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Show 519. Samuel Hays views the Roosevelt program with sympathy: The broader significance of the conservation movement stemmed from the r o l e i t played in the transformation of a decentralized nontechnical, loosely organized society, where waste and inefficiency ran rampant, into a highly organized, technical, and centrally planned and d i r e c t e d social organization which could meet a complex world with efficiency and purpose. The Roosevelt Administration's further emphasis on applied science, and Roosevelt's i n s i s t e n c e that "the National Government shall proceed as a p r i v a t e businessman would," led to decisions about national resources made from the top down. Even though Roosevelt and Pinchot t r i e d to make t h e i r programs appeal to middle and upper income urban dwellers, they wanted their program to be run by Hamiltonian means. What t h i s meant, quite simply, was t h a t the decision on Hetch Hetchy would be a political one, and based on a kind of thinking Muir abhorred. "This playing at p o l i t i c s saps the very foundations of righteousness," Muir once said. Yet that was the arena in which the fate of Hetch Hetchy had already been decided. Conservationists would not l i s t e n to a popular outcry; they would only try to hush the cry or outshout the objectors. So the story of Hetch Hetchy, as a p o l i t i c a l struggle, was determined by forces which had already been mustered, alliances of "reformers" which were larger than Muir or the Sierra Club. The time was not r i g h t for raising the issue which Hetch Hetchy suggested. San Francisco was attempting to |