from an Arizona newspaper printed probably about 1916: "Ten years ago farm land in the Salt River Valley was worth from thirty-five to a hundred dollars per acre. It is now worth from seventy-five to five hundred dollars. . . . What effected the change? The credit should be given to the Roosevelt Reservoir. . . . The Roosevelt Reservoir right now has more water in it than it ever had before, giving positive insurance of crops in the Salt River Valley for years to come. It is three-fourths full and will be entirely filled before the snow stops melting this spring." The Roosevelt Dam was nearly five years in construction,2 and was opened by ex-President Roosevelt in March, 1911. The Colorado River is the Nile of America, only it is not navigable; it was dammed at Yuma, 251 miles southeast of Los Angeles. The results were excellent and made for civilization. "Every item," wrote Roosevelt in 1913, "of the whole great plan of reclamation now in effect was undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the spring of 1909 the work was an assured success and the Government had become fully committed to its continuance." 4 James, in his chapter entitled "A Vision of the Future," the last one of his book published in 1917, wrote, "Who that is familiar with the destructive floods of, say, three Western rivers alone, the Columbia, Colorado and Sacramento, does not understand that the real conquest of these rivers has not yet even begun." There are 80 1 Washburn's Roosevelt, 126. 2 Sept. 20, 1906 to March, 1911, James, 80. For a full account, ibid., 97. Autobiography, 432. million acres of swamp lands and 400 million acres of deserts, mostly public domains, in the United States. "Our swamp and overflow lands," he continued, "embrace an area greater than the whole superficial area of the Philippines. Their reclamation would give employment for years to hundreds of thousands of laborers and later would afford opportunities for the establishment of approximately two and a half million families in homes of their own. Two or three harvests from these lands would suffice to pay the entire cost of reclamation. The Man of Destiny is the hydraulic engineer.” 1 Theodore Roosevelt was no engineer but he appreciated fully the material interests of his country. "A primeval forest," he wrote while governor, is a great sponge which absorbs and distils the rain water. And when it is destroyed the result is apt to be an alternation of flood and drought. Forest fires ultimately make the land a desert." "I was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry," he wrote while President.2 Forestry is the science of caring for and cultivating forests. "Concerned over the destruction of the forests," Roosevelt as President did what he could for their preservation. He was attracted to Gifford Pinchot to whom he paid a warm tribute. "He led," so Roosevelt wrote, "and indeed during its most vital period embodied the fight for the preservation through use of our forests." The enemies of the forest were fires, the sawmill and other inventions for getting timber and wood-pulp. By legislation which he furthered and by executive action the President had always in mind that a fight must be made 1 Pp. 389, 390, 393. 8 : Autobiography, 429. 2 Autobiography, 339, 431. for the preservation of the forests. They are, he told the people of Memphis, on October 4, 1907, "the most effective preventers of floods; . . . the loss from soil wash is enormous. It is computed .. that one billion tons in weight of the richest soil matter of the United States is annually gathered in storm rivulets, washed into the rivers and borne into the sea. We are con suming our forests three times faster than they are being reproduced. . . . Yet forests, unlike mines, can be so handled as to yield the best results of use, without exhaustion, just like green fields." 1 The President's trip down the Mississippi River on a steamboat was a notable occurrence. At St. Louis on October 2, 1907, he said, "I am taking a trip on the great natural highway which runs past your very doors - a highway once important now almost abandoned." In other parts of the country the railroad development had been at the expense of the rivers and of canals, natural and artificial waterways. In mercantile traffic we must follow the prime example of the Great Lakes as "the commerce that passes through the Soo far surpasses in bulk and value that of the Suez Canal." At Memphis during the speech from which I have already quoted, he said, "The Mississippi Valley is a magnificent empire in size and fertility." In it there are "12,000 miles of waterway now more or less fully navigable." "This vast stretch of country lying between the Alleghanies and the Rockies, the Great Lakes and the Gulf will largely fix the type of civilization for the whole Western Hemisphere." 3 1 Review of Reviews, ed., 1429 et seq. 2 2 Ibid., 1390. An important incident on this voyage was that the Inland Waterways Commission, appointed by the President during March, 1907, asked him to call a conference on the conservation of natural resources in Washington. Roosevelt carried out their request and wrote to the governors of the several States and to prominent men summoning them to Washington to attend such a conference. "The conservation of our natural resources," he wrote in a special Message to Congress of March 25, 1908, "is literally vital for the future of the Nation." To the imposing conference assembled in the East Room of the White House he said in his address of welcome: "So vital is this question that for the first time in our history the chief executive officers of the States separately, and of the States together forming the Nation, have met to consider it." Men, "chosen for their special acquaintance with the terms of the problem that is before us, the Senators and Representatives in Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet and the Inland Waterways Commission have likewise been invited to the conference." A friendly criticism was that such an assemblage was perfectly obvious. But no President had ever initiated it before and it remained for Roosevelt, in this case as in many others, to make the precedent. 2 The Convention of Governors as it was called was an interesting assembly. It was of course presided over by the President who, as he stepped into the East Room, took his place at the presiding officer's table and called the meeting to order by a rap of the gavel, could not help 1 Review of Reviews ed., 1687. * Ibid., 1739. reminding one of the Homeric Council at which Agamemnon, King of men, was at the head. Verily Roosevelt was in this assemblage "King of men." It was notable to an onlooker from the East to see the representative men of the South and West gathered together. After much discussion the Conference adopted a report and the debate on it was instructive. The governors of the Southern States were well to the fore and seemed to enjoy speaking of the President as a man of large brain and great heart - a man of "inside" views and generous ideas. He was always received with enthusiasm, and next to this, though below it in intensity, was that awarded to William J. Bryan, who came by invitation as one of the delegates. The Southern governors referred often to the indissoluble union of indestructible States, and their discussion of centralization and State rights was significant. Bryan read his paper and the onlooker thought he was a poor reader and was disappointed that he did not speak those words of silver eloquence, of which report was common. Bryan said: "I am a strict constructionist, if that means to believe that the Federal Government is one of delegated power and that constitutional limitations should be carefully observed. There is no twilight zone between the nation and the State in which exploiting interests can take refuge from both, and my observation is that most - not all but most the contentions over the line between nation and State are traceable to predatory corporations which are trying to shield themselves from deserved punishment or endeavoring to prevent needed restraining legislation. The first point which I desire to make is that earnest men with an unselfish purpose and controlled only for the of |