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Show Chapter XX Administration of the Public Forest Lands Conservation, one of America's great popular reform movements, was to deeply affect Federal land and forest policies. Concern about the future supply and cost of timber arose with the rapid depletion and anticipated early exhaustion of the better grades of timber in the older states, rising prices, and the fear that soon dependence would have to be placed on the yellow pine of the South or even on the Douglas-fir of the Pacific Coast states, which freight would make expensive. Professor Charles S. Sargent of Harvard was to make a report on the Forests of North America for the Census of 1880, containing alarmingly low estimates of the remaining stands of white pine in the Lake States. Gradually Americans became aware of the importance of maintaining forest cover to prevent floods, they became interested in preserving the forests for their recreational and aesthetic values, and began to appreciate the results of European forest management programs and the need for similar policies to be inaugurated in the United States.1 1 Conservation, as viewed in this context, was a product of the growing fear in the 1870's that the swift depletion of the white pine, the principal construction timber in the Northeast and the Lake States, would soon compel the use of inferior timber trees or dependence on other countries for supplies. Those fearing early exhaustion had their views documented, albeit prematurely and with marked exaggeration, by the part they played in the preparation of the Report of the Forests of North America, as a volume in the Tenth Census of the United States, wherein it was estimated that in 11 or 12 years the supply would be gone if the current rate of cutting were maintained. Though discredited by the commercial journals of The press increased its attention to forest matters, the Timber Culture Act was adopted, Arbor Day was instituted, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented a memorial to Congress in 1872 that led, 3 years later, to the appointment of an advisor on forest policy in the Department of Agriculture. In 1876 the American Forestry Association was organized and subsequently forestry congresses were held; a number of state forestry societies and commissions, and the lumber trade, notably the Northwestern Lumberman, the Report had a profound effect on slumpage values and in creating concern about limber supplies and other natural resources. The movement antedated Gifford Pinchot's concern for the scientific utilization of the natural resources and the crusade which grew out of his activities. I have discussed this early appearance of a concern for conservation in my Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University. A Study in Land Policy and Absentee Ownership (Ithaca, N. Y., 1943), pp. 221 ff. The history of conservation has attracted the attention of numerous participants in the movement and many historians and political scientists. In addition to the works of John Ise, Jenks Cameron, and E. Louise Peffer, previously cited, the following are helpful, though space does not permit a full listing: Charles R. Van Hise, The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States (New York, 1910); Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency; The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); David Cushman Coyle, Conservation. An American Story of Conflict and Accomplishment (New Brunswick, 1957); Elmo R. Richardson, The Politics of Conservation: Crusades and Controversies, 1897-1913 (Berkeley, 1962); J. Leonard Bates, "Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907-1921," Mississippi Valley Historical Review XLIVQune 1957), 29-57; Donald C. Swain, Federal Conservation Policy, 1921-1933 (Berkeley, Calif., 1963). 563 |