278 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
stitution were framed, the sense of citizenship still lay dormant in all 
but a few leading minds, and in some of these soon turned sluggardly 
for longer slumber; then the legion prodigals were fed with the swine 
on husks of party welfare rather than the sound corn of public weal 
until a shadowy “ no-man’s-land” grew up between citizen and state 
and a “twilight zone” spread between state and nation. Yet, stirred 
at last by the waterway movement and a forest policy uniting in the 
cult of conservation, the people are at last preempting the shadowy 
middle ground, and thus coming into their own as citizens. Two years 
ago the governors—the actual sponsors for the welfare of their com- 
monwealths—felt the stir; they responded vigorously, and now they and 
their people are moving together against a tyranny of regnant apathy 
not greatly different from that of his ease-loving and privilege-giving 
majesty George III. 
Within a few months the congress began to respond to the popular 
demand by authorizing the publication of the reports of the Inland 
Waterways Commission and National Conservation Commission and the 
Proceedings of the Conference of Governors; then the senate created a 
strong committee on the conservation of natural resources; and within 
a month this committee reported favorably a bill for the establishment 
of a “National Commission for the Conservation of Natural Resources.” 
The report? meets the popular movement half way. Declaring that 
“The measure is designed to conform with various actions, both legis- 
lative and administrative, growing out of one of the strongest popular 
movements in the history of our country,” the document outlines the 
movement, summarizes the nature and extent of our natural resources, 
indicates the leading wastes and the industrial diversions attending 
development of the resources, and concludes with a plan for action 
framed to meet the people’s will. Even more significant than the body 
of the report is the appendix; for at last the senate has yielded to the 
voice of the people sufficiently to print the expressions adopted in great 
conventions of citizens—among others, the declaration of the Fourth 
Deep Waterway Convention (adopted in New Orleans November 2 
last) “comprising duly appointed delegates to the number of 5,000 
from 44 of the 46 states of the union, including the governors of a 
majority of the states,” which finally turned over a new leaf by recog- 
nizing and declaring the rights of citizenhood to “demand and direct ” 
action by their representatives—in lieu of the far lesser rights of sub- 
jecthood to “ petition” or “submit” or “respectfully request” or 
“ forever pray” with which Americans have been content for a century 
_and then nailed down the new leaf by the public pledge of personal 
honor proper to full citizenship! Surely if these 5,000 delegates mean 
8 Calendar number 733, Sixty-first Congress, second session, Senate Report 
No. 826, pp. 1-50; ordered printed June 11, 1910. 
