The people of the United States have been the complacent victims of a system of grab, often perpetrated by men who would have been surprised beyond measure to be accused of wrong-doing, and many of whom in their private lives were model citizens. But they have suffered from a curious moral perversion by which it becomes praiseworthy to do for a corporation things which they would refuse with the loftiest scorn to do for themselves. Fortunately for us all that delusion is passing rapidly away.
President Hadley well said that "the fundamental division of powers in the Constitution of the United States is between voters on the one hand and property-owners on the other." When property gets possession of the voting power also, little is left for the people. That is why the unholy alliance between business and politics is the most dangerous fact in our political life. I believe the American people are tired of that alliance. They are weary of politics for revenue only. It is time to take business out of politics, and keep it out—time for the political activity of this Nation to be aimed squarely at the welfare of all of us, and squarely away from the excessive profits of a few of us.
A man is not bad because he is rich, nor good because he is poor. There is no monopoly of virtue. I hold no brief for the poor against the rich nor for the wage-earner against the capitalist. Exceptional capacity in business, as in any other line of life, should meet with exceptional reward. Rich men have served this country greatly. Washington was a rich man. But it is very clear that excessive profits from the control of natural resources, monopolized by a few, are not worth to this Nation the tremendous price they cost us.
We have allowed the great corporations to occupy with their own men the strategic points in business, in social, and in political life. It is our fault more than theirs. We have allowed it when we could have stopped it. Too often we have seemed to forget that a man in public life can no more serve both the special interests and the people than he can serve God and Mammon. There is no reason why the American people should not take into their hands again the full political power which is theirs by right, and which they exercised before the special interests began to nullify the will of the majority. There are many men who believe, and who will always believe, in the divine right of money to rule. With such men argument, compromise, or conciliation is useless or worse. The only thing to do with them is to fight them and beat them. It has been done, and it can be done again.
It is the honorable distinction of the Forest Service that it has been more constantly, more violently and more bitterly attacked by the representatives of the special interests in recent years than any other Government Bureau. These attacks have increased in violence and bitterness just in proportion as the Service has offered effective opposition to predatory wealth. The more successful the Forest Service has been in preventing land-grabbing and the absorption of water power by the special interests, the more ingenious, the more devious, and the more dangerous these attacks have become. A favorite one is to assert that the Forest Service, in its zeal for the public welfare, has played ducks and drakes with the Acts of Congress. The fact is, on the contrary, that the Service has had warrant of law for everything it has done. Not once since it was created has any charge of illegality, despite the most searching investigation and the bitterest attack, ever led to reversal or reproof by either House of Congress or by any Congressional Committee. Not once has the Forest Service been defeated or reversed as to any vital legal principle underlying its work in any court or administrative tribunal of last resort. It is the first duty of a public officer to obey the law. But it is his second duty, and a close second, to do everything the law will let him do for the public good, and not merely what the law directs or compels him to do. Unless the public service is alive enough to serve the people with enthusiasm, there is very little to be said for it.
Another, and unusually plausible, form of attack, is to demand that all land not now bearing trees shall be thrown out of the National Forests. For centuries forest fires have burned through the Western mountains, and much land thus deforested is scattered throughout the National Forests awaiting reforestation. This land is not valuable for agriculture, and will contribute more to the general welfare under forest than in any other way. To exclude it from the National Forests would be no more reasonable than it would be in a city to remove from taxation and municipal control every building lot not now covered by a house. It would be no more reasonable than to condemn and take away from our farmers every acre of land that did not bear a crop last year, or to confiscate a man's winter overcoat because he was not wearing it in July. A generation in the life of a nation is no longer than a season in the life of a man. With a fair chance we can and will reclothe these denuded mountains with forests, and we ask for that chance.
Still another attack, nearly successful two years ago, was an attempt to prevent the Forest Service from telling the people, through the press, what it is accomplishing for them, and how much this Nation needs the forests. If the Forest Service can not tell what it is doing the time will come when there will be nothing to tell. It is just as necessary for the people to know what is being done to help them as to know what is being done to hurt them. Publicity is the essential and indispensable condition of clean and effective public service.
Since the Forest Service called public attention to the rapid absorption of the water-power sites and the threatening growth of a great water-power monopoly, the attacks upon it have increased with marked rapidity. I anticipate that they will continue to do so. Still greater opposition is promised in the near future. There is but one protection—an awakened and determined public opinion. That is why I tell the facts.