Proceedings [of the] fourth National Conservation Congress [at] Indianapolis, October 1-4, 1912

by United States. National Conservation Congress

I have often made this boast about America, that, truly as we love our own institutions, proud as we are of the political history of America, if you could imagine yourself absolutely forgetting the documents upon which our constitutional history rests, over night, in the morning, we could make a new Constitution; we would not lose our self-possession, we would not lose our long training in self-control; we would not lose our instinct and genius for self-government. Strip us of one government, and we would make a new America in which we would shine as much as we did in the old. (Applause.) If that be not true, then it is not America, for America consists in the independent and originative power of the thought of the people. And so, when men and women from every part of the country gather in a great congress like this, to speak, not of matters of interest so much as of matters of duty, you realize in a gathering like this the vitality of the heart as well as of the mind of America, and men of every sort must give heed to the utterances of gatherings of this kind.

I know that there are some persons who come to these gatherings representing only themselves. I know that a gathering of men interested in a special cause is a great magnet to the crank. I know that all sorts of people, with special notions of their own, come sometimes to exploit them; but, after all, we ought to be very tolerant even of them, because some of the finest notions in the world have lived for a little while very lonely in the brain of a single man, or a single woman, and it is only by the tolerance of preaching that they get their currency, and finally get their imperial triumph by conquering the minds of the world, so that it is these voluntary contributions of thought, these irresistible currents of national life that are the most vital part of every people’s history. That is the reason I say it is a comfort to face an audience that I am not trying to persuade in regard to anything, but with which I am trying to get in sympathy, in order to share the great force which they represent.

It would be almost like assuring you that I was a thoughtful and rational being to say that I am in profound sympathy with the whole work of this great Congress, and that I am in particular sympathy, in keenest sympathy with that part which affects the conservation of the vital energy of the people of the United States. (Great applause.)

We have prided ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, upon our inventive genius; we have prided ourselves upon the ability to devise machines that can almost dispense with the intelligence of man. We have become a great manufacturing people because of this genius, because of our ability to draw together not only the tangible machinery of great enterprises but also the intellectual machinery of great enterprises, and we have been so proud of the mere multiplication of the resources of the Nation, so proud of its wealth, so proud of the ingenious methods by which we have increased its wealth, that we have been sometimes almost in danger of forgetting what the real root of the whole matter is.

I say, without intending to indict anybody, that it has too often happened that men have felt themselves obliged to dismiss superintendents who overtaxed a delicate piece of machinery, who have not gone further and felt obliged to dismiss a superintendent who overtaxed that most delicate of all pieces of machinery, the human body and the human brain. (Applause.)

If you drive your men and women too hard, your machinery will presently have to go on the scrap heap. If you sap the vital energy of your people, then there will be no energy in any part of the life you live, or in any enterprise that you may undertake. The energy of your people is not merely a physical energy. I am glad to say that the great State of New Jersey, which I have the honor to represent, has been very forward among her sister States in attempting to safeguard the lives and the health of those who work in her factories, and in all the undertakings which are in danger of impairing the health. I am glad to say that our Legislature has been to a very considerable extent, though not so far as it ought to be, thoughtful of the health of the children, thoughtful of the strength of women, thoughtful of the men and women together who have to breathe noxious gases, who are exposed to certain kinds of dust bred in certain manufactories, which dust carries congestion and danger to the lungs and to the whole system—we have been thoughtful of these things, but after all, we stand in exactly the same relation to our bodies that the nation stands to her forests and her rivers and her mines.

I have no use for my body unless I have a free and happy soul to be a tenant of it. We have no happy use for this continent unless we have a free and hopeful and energetic people to use it. I know that I have sometimes spoken of how foreigners laugh at Americans because they boast of the size of America, as if they had made it, and we are twitted with a pride in something that we did not create. We did not stretch all this great body of earth and pile it into beautiful mountains and variegate it with forests from ocean to ocean, and they say, “Why should you be so proud of what God created? You were not partners in the creation?”

But it seems to me that it is perfectly open for us to reply, “Any nation is as big as the thing that it accomplishes, and we have reason to be proud of the size of America, because we have occupied and dominated it.” (Applause.)

But we have come to a point where occupation and domination will not suffice to win us credit with the nations of the earth or our own respect. It was fine to have the cohesive and orderly power to plant commonwealths from one side of this great continent to another. It was pretty fine, and it strikes the imagination to remember the time when the ring of the ax in the forest and the crack of the rifle meant not merely the falling of a tree or the death of some living thing, but it meant the voice of the vanguard of civilization, making spaces for homes, destroying the wild life that would endanger human life, or destroying the life which it was necessary to destroy in order to sustain human life; and that the mere muscle, the mere quickness of eye, the mere indomitable physical courage of those pioneers that crossed this continent ahead of us, was evidence of the virility of the race, and was evidence also of its capacity to rule, to rule and to make conquest of the things that it needed to use. But now we have come to a point where everything has to be justified by its spiritual consequences, and the difficult part of the task is that which is immediately ahead of us.

Until the census of 1890, every census bureau could prepare maps for us, on which the frontiers of settlement in America were drawn, and until that time there had always been an interspace between the frontier of the movement westward and the little strip of coast upon the Pacific, which had been occupied, as it were, prematurely and out of order.