Proceedings of the Second National Conservation Congress at Saint Paul Part 27

Our American schools and colleges have stood in the past for liberal culture. They have taken pride in doing so and they have believed that by so doing they have been serving the ends of democratic citizenship.

American education from the beginning has looked the almighty dollar squarely in the face and pa.s.sed on in serene devotion to spiritual ends.

Is all of this to be changed with the new interest in industrial life?

Is the technical, in other words, to take place of the liberal? I do not believe it. In fact, no greater calamity could befall our industrial interests. But we are undoubtedly changing our conception of what is liberal and what is technical. We may describe a liberally educated man as one who has learned so thoroughly how the whole world hangs together that he constantly sees his own interests only as related to general and permanent human interests (applause). A technical education, on the other hand, enables a man to do that which most men cannot do, but which has some useful relation to those general human interests. If this is a fair statement, there is no field in which a liberal education is more to be desired than that of our material resources and our industries; for this is the field on which the whole game and drama of human life is to be played, though there is no other in which the temptation to illiberal, narrow, and selfish views is so great. To make the material basis of human society itself a subject of liberal education is one of the greatest things that scholastic enterprise can possibly accomplish.

The next step is to join the training for technical pursuits directly to our liberal culture thus broadly conceived, so that every citizen shall add some valuable skill to his more general attainments, and every special skill shall grow directly out of his general knowledge.

This, I believe, will be the great aim of American education everywhere. It is a high patriotic service to further such education.

Even in the elementary schools, let our pupils learn that their private interests are to be advanced only in accord with more general interests, and that they are to make their success in life by doing some one thing well for which the world at large has need. We have been, according to our critics, a Nation whose resources were greater and more impressive than our civilization. With such an education as this, we shall be a Nation whose civilization shall overtop all of the natural goods that may ever be discovered or conserved (applause). Such an education, moreover, could do much to overcome some of the chief obstacles which the Conservation movement now encounters; for it should give us a people who, from engineers and managers to farmers and miners, should not only be masters of their own trades but should pursue them with some positive regard for the public good (applause). Our education is not big enough and virile enough until it can deal with such great National issues as this. I am confident that it will come up to that high measure of power and efficiency, and that already it has begun to carry those larger responsibilities. (Applause)

President BAKER--Ladies and Gentlemen: Can there be higher patriotism than in the efforts of this Congress to protect the rights of all?

Conservation is true patriotism; and Mrs Matthew T. Scott, President-General of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, will now address you on this subject. (Applause, the entire audience rising)

Mrs SCOTT--Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In behalf of the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, I wish to make my grateful acknowledgments to the Executive Committee (through its President, Honorable Bernard N. Baker) for its courtesy in giving to Mrs Amos G. Draper, the able Chairman of our D. A. R. Conservation Committee who has so splendidly inaugurated and developed this work, and to myself, the privilege and honor of taking part in these splendid exercises. In its last a.n.a.lysis the generic term "Conservation"--in its widest scope, and broadest sense--may be said to be the keynote and touchstone of our great D. A. R. organization. The finest brains and blood and nerve force of the land have been absorbed and found n.o.ble expression in various lines of work of the D. A. R. While the Daughters have turned their sympathetic attention to various material branches of Conservation work, we have not neglected the higher intellectual, ethical, and moral Conservation interests; we aim to help preserve the glorious heritage that has fallen to us of self-government, and hand down the birthright undiminished to those who come after us that the priceless boon of "government of the people by the people and for the people" perish not from the earth. (Applause)

It has been borne in upon me of late that there are two Conservation interests whose importance we have not fully recognized, and they are the conservation of true womanliness, and the conservation of the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent. As to the former, the President of the United States in a recent address at Washington before the annual Congress of the D. A. R., said that woman's place and sphere are on too high a plane to be even discussed. It is surely an inspiration to have the privilege before this splendid a.s.semblage of representing the great patriotic movement, which under the banner of the D. A. R., marches steadily forward, with ever increasing numbers, enthusiasm, prestige, and practical power.

