The conservation point of view is valuable in the education of our people as well as in forestry; it applies to the body politic as well as to the earth and its minerals.  A municipal franchise is as properly within its sphere as a franchise for water-power.  The same point of view governs in both.  It applies as much to the subject of good roads as to waterways, and the training of our people in citizenship is as germane to it as the productiveness of the earth.  The application of common-sense to any problem for the Nation’s good will lead directly to national efficiency wherever applied.  In other words, and that is the burden of the message, we are coming to see the logical and inevitable outcome that these principles, which arose in forestry and have their bloom in the conservation of natural resources, will have their fruit in the increase and promotion of national efficiency along other lines of national life.

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency.  In the great commercial struggle between nations which is eventually to determine the welfare of all, national efficiency will be the deciding factor.  So from every point of view conservation is a good thing for the American people.

The National Forest Service, one of the chief agencies of the conservation movement, is trying to be useful to the people of this nation.  The Service recognizes, and recognizes it more and more strongly all the time, that whatever it has done or is doing has just one object, and that object is the welfare of the plain American citizen.  Unless the Forest Service has served the people, and is able to contribute to their welfare it has failed in its work and should be abolished.  But just so far as by cooeperation, by intelligence, by attention to the work laid upon it, it contributes to the welfare of our citizens, it is a good thing and should be allowed to go on with its work.

The Natural Forests are in the West.  Headquarters of the Service have been established throughout the Western country, because its work cannot be done effectively and properly without the closest contact and the most hearty cooeperation with the Western people.  It is the duty of the Forest Service to see to it that the timber, water-powers, mines, and every other resource of the forests is used for the benefit of the people who live in the neighborhood or who may have a share in the welfare of each locality.  It is equally its duty to cooeperate with all our people in every section of our land to conserve a fundamental resource, without which this Nation cannot prosper.

CHAPTER V

WATERWAYS

The connection between forests and rivers is like that between father and son.  No forests, no rivers.  So a forester may not be wholly beyond his depth when he talks about streams.  The conquest of our rivers is one of the largest commercial questions now before us.