LAWS THAT SHOULD BE PASSED
Francis G. Newlands
Senior Senator From Nevada
Regretting my inability to address the Conservation Congress personally on the subject assigned to me, I submit my views briefly by telegraph.
Conservation legislation necessarily involves harmonious action by forty-seven sovereigns, the Nation and the States, each acting within its jurisdiction. As the legislative bodies cannot confer together, it is necessary that there should be some intermediate organization which will bring about team work. There should be a National Commission and State commissions which can act together, as well as separately, in recommending needed legislation. A reactionary Congress disregarded Roosevelt's recommendations on this subject, but the progressive sentiment of the country will not brook further resistance; and the bill for the appointment by the President of a National Conservation Commission composed of publicists and experts in civil, hydraulic, and electric engineering, in arid and swamp land reclamation, in transportation, and in mining and lumbering, reported by the Senate Conservation Committee at the last session, should surely pass. With Roosevelt as chairman, and Garfield, Pinchot, Newell, and the Chief of Engineers of the Army as members of this Commission, we would have the men who in practical administration have become more thoroughly informed regarding the natural resources of this country than any others.
As to the land laws: It is evident that for years large portions of the public domain have been gradually drifting into private and monopolistic ownership under antiquated and misfit land laws utterly unadapted to existing economic conditions, and therefore stimulating fraud in their evasion and perversion. Legislators outside of the public land States have taken little interest in the subject, relying mainly upon the States involved to suggest legislation. Had the Senators and Representatives from the public land States counseled together continuously, patiently, and tolerantly regarding the land laws, as they did regarding the Reclamation Act, the confusion and scandal and the prosecutions of the past six years would have been lessened, and a wise solution of needed legislation would have been evolved and accepted by the country. At the next session of Congress such a council of western Senators and Representatives should be held, and the present deadlock of conflicting views ended. In shaping laws regarding the public lands the central idea should be a rational development, without monopoly or waste; the establishment of individual homes upon the agricultural lands; the utilization of the forests and the coal, iron, and oil deposits under conditions that will enlist the aid of needed capital without monopolistic exaction or excessive prices; and the improvement of our waterways, regardless of State lines, so as to promote every use to which civilization can put them, and in that connection secure team work on the part of the various services, National and State, engaged upon them, as well as the cooperation of the Nation and the States, each within its appropriate jurisdiction in the work to be done and the expenditures to be made.
Until comprehensive plans are developed, the Nation should not part permanently with the title to any lands suited for the development of water-power, the promotion of navigation, or the establishment of transfer facilities and sites, but should hold the National properties in such shape that they may be utilized in the working out of comprehensive plans involving the union of National and State powers. In forming these plans it should be borne in mind that the Nation holds the public domain, not for National profit, but in trust for the population, present and future, of the public land States which welcome immigration from other States whose surplus population there finds a resting place. The money realized either from sale or rentals should therefore be applied to the schools, roads, reclamation projects, and other public development of the States in which the lands are located.
The ultimate purpose of the laws should be to gradually substitute State sovereignty for National sovereignty in the direction and control of this great public trust; but great care should be taken not to prematurely turn over the trust to States too weak to resist powerful combinations and monopolies, or until the organization of adequate public regulation and control is effected.
CONSERVATION OF THE NATION'S RESOURCES
J. B. White
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Conservation Congress
In the division of the program set apart for discussion there are many ideas and inquiries crowded upon our minds for expression; and while much will be made clearer to us, there will be many questions that will remain to us unanswered.