The Daughters of the American Revolution in distinctive and especial ways have lent their organized strength to various good causes, which may all be practically considered as Conservation interests: among other objects, to social uplift, to patriotic education in its widest scope, to placing bounds to the abuse of child labor, to playgrounds, to juvenile courts, to improvement of hygienic conditions in our great cities, to preservation of historic spots and records, to the safe and sane celebration of July Fourth; and to cooperation with the S. A. R. in their n.o.ble work for immigrants landing upon our sh.o.r.es and subsequently for these foreigners and their children in the effort to Americanize them and to inoculate them with ideals and principles known in this twentieth century as Americanism.

Much has been done also among the mountain whites of the South. Every mountaineer, child or adult, that in our work we help to educate toward intelligent citizenship--and many of these mountaineers are of Revolutionary ancestry--is a barrier raised against the anarchistic tendencies and the unrest of our great cities; is a guarantee for the supremacy of the Caucasian race in America. Read, if you can secure it, Mr Thomas Nelson Page's plea for the education of the Southern Mountain whites in his magnificent address delivered at Washington before the last Continental Congress! We are also preserving, all over this broad land, landmarks of history--sacred relics of a vanished age--which are object-lessons for our own youth and for the strangers who crowd our sh.o.r.es. Every monument we rear, every tablet we place, every statue we erect, every old fort or bastian, every Revolutionary relic or Revolutionary soldier's grave we honor, is a tribute to those to whom we owe the imperishable gifts of liberty, of independence, of the right to worship G.o.d in our own way. Every fountain or stone recording the trail of the pioneer, the priest, the trader, the soldier, or the devotion of the Revolutionary heroine, is a breath of incense wafted back to the immortals, an inspiration for "tangible immortality" for ourselves, and those who come after us. (Applause)

The Conservation of our natural resources is a subject of intensely practical importance to the D. A. R. Representing as we do the motherhood of the Nation, we feel that it is for us to see that the children of this and future generations are not robbed of their G.o.d-given privileges. It is our high privilege and mission to see to it that the future shall be the uncankered fruit of the past. The ideal democracy solemnly dedicated by the Founders, we, as their Daughters, declare shall not be forestalled. As women we cannot be silent and see the high ends at which they aimed made futile by the growth of a grovelling l.u.s.t for material and commercial aggrandizement. This headlong haste for enormous gain, the total disregard of the future for the present moment, if not stopped will bring us to the condition of the Old World where the fertility and habitability of past ages have been destroyed forever. We feel that it is for us, who are not wholly absorbed in business, to preserve ideals that are higher than business--the outlook for the future, the common interests, and the betterment of all cla.s.ses. The wasteful scrambling and greedy clutching at our natural treasures has made the present generation rich; but the mothers of the future must be warned by us lest they find that our boasted prosperity has been bought at the price of the suffering, of the poverty, and cla.s.s war of our descendants. There is no lack of patriotic devotion in the country; but the mere thoughtlessness and inability or unwillingness of the commercial cla.s.s to drop the interests of the moment long enough to realize how they are compromising the future--this hot haste and heedlessness, it is for us with our larger outlook, to restrain.

Women have already preserved a large National forest in the Pennsylvania mountains; the women of Minnesota have to their credit the Minnesota National forests; it was the women of California who saved the immemorial groves of the Calaveras big trees. Our own work in behalf of the preservation of the Appalachian watersheds, in behalf of the preservation of historic sites, as well as the efforts being made by various women's organizations to preserve the natural beauty of the Palisades, of Niagara Falls, and of other precious scenic treasures of the Nation, are all steps in the right direction, are all preparation for the larger Conservation interests which the D. A. R. have begun actively to champion. It should be a second nature to women, with the spirit of motherhood and protecting care innate in them, to take an effective stand in the spirit of true patriotism--against the spirit of rank selfishness--the anti-social spirit of the man who declines to take into account any other interests than his own. (Applause)

