Lesson One
The Fight for Conservation, by Gifford Pinchot
NOTE: This is an excerpt. For the full document, see The
Fight for Conservation in The Evolution of the Conservation
Movement, 1850-1920
.
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CHAPTER XII
THE PRESENT BATTLE
CONSERVATION has captured the Nation. Its progress during the last
twelve months is amazing. Official opposition to the conservation movement,
whatever damage it has done or still threatens to the public interest,
has vastly strengthened the grasp of conservation upon the minds and consciences
of our people. Efforts to obscure or belittle the issue have only served
to make it larger and clearer in the public estimation. The conservation
movement cannot be checked by the baseless charge that it will prevent
development, or that every man who tells the plain truth is either a muck-raker
or a demagogue. It has taken firm hold on our
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national moral sense, and when an issue does that it has won.
The conservation issue is a moral issue, and the heart of it is this:
For whose benefit shall our natural resources be conserved-for the benefit
of us all, or for the use and profit of the few? This truth is so obvious
and the question itself so simple that the attitude toward conservation
of any man in public or private life indicates his stand in the fight for
public rights.
All monopoly rests on the unregulated control of natural resources and
natural advantages, and such control by the special interests is impossible
without the help of politics. The alliance between business and politics
is the most dangerous thing in our political life. It is the snake that
we must kill. The special interests must get out of politics, or the American
people will put them out of business. There is no third course.
Because the special interests are in politics,
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we as a Nation have lost confidence in Congress. This is a serious
statement to make, but it is true. It does not apply, of course, to the
men who really represent their constituents and who are making so fine
a fight for the conservation of self-government. As soon as these men have
won their battle and consolidated their victory, confidence in Congress
will return.
But in the meantime the people of the United States believe that, as
a whole, the Senate and the House no longer represent the voters by whom
they were elected, but the special interests by whom they are controlled.
They believe so because they have so often seen Congress reject what the
people desire, and do instead what the interests demand. And of this there
could be no better illustration than the tariff.
The tariff, under the policy of protection, was originally a means to
raise the rate of wages. It has been made a tool to increase the cost of
living. The wool schedule, professing
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to protect the wool-grower, is found to result in sacrificing grower
and consumer alike to one of the most rapacious of trusts.
The cotton cloth schedule was increased in the face of the uncontradicted
public testimony of the manufacturers themselves that it ought to remain
unchanged.
The Steel interests by a trick secured an indefensible increase in the
tariff on structural steel.
The sugar Trust stole from the Government like a petty thief, yet Congress,
by means of a dishonest schedule, continues to protect it in bleeding the
public.
At the very time the duties on manufactured rubber were being raised,
the leader of the Senate, in company with the Guggenheim Syndicate, was
organizing an international rubber trust, whose charter made it also a
holding company for the coal and copper deposits of the whole world.
For a dozen years the demand of the
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Nation for the Pure Food and Drug bill was outweighed in Congress by
the interests which asserted their right to poison the people for a profit.
Congress refused to authorize the preparation of a great plan of waterway
development in the general interests, and for ten year has declined to
pass the Appalachian and White Mountain National Forest bill, although
the people are practically unanimous for both.
The whole Nation is in favor of protecting the coal and other natural
resources in Alaska, yet they are still in grave danger of being absorbed
by the special interests. And as for the general conservation movement,
Congress not only refused to help it on, but tried to forbid any progress
without its help. Fortunately for us all, in this attempt it has utterly
failed.
This loss of confidence in Congress is a matter for deep concern to
every thinking American. It has not come quickly or
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without good reason. Every man who knows Congress well knows the names
of Senators and members who betray the people they were elected to represent,
and knows also the names of the masters whom they obey. A representative
of the people who wears the collar of the special interests has touched
bottom. He can sink no farther.
Who is to blame because representatives of the people are so commonly
led to betray their trust? We all are-we who have not taken the trouble
to resent and put an and to the knavery we knew was going on. The brand
of politics served out to us by the professional politician has long been
composed largely of hot meals for the interests and hot air for the people,
and we have all known it.
Political platforms are not sincere statements of what the leaders of
a party really believe, but rather forms of words which those leaders think
they can get others to believe they believe. The realities of the
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regular political game lie at present far beneath the surface; many
of the issues advanced are mere empty sound; while the issues really at
stake must be sought deep down in the politics of business-in politics
for revenue only. All this the people realize as they never did before,
and, what is more, they are ready to act on their knowledge.
Some of the men who are responsible for the union of business and politics
may be profoundly dishonest, but more of them are not. They were trained
in a wrong school, and they cannot forget their training. Clay hardens
by immobility-men's minds by standing pat. Both lose the power to take
new impressions. Many of the old-style leaders regard the political truths
which alone insure the progress of the Nation, and will hereafter completely
dominate it, as the mere meaningless babble of political infants. They
have grown old in the belief that money has the right to rule, and they
can never
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understand the point of view of the men who recognize in the corrupt
political activity of a railroad or a trust a most dangerous kind of treason
to government by the people.
When party leaders go wrong, it requires a high sense of public duty,
true courage, and a strong belief in the people for a man in politics to
take his future in his hands and stand against them.
The black shadow of party regularity as the supreme test in public affairs
has passed away from the public mind. It is a great deliverance. The man
in the street longer asks about a measure or a policy merely whether it
is good Republican or good Democratic doctrine. Now he asks whether it
is honest, and means what it says, whether it will promote the public interest
weaken special privilege, and help to give every man a fair chance. If
it will, it is good, no matter who proposed it. If it will not, it is bad,
no matter who defends it.
