The First Conservationist
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

Last week I had a piece on the growing debate over ethanol, particularly the corn-based variety, but over the next few weeks I want to extend the environmental theme a bit. This certainly isn't a stretch for a column titled "Wall Street History" as the topic has become big business, whether you are talking about alternative fuels, solar, wind power, and all manner of emerging businesses and markets. As I've noted before, my own investments now encompass solar, wind, biodiesel and water.

But today, I want to take a look back at the first real champion of conservation and the environment in our country, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States (1901-09).

TR is better known in some circles for his days as a Rough Rider and the Spanish-American War, bringing the Panama Canal to fruition, America's increased role on the foreign policy front in general, and as a corporate trustbuster.

But in the book "The Growth of the American Republic," the authors have this to say.

"Unquestionably the most important achievement of the Roosevelt administrations came in the conservation of natural resources. Roosevelt's love of nature and knowledge of the West gave him a sentimental yet highly intelligent interest in the preservation of soil, water, and forest. Even more important, he understood the need to rely on technicians to develop resource policy. It was high time to put some brake on the greedy and wasteful destruction of natural resources that was encouraged by existing laws. Of the original 800 million acres of virgin forest, less than 200 million remained when Roosevelt came to the presidency; four-fifths of the timber in this country was in private hands, and 10 percent of this was owned by the Southern Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company. The mineral resources of the country, too, had long been exploited as if inexhaustible. The conservationists sought both to halt the waste of such resources and to develop scientific recommendations for their use."

Congress passed the Forest Reserve Act in 1891, authorizing the president to set aside timber lands, and Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley withdrew a collective 45 million acres. But, "Despite this promising beginning, the process of exploitation was going on more rapidly than that of conservation when Roosevelt assumed office."

"Taking advantage of the law of 1891, Roosevelt set aside almost 150 million acres of unsold government timber land as national forest reserve, and on the suggestion of Senator Robert La Follette withdrew from public entry some 85 million more in Alaska and the Northwest?The discovery of a gigantic system of fraud by which railroads, lumber companies, and ranchers were looting and devastating the public reserve enabled the President to obtain authority to transfer the national forests to the Department of Agriculture, whose forest bureau, under the far- sighted Gifford Pinchot, administered them on scientific principles."

TR was successful in arousing public support over the need for conservation, and among his many achievements were various grand irrigation projects for the West, including Roosevelt dam in Arizona, Hoover dam on the Colorado River, and Grand Coulee on the Columbia river. TR also created five new national parks together with four game preserves and over fifty wild bird refuges. Senator La Follette said of him: "His greatest work was actually beginning a world movement to staying terrestrial waste."

Alas, many of those who followed him fell woefully short in carrying out Roosevelt's dreams.

But in perusing a book titled "Words That Shook the World," I came across a May 6, 1903, speech that Teddy Roosevelt gave at the Grand Canyon. Author Richard Greene notes:

"On his first visit to the Grand Canyon and Arizona, President Roosevelt's train stopped near the edge of the massive canyon carved out by the rushing Colorado River. Eight hundred people were waiting for him?

"The very short speech he delivered breaks ground in two important ways. It establishes the theme of conservation (recognizing both the need to 'preserve' and at the same time to 'use' the land and its resources), and marks the first time that Roosevelt used the phrase 'square deal,' which became a cornerstone of his administration's philosophy. To Roosevelt those words embodied the philosophy that government had to be fair and honest in its dealings with individuals and not simply the protector of business and special interests."

[Excerpts]

Mr. Governor, and you, My Fellow Citizens:

I have never been in Arizona before. It is one of the regions from which I expect most development through the wise action of the National Congress in passing the irrigation act. The first and biggest experiment now in view under that act is the one that we are trying in Arizona. I look forward to the effects of irrigation partly as applied by and through the government, still more as applied by individuals?profiting by the example of the government, and possibly by help from it - I look forward to the effects of irrigation as being of greater consequence to all this region of country in the next fifty years than any other material movement whatsoever.

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country - to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I was delighted to learn of the wisdom of the Santa Fe railroad people in deciding not to build their hotel on the brink of the canyon. I hope that you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon.

Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it.

[Editor Richard Greene: "These two short sentences say it all: that the Grand Canyon is God's work, that it is divine, that it is irreplaceable, that human beings can never reproduce or improve on nature. All in 11 words!"]

The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.

We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it.

If you deal with irrigation, apply it under circumstances that will make it of benefit, not to the speculator who hopes to get profit out of it for two or three years, but handle it so that it will be of use to the home-maker, to the man who comes to live here, and to have his children stay after him. Keep the forests in the same way. Preserve the forests by use; preserve them for the ranchman and the stockman, for the people of the Territory, for the people of the region round about. Preserve them for that use, but use them so that they will not be squandered, that they will not be wasted, so that they will be of benefit to the Arizona of 1953 as well as the Arizona of 1903.

To the Indians here I want to say a word of welcome. In my regiment I had a good many Indians. They were good enough to fight and to die, and they are good enough to have me treat them exactly as squarely as any white man. There are many problems in connection with them. We must save them from corruption and from brutality; and I regret to say that at times we must save them from unregulated Eastern philanthropy. All I ask is a square deal for every man. Give him a fair chance. Do not let him wrong any one, and do not let him be wronged.

I believe in you. I am glad to see you. I wish you well with all my heart, and I know that your future will justify all the hopes we have.

[Editor Richard Greene says of this last passage: "TR's personal passions and human compassion made him a great leader as well as a compelling speaker. Here, off the top of his head, he digresses from irrigation policy to conservation and now to his personal perspective on the Indians who had come to greet him. In acknowledging them for their heroic efforts, he may seem to contemporary ears paternalistic, but in 1903 his advocacy of giving 'Indians' a 'square deal' was considered quite progressive."]

Sources:

Louis Auchincloss, "Theodore Roosevelt"
Richard Greene, "Words That Shook the World"
Samuel Eliot Morrison, Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg, "The Growth of the American Republic"

More on the environment, mostly from the energy angle, next week.

Brian Trumbore