There is another great world interest that is peculiarly our own as Daughters and descendants of the peace-loving patriots who took up arms a century and a half ago. They were not professional soldiers, but plain citizens hastily rallied together in often-wavering lines of defense of home and country. All the world wondered when at Lexington and Concord, on the village green and at the wooden bridge, the embattled farmers stood across the line of march of the British regular army, and fired "the shot heard round the world." It is the opening decade of the twentieth century of the Christian era; it is time that brute force--the recourse of primitive, barbaric man--cease to be the last arbitrament between great nations calling themselves Christian and civilized, and that the Conservation of peace be established by international arbitration. (Applause)

Again, it is one of the glories of our great organization that we are first, last, and all the time, considering the child. Today in all civilized countries the child is leading the way. I am happy to be able to say that through the instrumentality of our chapters in different parts of the country, interest has been awakened in homeless and dependent children; organizations have been formed for children of foreign birth to teach them respect for the flag, and some things about our form of government. Many chapters provide instructive lectures in their own language for foreigners, who listen eagerly. Many chapters offer prize medals for the best essays on historical subjects--American history especially--and for memorizing our National songs. Nothing is more important than our organized work for the "Children of the American Revolution"--children of American birth and descent--unless it be our work for the "Children of the Republic" in teaching to be American citizens boys of foreign parentage who come to us with little idea of the difference between liberty and license. For patriotism consists as much in making good citizens as in saving the Nation from bad ones (applause). Every boy of foreign birth or extraction that we can help to transform into a thorough American through this magnificent branch of our work, every lad of foreign birth or extraction that we can help train to become a useful citizen and grow up into honorable manhood as a credit to his adopted land is an added a.s.set to the ethical wealth of the country. Think for a moment what it means to help train these young foreigners in the plastic period of their life in the patriotic principles of their adopted country! A long stride has been taken in their patriotic and civic education, when through the exertions of n.o.ble women they have been given some idea of the great principles which are the basis of our form of government.

Another branch of our Conservation work which is especially near my heart, and which I think must be near to the heart of every mother in this broad land, is that in connection with the splendid crusade now being carried on against the evil of child labor. We have attempted, in dealing with this as with every other problem, first to obtain a wide and sure knowledge of the facts, and secondly to avoid everything savoring of the spirit of fanaticism in concentrating our energies on some great constructive policy. The committee on child labor, under the leadership of its n.o.ble chairman--the late Mrs J. Ellen Foster, whose life was dedicated to the needs of humanity--has made herculean efforts to bring this matter properly before the attention not only of the D. A.

R. but of all the women of our land who are capable of responding to the pathetic appeal of suffering and stunted childhood, that we may wipe away this inexcusable stain on our National honor and this irreparable blight on that product which is more valuable than all the combined harvests of this fertile continent--the splendid American crop of human souls. (Applause)

If in a serener atmosphere than that of the politics of the hour, we as patriotic women can meet and help to solve these and other equally important problems in the eternally feminine way that has always given us power over men--if we would indeed, in the words of the old Athenians, help to transmit our fatherland not only undiminished but better and greater than it was transmitted to us, and if we are indeed unwilling to transmit to posterity mere material possessions unillumined by divine ideals; if we can but rise to the height and might of a pure, disinterested, pa.s.sionless consecration to the principles which time has proved to be the soul of the purpose of the Fathers of the Republic, and on that high level, above the distracting personalities and pa.s.sing incidents and accidents of the hour, "live and move and have our being"

as a National Society, then we shall best establish and preserve the useful influence and leadership in the country to which we loyally aspire. Our interest and work for these great Conservation interests we cannot too often reiterate for our own encouragement and inspiration and for the enlightenment of the public.

