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acres in the national forest. Cleveland increased the forest reserves to 18,993,280 acres, McKinley to 46,828,449, while Roosevelt multiplied the area several fold, and increased the total to 172,230,233 acres before he left office. The forests were so closely involved in the problems of river flow, soil waste, and timber conservation, that it was natural for the forestry group to assume a leadership in the new movement.

Conserva

On May 13, 1908, there met at the White House a conference to which the governors of all the States had been invited, and which most of them attended action confer- companied by scientific advisers, business men, ence, 1908 and political leaders. For three days this conference maintained its sessions, and continued its discussions of the natural resources of the United States and the problems involved in their management. Never before had the governors been gathered for a national purpose, and there were numerous suggestions that out of this meeting there might arise a sort of house of governors to supplement the deliberations of Congress. Members of Congress watched the conference with much suspicion, because of their unfamiliarity with the subject-matter under discussion, and their fear that new policies in conservation might upset political and business interests of long standing. They showed this suspicion in their treatment of the conservation movement.

A few days after the White House conference had advertised at once the new national movement and Roosevelt's interest in it, the President appointed a National Conservation Commission of forty-nine members selected about equally from the fields of politics, industry, and science. This commission organized in the autumn of 1908 for a study of the minerals, waters, forests, and soils of the United States. In more than forty States local conservation commissions were appointed and in operation before the end of 1909 supplementing by their studies the work of the national commission. In December, the commission held national conference before which a draft of its report was

presented, and early in 1909 President Roosevelt transmitted this report to Congress.

The work of the commission revealed the political methods of Roosevelt, and the suspicions prevailing in Congress. The commission was appointed without legal authority, and served without compensation. Since Congress had provided no funds for its clerical assistance, Roosevelt directed each of the executive departments when called upon by the commission to provide the information it desired. In this way it was possible for the commission to include in its report three volumes of technical papers on the different resources. Congress, however, jealous of its prerogatives and suspicious of the work in question, refused an appropriation to provide wide circulation to the report. The President declared in January, 1909, that the "underlying principle of conservation" was "the application of common sense to common problems for the common good." But Congress attached to one of the appropriation bills a proviso forbidding the executive departments in the future to render scientific assistance to such a commission as this. The National Conservation Commission attracted wide attention to the problem before it. Among the special immediate needs that it pointed out was legislation Bureau to control the mining of coal. Throughout a wide extent of the public domain coal deposits were known or suspected to exist. The early land laws had provided for the classification of public lands as coal lands or agricultural, but no attempt had been made to prevent the occupation of lands as agricultural when their value was chiefly with reference to their underlying coal. From the reports of the General Land Office it appeared that large areas of coal lands were being alienated as agricultural lands, and that the Homestead Law was being perverted by collusion between entrymen and speculators, whereby great coal interests were being built up in private hands, and the United States was being deprived of this portion of its common heritage. In 1909 Congress modified the land laws so as to provide for the separate sale of the agricultural,

of Mines

timber, and mineral resources of the land, and the next year the Bureau of Mines was created to give systematic study to the problems connected with this industry.

of business

Once the importance of conservation had come to his attention, Roosevelt exerted his powers to protect the Supervision public interest. He had no lawful power to dispose properly of the timber or mineral lands, or water rights, but he at least had power to determine what public lands should remain on the market for open entry. He accordingly proceeded with surveys to discover the resources of the remaining public lands. He entrusted to the recognized powers of the Forestry and Reclamation Services whatever was suitable for them, and the remaining acreage he withdrew from entry with the intention of holding it in the national domain until Congress should take action to safeguard the public interest. In his later writings he regarded his work for conservation as the most important of his Administration. Its effect upon public opinion was to raise new hopes of effective governmental action, and to add to the uncertainties with which business regarded the future. The trend of Government control had already established the fact that business must expect to be supervised. The idea of conservation suggested that great fields hitherto open to private exploitation were hereafter to be closed. Public interest had been asserted as a factor to be respected in all business, and to this was now added the interests of posterity.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The most useful general works on conservation are Charles R. Van Hise, Conservation of Natural Resources (1910); William E. Smythe, Conquest of Arid America (1900); Frederick H. Newell, Irrigation in the United States (1902). There are numerous useful illustrated articles in the National Geographic Magazine. The Report of the National Conservation Commission was published in a small edition as 60th Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 676; that of the Public Lands Commission as 58th Cong., 3d Sess., Sen. Doc. 189; that of the Inland Waterways Commission as 60th Cong., Ist Sess., Sen. Doc. 325. The point of view of the West toward conservation is revealed in the Proceedings of the Public Land Convention held in Denver, Colorado, June 18, 19, 20, 1907 (Denver, 1907). The Annual Reports of the Forestry Service, the Reclamation Service, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office are, of course, indispensable.

