President Baker—Ladies and Gentlemen: Now that this subject has been so ably opened by Mr Garfield, we are going to call upon another man who has been militant in the work of Conservation—an Ex-Governor who is even more active as an ex than he was as Governor, a sort of characteristic, these days, of prominent men (laughter). I am sure you will have great pleasure in hearing from Ex-Governor George C. Pardee, of California. (Applause)
Ex-Governor Pardee—Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I hope the Chair will forgive me if I differ from him very radically in one statement that he made, to the effect that all of us who have been things (laughter) are now more active than we were when we were things. (Laughter)
I sat here today in this vast Auditorium and saw thousands of men and women and children, gathering to do honor to the man whom we, in common with the rest of the world, consider to be the greatest American now alive (great applause). When I saw those thousands of people filling this great Auditorium, row on row and tier on tier, until the heads of those standing in the topmost row touched the very roof, I thought to myself that the activities of him who was in office are being only continued since he left the office which he filled to our entire satisfaction. (Applause)
I come here this afternoon to discuss the very able paper so well presented to you by him who was once Secretary of the Interior, in the cabinet of the President of the United States (applause); and I hope you will not consider it presumptuous that I should attempt to discuss that very able paper. Mr Garfield was good enough to furnish me with a copy of his address several days ago, and I am free to confess to you that I have given it prayerful consideration and that I can find nothing in it to discuss (applause), because it calls a spade a spade and a thief a thief (applause); and with both of those propositions I have no doubt the ladies and gentlemen here assembled will thoroughly and totally agree. (Applause)
Every now and then we hear of some poor, miserable fool sent to the penitentiary for crimes and frauds against the land laws; but will any one be kind enough to mention to me the name of any principal in such crimes and frauds who, with shaved head and striped suit, is looking through the bars of the penitentiary today? I take it that you will agree with me that the time has come when the rights and duties of the plain American citizen should be again placed within his grasp, and that the rights and duties of the very meanest of us should be regarded as equal to those of the most powerful and the richest and most influential. Our representatives have too often forgotten the fact that they represent the great mass of the people, and that they represent unborn generations of American citizens—that they are plowing legal furrows and building legal fences and making things ready for the coming generations of Americans who will fill this great land of ours.
So when I speak of my own State of California, and say that its people have been robbed and plundered and pillaged; when I say that its government has been debased and corrupted; when I say with shame and with blushes that my native city of San Francisco has been humbled and shamed into the very dust by the corrupting influences of men and public-service corporations who, with us as their benefactors, have turned and stung the breast that warmed them into life; when I say these things I have but to call to your attention conditions which have existed in almost every large city, in almost every State of this Union. (Applause)
Like Mr Garfield, I do not find it in my heart to blame the men who have taken advantage of our laxness; I cannot find it in my heart to blame the two men who own each over a million acres of the best timber land in the State of California for having taken advantage of the laxness in administration of the law in times past—not of the law itself, for the law has been good, and if it had been administered as it should have been administered these two men could not have owned a million acres apiece of the best timbered land in the State of California (applause). But who of us has not heard—in times past more than since the time of Theodore Africanus (laughter)—who of us has not heard those who, perhaps with a selfish interest, have sneered and said, "Well, we're all a little crooked, and why should we take exceptions to the man who is a little more crooked?" when the question of frauds against the land laws was in discussion? I take it that the officials who had those matters in charge should be, as Mr Garfield has so well said, ever vigilant within the law to do those things which the law does not prohibit and not wait for the prods and stings of outraged public opinion that compel them to do the things which they should, in common honesty to the people whom they represent, perform and do for the protection of you and me and your children and my children. (Applause)
I listened yesterday afternoon with mingled feelings to the statements of the gentlemen who four short years ago I would have hailed as brother governors. I heard some most violent utterances concerning the feeling of the people of the Pacific-coast States in regard to State rights. One good brother governor said that 95 percent of the people of the Pacific Coast were in favor of State rights. We had in California on the 16th day of August (less than a month ago) a direct-primary election. At that election there was nominated as the republican candidate for Governor of the State of California Hiram W. Johnson. Out of something over 200,000 votes cast he received over 100,000 votes. His next nearest opponent received 55,000 votes. Mr Johnson's campaign was made on a platform containing three principal planks—Roosevelt, Pinchot, and Conservation. (Great applause) If it be necessary, I can read a telegram from Mr Johnson in which he assures me that he has not yet recanted from his old Rooseveltism, his Pinchotism and his Garfieldism, or his Conservationism (applause); so I think I am safe in saying that instead of 95 percent of the people of at least one Pacific-coast State being in favor of State rights, I am entirely within the bounds of conservative statement if I say that 80 percent of the people of California have not forgotten the Civil War and remember that the ghost of State rights was laid so many fathoms deep at that time that no ingenious argument of any Governor from the Northwest, the Southeast, or any other portion of this country can revive it and make it walk. (Great applause) If necessary, I could read from this little packet that I have in my hand a portion of a letter from the Grand Master of the Patrons of Husbandry (that is the Grange) of the State of Washington (applause), whose Governor addressed this Congress yesterday afternoon and declared himself and his State as both being entirely in favor of State rights. In that letter the Grand Master of the Patrons of Husbandry of the State of Washington, whose Governor addressed this Congress yesterday afternoon, says that he represents 19,000 of the people of Washington, and that no man has the right to represent them upon the floor of this Congress and say that they are in favor of State rights (great applause). And in this little packet I also have a telegram from the Conservation Association of the State of Washington, signed by its president, which says that its membership in the State of Washington is not in favor of State rights (applause). So, our good southern brethren having forgotten the bloody past (as my Yankee blood has forgotten it), having come again into the Union and declaring themselves loyal sons marching under the American flag and having forgotten the obsolete doctrine of State rights, I think I am safe in saying that the people of the North and Northwest have not changed places with them, but that they believe that the Federal Government should keep and administer the things that belong to all the people of the country. (Applause)
We have in California, my fellow-citizens of other States, a great deal of your property. We have several millions of acres of National forests that belong to you. They cannot belong exclusively to the people of the State of California until the people of the United States, to whom they belong, give them to us. And I thank God that the National Government, representing the people of other States, has not given those millions of acres of National forests in the State of California to the State of California. For if it had, just as sure as you are sitting here, those acres would have been given over into private ownership, just as thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres of the public lands which were given to the State of California have been squandered with a prodigal hand and given to men who have not obeyed either the letter or the spirit of the law conveying and granting to them those hundreds and hundreds of thousands and millions of acres of the public lands. (Applause)