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Show 466. forgetting what it was he had to teach? For years he had spoken in parables. If he descended to the language of the political world, wouldn't his message become as banal as the banal world of technology which encroached on the wilderness? The worst of all was conservation: in the mouths of Pinchot and Roosevelt, this term came to describe the process by which America would attain dominion over Nature, by utilizing efficiently the resources of material wealth in the West. Conservation might have included rational planning, but it only offered a more systematic plan for lumbering, mining, and grazing on the public domain. THE FORESTRY COMMISSION'S REPORT Though Muir apparently didn't want to be a member of the Forestry Commission, he was initially interested in its work. Johnson and Sargent were less interested in his membership in the Commission than they were in the good he could do with his pen. How much he actually influenced the Commission's report is in some question. One historian believes that Muir was responsible for the Commission's taking a position against grazing in Reserves. Pinchot too substantiates this theory in Breaking New Ground. But the fact remains that it was not Muir's report but the Commission's, and was largely the result of Sargent's leadership. When Muir travelled with the group through Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico, as well as the California coast, he was there because he |