You know what has been the embarrassment about conservation.  The federal government has not dared relax its hold, because, not bona fide settlers, not men bent upon the legitimate development of great states, but men bent upon getting into their own exclusive control great mineral, forest, and water resources, have stood at the ear of the government and attempted to dictate its policy.  And the government of the United States has not dared relax its somewhat rigid policy because of the fear that these forces would be stronger than the forces of individual communities and of the public interest.  What we are now in dread of is that this situation will be made permanent.  Why is it that Alaska has lagged in her development?  Why is it that there are great mountains of coal piled up in the shipping places on the coast of Alaska which the government at Washington will not permit to be sold?  It is because the government is not sure that it has followed all the intricate threads of intrigue by which small bodies of men have tried to get exclusive control of the coal fields of Alaska.  The government stands itself suspicious of the forces by which it is surrounded.

The trouble about conservation is that the government of the United States hasn’t any policy at present.  It is simply marking time.  It is simply standing still.  Reservation is not conservation.  Simply to say, “We are not going to do anything about the forests,” when the country needs to use the forests, is not a practicable program at all.  To say that the people of the great State of Washington can’t buy coal out of the Alaskan coal fields doesn’t settle the question.  You have got to have that coal sooner or later.  And if you are so afraid of the Guggenheims and all the rest of them that you can’t make up your mind what your policies are going to be about those coal fields, how long are we going to wait for the government to throw off its fear?  There can’t be a working program until there is a free government.  The day when the government is free to set about a policy of positive conservation, as distinguished from mere negative reservation, will be an emancipation day of no small importance for the development of the country.

But the question of conservation is a very much bigger question than the conservation of our natural resources; because in summing up our natural resources there is one great natural resource which underlies them all, and seems to underlie them so deeply that we sometimes overlook it.  I mean the people themselves.

What would our forests be worth without vigorous and intelligent men to make use of them?  Why should we conserve our natural resources, unless we can by the magic of industry transmute them into the wealth of the world?  What transmutes them into that wealth, if not the skill and the touch of the men who go daily to their toil and who constitute the great body of the American people?  What I am interested