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It is a greater thing to be a good citizen than to be a good Republican
or a good Democrat.
The protest against politics for revenue only is as strong in one party
as in the other, for the servants of the interests are plentiful in both.
In that respect there is little to chose between them.
Differences of purpose and belief between political parties to-day are
vastly less than the differences within the parties. The great gulf of
division which strikes across our whole people pays little heed to fading
party lines, or to any distinction in name only. The vital separation is
between the partisans of government by money for profit and the believers
in government by men for human welfare.
When political parties come to be badly led, when their leaders lose
touch with the people, when their object ceases to be everybody's welfare
and becomes somebody's profit, it is time to change the leaders. One
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of the most significant facts of the time is that the professional
politicians appear to be wholly unaware of the great moral change which
has come over political thinking in the last decade. They fail to see that
the political dogmas, the political slogans, and the political methods
of the past generation have lost their power, and that our people have
come at last to judge of politics by the eternal rules of right and wrong.
A new life is stirring among the dry bones of formal platforms and artificial
issues. Morality has broken into politics. Political leaders, Trust-bred
and Trust-fed, find it harder and harder to conceal their actual character.
The brass-bound collar of privilege has become plain upon their necks for
all men to see. They are known for what they are, and their time is short.
But when they come to be retired it will be of little use to replace an
unfaithful public servant who wears the collar by another public servant
with the same collar around his neck. Above
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all, what we need in every office is free men representing a free people.
The motto in every primary-in every election-should be this: No watch-dogs
of the Interest need apply.
The old order, standing pat in dull failure to sense the great forward
sweep of a nation determined on honesty and publicity in public affairs,
is already wearing thin under the ceaseless hammering of the progressive
onset. The demand of the people for political progress will not be denied.
Does any man, not blinded by personal interest or by the dust of political
dry rot, suppose that the bulk of our people are anything else but progressive?
If such there be, let him ask the young men, in whose minds the policies
of to-morrow first see the light.
The people of the United States demand a new deal and a square deal.
They have grasped the fact that the special interests are now in control
of public affairs. They
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have decided once more to take control of their own business. For the
last ten years the determination to do so has been swelling like a river.
They insist that the special interests shall go out of politics or out
of business-one or the other. And the choice will lie with the interests
themselves. If they resist, both the interests and the people will suffer.
If wisely they accept the inevitable, the adjustment will not be hard.
It will do their business no manner of harm to make it conform to the general
welfare. But one way or the other, conform it must.
The overshadowing question before thee American people to-day is this:
Shall the Nation govern itself or shall the interests run this country?
The one great political demand, underlying all others, giving meaning to
all others, is this: The special interests must get out of politics. The
old-style leaders, seeking to switch public attention away from this one
absorbing and overwhelming issue are pitifully ridiculous and
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out of date. To try to divert the march of an aroused public conscience
from this righteous inevitable conflict by means of obsolete political
catchwords is like trying to dam the Mississippi with dead leaves.
To drive the special interests out of politics is a vast undertaking,
for in politics lies their strength. If they resist, as doubtless they
will, it will call for nerve, endurance, and sacrifice on the part of the
people. It will be no child's play, for the power of privilege is great.
But the power of our people is greater still, and their steadfastness is
equal to the need. The task is a tremendous one, both in the demands it
will make and the rewards it will bring. It must be undertaken soberly,
carried out firmly and justly, and relentlessly followed to the very end.
Two things alone can bring success. The first is honesty in public men,
without which no popular government can long succeed. The second is complete
publicity of all the affairs in which the public has an interest,
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such as the business of corporations and political expenses during
campaigns and between them. To these ends, many unfaithful public servants
must be retired, much wise legislation must be framed and passed, and the
struggle will be bitter and long. But it will be well worth all it will
cost, for self-government is at stake.
There can be no legislative cure-all for great political evils, but
legislation can make easier the effective expression and execution of the
popular will. One step in this direction, which I personally believe should
be taken without delay, is a law forbidding any Senator or Member of Congress
or other public servant to perform any services for any corporation engaged
in interstate commerce, or to accept any valuable consideration, directly
or indirectly, from any such corporation, while he is a representative
of the people, and for a reasonable time thereafter. If such a law would
be good for the Nation in its affairs, a similar law should
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be good for the States and the cities in their affairs. And I see no
reason why Members and Senators and State Legislators should not keep the
people informed of their pecuniary interest in interstate or public service
corporations, if they have any. It is certain such publicity would do the
public no harm.
This Nation has decided to do away with government by money for profit
and return to the government our forefathers died for and gave to us-government
by men for human welfare and human progress.
Opposition to progress has produced its natural results. There is profound
dissatisfaction and unrest, and profound cause for both. Yet the result
is good, for at last the country is awake. For a generation at least there
has not been a situation so promising for the ultimate public welfare as
that of to-day. Our people are like a hive of bees, full of agitation before
taking flight to a better place. Also they are ready to sting. Out of the
whole situation
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shines the confident hope of better things. If any man is discouraged,
let him consider the rise of cleaner standards in this country within the
last ten years.
The task of translating these new standards into action lies before
us. From sea to sea the people are taking a fresh grip on their own affairs.
The conservation of political liberty will take its proper place alongside
the conservation of the means of living, and in both we shall look to the
permanent welfare by the plain people as the supreme end. The way out lies
in direct interest by the people in their own affairs and direct action
in the few great things that really count.
What is the conclusion of the whole matter? The special interests must
be put out of politics. I believe the young men will do it.
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