As I said before, in the light of recent incidents and experiences, it has been borne in upon me that there are two great Conservation interests we have not yet sufficiently touched. With all the advance in learning, all the discoveries of science, all the enlightenment and uplifting of religion, all the refining of manners, all the acquisitions of men through invention and additions to the facilities for work and comfort of living, all the improvements of inst.i.tutions providing for the farther and farther spread of well-being among the children of men, still, in the great underlying physical principles of existence, in the "main travelled roads" of humanity from birth to death, there is and can be no essential change. Nevertheless, there are an infinite number of variations and gradations in the product of these eternal operations of nature. Man's battle with nature--for human progress is a constant struggle against natural conditions, a continual re-making of the planet--has been ever accompanied, step by step, by the battle within himself against the contradictions in his inescapable heredity. It is the degree of success in this struggle for the triumph of the spiritual and the intellectual that marks the differences in racial types. Here then are the grand elements of the problem, the condition as well as theory confronting every well-wisher to humanity, every lover of her kind and her country, especially among women. For it is woman who is the divinity of the spring whence flows the stream of humanity--nay, she is the source herself. To her keeping has been entrusted the sacred font. In her hands rests the precious cup, the golden bowl of life.

Holier than the Holy Grail itself is this chalice glowing ever, with its own share of the divine fire, its own vital spark from the altar of Almighty power. Never has this office of cup-bearer to creation placed greater responsibility upon woman than in this our own day, and this our own country. Freely we have received, and generously must we respond; and deeply must we realize what a charge to keep we have--nothing less than the Conservation of the greatest experiment in enlightened self-government the world ever saw. Is that sacred trust to be jeopardized by untried, impracticable, uncalled for innovations upon the inst.i.tutions of Government sufficing for the Fathers of the Country, and providing for its splendid development thus far? Shall we grasp at a shadow in the stream, like the dog in the fable, and drop the substance to sink away from us beyond recall? Is any _real_ interest of the women of the land in danger? Is any _real_ interest of women inseparable from the interests of the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons of the women of the land? Is there any interest of women to be compared in vital importance to themselves, with the conservation of true womanliness?

I plead, as the representative of a great National organization of the women of the land, for the Conservation of true womanliness, for the exalting, for the lifting up in special honor, of the Holy Grail of Womanhood. But not merely the cup whence flows the stream of human life, must we guard and cherish; we must look to the ingredients which are being cast into the cup. We must protect the fountain from pollution. We must not so eagerly invite all the sons of Shem, Ham, and j.a.phet, wherever they may have first seen the light, and under whatever traditions and influences and ideals foreign and antagonistic to ours they may have been reared, to trample the mud of millions of alien feet into our spring. We must conserve the sources of our race in the Anglo-Saxon line, Mother of Liberty and Self-government in the modern world. I would rather our coming census showed a lesser population and a greater h.o.m.ogeneity. Especially do I dread the clouding of the purity of the cup with color and character acquired under tropical suns, in the jungle, or in paradisian islands of the sea alternately basking in heavenlike beauty and serenity and devastated by earthquake and tornado and revolution. (Applause)

I come of the old Virginia stock (applause) which first pa.s.sed over the Blue Ridge and possessed the great Middle West, just in time to prevent it from becoming Spanish or French or British. Some of the pioneers of Washington's times have stayed on right there, in that eagle's nest of pure Americans where Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia meet in the mountains against which Cornwallis' previously invincible raiding column--after devastating the Carolinas--dashed itself to pieces, wiped out by volunteer mountaineers in that wonderful battle of Kings Mountain which no general planned or even heard of until it was over. Personally, I would be willing to reduce our population-boast by many millions, had the remnant the unadulterated Americanism conserved to this day in these mountaineers' descendants! We may be destined to see our cup of liberty, which we have so generously proffered to the whole world, grow to the proportion of a grand mixing-bowl of races; but if so, will it not at least be wise to see that our own race dominate?

