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Show 518. John Muir did not hear Roosevelt say these words, because he was conspicuously absent from Pinchot's carefully orchestrated Conference in Washington. Yet he undoubtedly read the published proceedings. Muir had appealed to Roosevelt on the matter of damming Hetch Hetchy in 1907, and Roosevelt had replied that he, the President, found i t d i f f i c u l t to "interfere with the development of the State for the sake of keeping a valley which apparently hardly anyone wanted to have kept, under national control." Muir wrote again to Roosevelt in April of 1908, repeating his plea, t h i s time arguing that the integrity of Yosemite National Park was threatened by perhaps able but ignorant " c a p i t a l i s t s , engineers, lawyers, or even philanthropists Though Roosevelt had been pleased to set aside Petrified Forest National Monumnet on Muir's advice in 1906, and accepted William Kent's gift of Muir Woods as a National Monument early in 1908, this matter of Hetch Hetchy was e n t i r e l y different. Muir wished to believe, a l l the while, that the Big Stick p o l i t i c i a n was "not the real Roosevelt," and further suspected that the President had only been too heavily influenced by Pinchot. So, i t seems, Muir was q u i t e thoroughly deceived, either by his own hopes, or by h i s own p o l i t i c a l naivete. Roosevelt was the n a t i o n a l i s t i c and conservationist enemy, despite the concessions he was w i l l i n g to make to p r e s e r v a t i o n i s t s , on matters which did not t h r e a t e n the e f f i c i e n t development of resources in America. |