem. It was at 
his invitation that the first national park 
conference was held in September last. 
He has visited most of the parks, and, 
coming from a city where intensive 
park development has proceeded to a 
greater beneficence than in any other irt 
the world, he comprehends fully the 
American service park idea. 