We, the mothers of this generation--ancestresses of future generations--have a right to insist upon the conserving not only of soil, forest, birds, minerals, fishes, waterways, in the interest of our future home-makers, but also upon the conserving of the supremacy of the Caucasian race in our land. This Conservation, second to none in pressing importance, may and should be insured in the best interests of all races concerned; and the sooner attention is turned upon it the better. (Great applause)

[Pending the foregoing, Governor Eberhart resumed the Chair.]

Professor CONDRA--Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: At the instance of the President of the Congress, and inspired by the splendid address of Mrs Matthew T. Scott, President-General of the Daughters of the American Revolution and one of the most eminent of American women, I move that the Secretary of the Congress be empowered to prepare a suitable expression of the condolence of the Congress to be sent to the family of the late Mrs J. Ellen Foster, a member of the Executive Committee of the Congress and one of the most militant women of the country in behalf of Conservation.

The motion was seconded by several delegates.

Governor EBERHART--Ladies and Gentlemen: You have all heard the motion.

As many as favor its adoption will please rise to their feet. [The entire Congress arose.] The motion is carried unanimously, and the Secretary will be instructed to forward the expression.

While the formal addresses of the women of the Nation to this Conservation Congress are now concluded, there is a little presentation which a lady of our State wishes to make; and in accordance with the instructions of the President of the Congress, I am pleased to introduce Mrs J. C. Howard, of Duluth. (Applause)

Mrs HOWARD--Your Excellency, and Ladies and Gentlemen: Mrs Scott asks me to present this certificate which I hold in my hand, for her and for the D. A. R., to a man whom we all delight to honor.

I used to live in Washington before I grew up and came to Minnesota, where I hope to spend the rest of my life; and there in my time I met many near-heroes and many heroes. I observed that modesty was always a sure sign of the real heroes; and if you had witnessed my efforts with Mr Gifford Pinchot to persuade him to come on the stage and stay there until I could give him this card, you would have no more doubt than before in which category he belongs (laughter and applause). Now, Governor, please don't let him get away while my back is turned (laughter), because I feel he really ought to have this certificate.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this certificate is a tribute by the D. A. R., in the form of a diploma, as you see; it says, in part,

=He that planteth a tree is a servant of G.o.d. He provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.=

I have intense pride in presenting it to the man who is first in the Conservation war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of all tree-lovers.

[Mrs Howard here presented the certificate to Mr Pinchot amid great and prolonged applause, with cries of "Pinchot!" "Speech!"]

Mr GIFFORD PINCHOT--Mr Chairman, Mrs Scott, and Mrs Howard: There are two reasons, Ladies and Gentlemen, why I am profoundly moved, and delighted to receive this certificate: One of them is--and it is not a bit modified by the fact that you have so kindly, yesterday and today, given me far more credit than I deserve--that I would rather have the good opinion of the women who are interested in Conservation than that of the men--by far (applause and laughter). The other is, that of all the organizations that have been working for the Conservation movement, for the preservation of the forests and for the extension of the same idea to all our natural resources, there has been none more devoted and more effective than the D. A. R. Besides, of all the women in the D. A.

R., no one has been more devoted or more effective than Mrs Howard's mother, Mrs Draper (applause). And in this certificate I have joined together in my mind the kindness of Mrs Scott and the organization which she represents, the good-will of Mrs Draper which I very deeply prize, and that of her daughter, Mrs Howard, who was kind enough to give it to me; and I want to thank them all most heartily. (Great applause)

Governor EBERHART--When our friend Mr Pinchot comes here for the next Conservation meeting, after having seen all the charming ladies who have attended this Congress and worked in its interest, it is to be hoped that there may be still another certificate which he may have in his possession at that time (great applause). I am not saying this for the purpose of announcing any compet.i.tion on the part of the ladies, but merely because Mr Pinchot himself suggested that he prizes this certificate so highly. But he would, I am sure, prize the other one still more if he got it (laughter).

