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Show 532. at the bottom of the valley could be drained as had been done in Yosemite Valley. Muir knew that this would accelerate forest succession and diminish the meadows, but almost anything seemed a lesser evil than the dam itself. Muir and his allies were willing to answer "park invaders" in utilitarian terms, and so their arguments could be easily countered by the Pinchots who simply asserted that "at this stage of the game" the aesthetic side of conservation could not "go ahead of the economic and moral aspects of the case." When the issues were reduced to the realm of utilitarian and materialist ideology, there was not much doubt that water for San Francisco would be seen as a "greater good for a greater number." Muir might point out the disastrous precedent that Hetch Hetchy represented in the pages of American Forestry, where he argued in a very subdued and businesslike way that the Hetch Hetchy controversy was "a national question," pitting the citizens of the United States against "certain individuals in San Francisco." He might insist that . . . the commercial invasion of the Yosemite Park means that sooner or later under various specious beguiling pleas, all the public parks and playgrounds throughout our country may be invaded and spoiled. The Hetch-Hetchy is a glaringly representative case . . . which, if allowed, would create a most dangerous precedent. fet the arguments that he and his allies created had stooped to a consideration of the practical merits of the Hetch Hetchy |