“The chief object of this provision, however, is to prevent the Executive repeating what it has done within the last year in connection with the Conservation Commission and the Country Life Commission.  It is for the people of the country to decide whether or not they believe in the work done by the Conservation Commission and by the Country Life Commission. . . .

“If they believe in improving our waterways, in preventing the waste of soil, in preserving the forests, in thrifty use of the mineral resources of the country for the nation as a whole rather than merely for private monopolies, in working for the betterment of the condition of the men and women who live on the farms, then they will unstintedly condemn the action of every man who is in any way responsible for inserting this provision, and will support those members of the legislative branch who opposed its adoption.  I would not sign the bill at all if I thought the provision entirely effective.  But the Congress cannot prevent the President from seeking advice.  Any future President can do as I have done, and ask disinterested men who desire to serve the people to give this service free to the people through these commissions. . . .

“My successor, the President-elect, in a letter to the Senate Committee on Appropriations, asked for the continuance and support of the Conservation Commission.  The Conservation Commission was appointed at the request of the Governors of over forty States, and almost all of these States have since appointed commissions to cooperate with the National Commission.  Nearly all the great national organizations concerned with natural resources have been heartily cooperating with the commission.

“With all these facts before it, the Congress has refused to pass a law to continue and provide for the commission; and it now passes a law with the purpose of preventing the Executive from continuing the commission at all.  The Executive, therefore, must now either abandon the work and reject the cooperation of the States, or else must continue the work personally and through executive officers whom he may select for that purpose.”

The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane, Washington, a singularly energetic and far-seeing organization, itself published the report which Congress had thus discreditably refused to publish.

The work of the Bureau of Corporations, under Herbert Knox Smith, formed an important part of the Conservation movement almost from the beginning.  Mr. Smith was a member of the Inland Waterways Commission and of the National Conservation Commission and his Bureau prepared material of importance for the reports of both.  The investigation of standing timber in the United States by the Bureau of Corporations furnished for the first time a positive knowledge of the facts.  Over nine hundred counties in timbered regions were covered by the Bureau, and the work took five years.  The most important facts ascertained were that forty