CHAPTER XXXV

WORLD POWER

BEFORE the disturbance occasioned by the panic of 1907 had subsided and had revealed the panic as a squall rather than a storm, President Roosevelt embarked American upon a new venture in the field of foreign rela- battle fleet tions. On December 16, 1907, a fleet of American battleships left its anchorage at Hampton Roads for a voyage around the Americas to northern Pacific waters and with the ultimate intent to cruise around the world. The navy of 1907, much stronger than the new navy whose units behaved so well in the Spanish War, was now able to send to sea the heaviest battle flotilla that the world had seen. Sixteen new battleships under Robley D. Evans, who had commanded the Iowa at Santiago, with the accompanying tenders and supply ships, tested out the organization of the Navy Department and the fidelity of the work that had been done since 1895. In February, 1909, the fleet returned intact and triumphant, having completed a demonstration that impressed every foreign office in the world, and strengthened the general interest in the new rules of naval warfare, which were signed on February 26, 1909, by delegates at the international naval conference at London.

The significance of the circumnavigation of the world by the new fleet of battleships was variously interpreted as a menace of war and an act of peace. The project was undertaken on Roosevelt's responsibility alone. When the fleet started no funds had been appropriated to take it across the Pacific, or even to bring it back from the Pacific waters to which the President had sent it. Its mission to the Orient was ostensibly a friendly visit, but the President was by no means certain that it would not be attacked, and had prepared the fleet for fighting. He had observed what he interpreted to be an air of truculence in the correspond

ence of Japan, and had been advised by informal friends that the time would come when Japan would contest American power in the Philippines and at Hawaii. If Japan should seize this moment to declare war, he believed there would be a national advantage in being ready for it. If there should be no attack, he believed it equally advantageous to have made a demonstration of strength in Oriental waters. At the time, however, the public was left to draw its own inferences as to the meaning of the venture, and, as it worked out, the voyage was provocative of friendly international relationships, and revealed an unhoped-for capacity in the naval organization.

The fleet of 1907, though able to make the most impressive naval demonstration yet seen, was none the less nearly obsolete. The great powers had ceased laying down the keels of vessels of the battleship class, and were instead experimenting with dreadnaughts. In July, 1908, a Navy Department conference at Newport worked in secret upon the designs for four new dreadnaughts, and when the keels of these were laid, North Dakota, Delaware, Utah, and Florida, it was believed that no better ships were under construction anywhere. The first of these was commissioned in 1910. By the end of 1916 thirteen were in commission and four more were building, and the great armada of 1907 had become at best a second line. Within the Navy Department improvement in organization progressed with naval architecture. The complete independence of the several bureaus that lessened the capacity for team-work, and developed all of the forces for inertia, was under con tinuous fire. In 1915 a new Bureau of Naval Operations was created to act as a general staff for the navy under command of William S. Benson, with the rank of admiral. Reorganization proceeded in the War Department as in the navy.

War department changes

Under the General Staff Act of February 14, 1903, it was sought to increase the efficiency of the army by the organization of a corps whose duty should be to prepare war plans and supervise their execution. The new procedure had to fight its

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