DON CARLOS ELLIS, Secretary.
Mr. Chairman, Knoxville has empowered me to invite to that city, to the Exposition, the fifth meeting of the National Conservation Congress. The National Conservation Congress belongs to the whole Nation, and the Nation is proud of it. For the past four years, since its birth, it has held its meetings in the North and Northwest. The South needs the Congress, particularly at this time, when it is in a phase of its great industrial awakening, and it earnestly urges that the Congress come within its bounds next year. If it should come South next year, there is certainly no more fitting place for its sessions than in that city which has done so much by its own energies and industries for Conservation as has Knoxville. It will be centering in Knoxville in that year and at that time all the forces working for Conservation throughout the United States. Knoxville is a smaller city than others in the South where the Congress might be held, but it is a city of between seventy and eighty thousand people. It has five excellent hotels. Two main railroads run through, and it has shown its ability to handle large crowds of people by the way it has taken care of the Appalachian Exposition for two years, with an average of twelve thousand visitors a day.
The Exposition is moving along parallel lines with the Congress, and it is in a way an offspring of the efforts of this Congress. It has taken up the ideas that have been promulgated by this Congress, and is going to apply them by showing at Knoxville the tangible, visible results of Conservation. The people in that section of country are in great need of instruction along these lines.
The plant already established for this other exposition is valued at between one-half and one million dollars. Already several buildings have been erected, and all this has been turned over to the new Exposition as a foundation.
I have letters with me from the various commercial bodies of the city, and this has been also heartily endorsed by the Governor of the State.
In conclusion, I wish to offer a resolution made by the Advisory Board:
Whereas, It is the sense of the Fourth National Conservation Congress, assembled at Indianapolis, Indiana, October 1 to 4, 1912, that the National Conservation Exposition, to be held at Knoxville, Tennessee, in September and October, 1913, will be a strong factor in the advancement of the Conservation and wise use of the national resources of this Nation, and particularly of the Southern States; and
Whereas, It is, further, the sense of this Congress that education in the care of natural resources is particularly needed in the Southern States, where the resources are of great value and their development in a period of a great awakening, but their Conservation at a low ebb; therefore, be it
Resolved, That the National Conservation Congress hereby signifies its gratification that the National Conservation Exposition is to take place, and its earnest hope that all persons and institutions interested in the Conversation of any of our natural resources will give to the Exposition their cordial support and co-operation.
I move the adoption of this resolution.