Some time ago, when it became necessary to send a man of ability, honor, and integrity out West to prosecute land frauds, President Roosevelt looked quite a while before he could find the right one. The instruction under which that man went was that he should prosecute every guilty person, no matter what position in life he held, whether of high or low standing; and the man he sent was eminently successful. After successfully prosecuting those land frauds, he went to San Francisco and continued in the same work with equally great credit and distinction; so that in introducing him to you I am introducing the best-known, the ablest and strongest, apostle of clean citizenship in the United States, a man who stands for a square deal, and who believes in what is best and highest and truest and cleanest and purest in American citizenship.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the honor and privilege of introducing to you that conserver of clean citizenship, who will address you on the subject of "Safeguarding the Property of the People," Honorable Francis J. Heney, of California.

[Great and prolonged applause and cheers. Voices: "What's the matter with Heney?" "He's all right!"]

Mr HENEY (after asking an attendant to remove the water pitcher)--Mr Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: As I never take water, I have requested that it be moved over to another table before I commence. (Laughter)

The efficiency of a democracy must ultimately depend on the intelligence of its voters. It was the recognition of that idea which caused the Fathers of this Republic to advocate so strongly the establishment of a public school system in this country. Any effort on the part of any public servant to prevent the voters of this country from having full knowledge of all its public affairs is, therefore, a species of treason, and any failure on the part of any citizen to acquaint himself as fully as possible with our National affairs is a failure to perform one of the duties and obligations which are imposed upon every member of a democracy. (Applause)

Public opinion, it is said, rules the Nation. It might better be said (because it would be more accurate) that public opinion in a democracy _should_ rule the Nation; and it might further be said that if we had a real democracy, and a real representative government, public opinion _would_ rule the Nation (applause). There are some evidences, however, that public opinion in this country does not have a free chance to operate. I need not mention many instances to convince you. Ninety percent of the people of the United States were opposed to men being permitted to make a profit by poisoning a people; they wanted a pure-food law, and yet it was locked up on the high shelf in Congress for sixteen years until Theodore Roosevelt, with the Big Stick, forced it out (great applause). What public opinion failed to do the Big Stick accomplished. (Renewed applause)

Now, my friends, public opinion should be intelligent; and that requires accurate information. A friend of mine, riding on a street-car in the city of Washington, at a time when the Ballinger-Pinchot investigation was going on, saw two young men, beyond the voting age, reading the morning newspaper. They had a paper apiece. He was standing close by hanging on to a strap. He heard one of them say to the other, "They are having a great fuss up there in Congress over this Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, aren't they?" "Yes," said the other; "I see that Ballinger has been found three million dollars short in his accounts" (laughter).

"Yes, I see that," said the first, "and that they found Pinchot has stolen a _million acres_ of public land" (laughter). Whereupon both of them turned to the sporting column to see whether Johnson or Jeffries was predicted to win (laughter). They seemed to have a pretty accurate knowledge, also, of which club was ahead in the baseball game.

Now, my friends, that sort of misinformation is one of the diseases with which we are afflicted in this Republic, and I again call your attention to the responsibility of citizenship; and in that connection I congratulate myself, and I congratulate the Nation, that so many women are beginning to come to places like this, on occasions like this, to learn something about our National affairs (applause), because the future of this country is in the hands of the boys who are now growing up, and, perchance, the girls--who knows what may become of woman suffrage in the next generation? (Applause) Therefore, the more information the mothers have the better opportunity the Nation has of getting intelligent action from the voters.

The subject of my text today is "Safeguarding the Property of the People." Well, my friends, there are just two ways in which the property of the people may be safeguarded: one is by the Legislative arm of the Government, to whom the Const.i.tution of the United States has entrusted the power of disposing of, regulating, and controlling public property; the other is the Executive arm of the Government, to which, under the Const.i.tution, the power is entrusted of enforcing the laws which have been provided by the Legislative body.