A technical compliance
with the letter of the law was all that was required.
The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained,
and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition.
The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems
of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the
public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still
a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system,
with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by
the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect
on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there--a theory
which, I regret to say, still obtains.
The place of the farmer in the National economy was still regarded
solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the
human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still
remained wholly outside the recognition of the Government.
All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and
administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government
employ were in another Department.
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