“Omaha, Neb., September 30, 1912.
Capt. J. B. White, National Conservation Congress, Indianapolis:
Please tell the Congress I am keenly sorry to be away. I should be with you, except that I believe I can do the cause of Conservation more good where I am. We are working to make this continent a better home for a better race. It is a great task. I wish you the best of meetings and complete success.
GIFFORD PINCHOT.
GIFFORD PINCHOT.”
The speaker of this evening is well known to us all. He has impressed himself and his subject upon the people of this great country in the past few years, and he needs no introduction from me. I have long wanted to know how old people managed to grow old and keep looking young. I do not mean to infer that the speaker of this evening is getting old, as I understand he has a boy only about a year old (applause); but I have found out his age, by persistent and tactful undertaking, and, being in pursuit of some way of living to a good old age myself, I inquired as to his habits. I will not give them to you now, except to say that he told me, briefly and epigrammatically, that he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink (applause), he doesn’t chew, and he says he doesn’t swear (applause)—only occasionally. (Laughter.)
I now take great pleasure in introducing to you Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, who will speak on the subject “The Conservation of Man.” (Applause.)
Address, “The Conservation of Man”
Dr. Wiley—The National Conservation Congress has at its previous meetings discussed in a most illuminating and helpful way the great problems of Conservation as applied to the soil, to the forests, to the mines, and to the running streams.
I do not suppose it is proper, with an audience of this kind, to refer to earlier papers, but I do believe I am the first person who ever made a public address in this country upon the subject of Conservation, and I am certain, as far as I know, that I am the last one that is making such an address. But as long ago as 1893 and being a very old man, as you have heard, I can remember that far back—I made an address on the conservation of the soil, so I am really the father of the conservation movement in this country as well as of a very fine boy. (Applause.) I miss my dear friend, Gifford Pinchot, whom I love as a brother, but who has fallen into the patent medicine habit and is giving us “absent treatment.” I am not at all sure that he is doing a better work out there than he would be here. In the words of the Scotch poet, “I hae ma doots.” But still we were glad to hear from him and know he has not lost interest because of the strenuous political life he is now compelled to lead.