You will be glad to know that Little Rhody is trying to do its share. It always does its share. It always matches the Government, at least dollar for dollar, on any public improvement work. Just now it is spending a million dollars on the harbor of Providence to match another million that the Government appropriated last year. That is the kind of "State rights" the Government gives it. But not much compared with what the railroads are putting in.
The formal establishment of a Conservation Commission was almost the very last act of the Rhode Island Legislature at its special session, only about two weeks ago. We didn't expect, of course, to be quite so much up to date, or so early in any new field, as our brethren in Montana for example, though we have had a Conservation Commission, rather informally appointed by the Governor, ever since that notable gathering of the Governors at Washington, and work that such a commission would naturally do has been going on, under other names, longer than I can remember.
The aim of the new Commission is to secure the maximum of efficiency and the minimum of politics. I do not know what the political affiliations of its members are, or if they have any, and I do not believe the Legislature knows. It is made up of ex officio members, to bring into efficient cooperation several well-established departments that have long dealt with some phase or other of Conservation. The head of the Bureau of Industrial Statistics, which is conducting a State survey of natural resources, including soil analysis; the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture; the Director of the Experiment Station of the State College; the State Forester; and the Secretary of the Metropolitan Park Commission—these departments will now contribute their efforts to a common purpose. The State Forestry Department, with advice from the National Forest Service, has been getting some very up to date forest laws passed, and the Park Commission has made a visible beginning to secure for public use and preservation some necessary recreation places for the over-crowding population of the Providence "Metropolitan District," which has about four-fifths of the population within about four-fifths of the area of the Twin Cities combined.
The State College, assisted by the U. S. Bureau of Soils, has been showing such farmers as care to take notice that southern New England is a very different sort of place agriculturally than it has been the habit to suppose, and that at least three ears of corn may be made to grow, where, previously, one went to the dogs—or the hogs. The very fact that there are more ever-hungry mouths to feed and more manufactures to the square inch in southern New England than there are anywhere else makes this necessary. We must care for every drop of water that falls on our hillsides. The cities need it; the manufacturers need it (and can use it first); the great bleacheries—that furnish about all the textiles that all of you use and wear—need all they can have; and the people need the lakesides and the river banks for recreation as in the past.
At present our markets get most of their "fine Rhode Island turkeys" from Vermont and their "new-laid eggs" from beyond the Mississippi. A large part of the Rhode Island greenings and Massachusetts Baldwin apples come from Oregon and Washington, though not because they refuse to grow in their native habitat. But much of the soil must have put back into it those elements which previous unscientific generations robbed it of. And here is an amusing paradox: With a population growing in density faster than in any other State of the Union, and with more markets just around the corner, there are, nevertheless, more acres of forest-covered lands and more acres of unutilized lands in Rhode Island than there were 50 years ago—and more in proportion than in almost any other State in the Union.
Well, that's where Rhode Island comes in, in this Conservation movement; and it has come in none too soon. If it had only had a wise and paternal Government to help it administer and develop its natural resources a century ago, the cost of living would be less today for every one of its inhabitants.
Rhode Island has awakened to vital things, but even if it had only an indirect interest in Conservation it would still feel that it owed its moral influence to the country as a whole, and that it is not a separate selfish little two-cent republic all by its lonesome, but a part of a great Nation that prefers to be governed from Washington rather than from Wall Street: a Nation whose prosperity and power and glory need the cooperation and loyalty of every one of its citizens.
REPORT FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
E. J. Watson
Commissioner of Agriculture
Chairman State Conservation Commission
South Carolina Commission's full report delayed, so report briefly by wire. Active work has been done. A preliminary forest survey has been made, and a complete measure for conservation of forests and protection against forest fires has been introduced in the General Assembly and will be pushed during the coming session. Active steps have been taken toward drainage and reclamation of coastal lands, and a measure to provide for a complete system under the direction of the State Commission is now being prepared for introduction in the Legislature in January next. Conservation of human resources has been greatly advanced in the past two years, following the enactment of complete factory inspection laws. No State is giving more attention to conservation of all her resources at this time than is South Carolina. I am heartily in sympathy with everything making for Conservation, and greatly regret I cannot be with you at the Congress.