In the Far West a decided opposition arose against the new forest policy, but by 1911 the policy of Congress not to release any of the safeguards against the forestalling of land by corporations and large individual owners and to continue the forest policy and to reserve public mineral rights became clear.
In 1911-12 Congress began appropriations for the purchase of forest reserves in the Appalachian and White mountains.
In 1909, the first steps were taken to prevent plans of great capitalists to obtain control of valuable natural resources in Alaska. Ex President Roosevelt led in the support of a plan of government ownership with leases to corporations.
The conservation policy was also manifested in the agitation to reserve water-power sites, to secure new laws for the disposal of coal lands and to modify the Homestead Act. By act of 1910, the President can reserve public lands for water-power sites or irrigation. The Secretary of the Interior recommended that the Federal government be authorized to lease such power sites at a moderate rate for a period of not to exceed 30 years. It has been urged that the development of power in navigable and source streams should be co-ordinated to re duce drain on other resources, to aid in the control of streams for navigation, to prevent soil wash and to purify water supply. For the proper conservation of water power the most important thing is to prevent private monopolies from getting the sites and to preserve the use of them for the benefit of the whole people. The importance of this is indicated by the fact that 65 per cent of all the developed water power of the United States was controlled by 10 groups of power interests, several of which were closely related by interlocking directorates. The new policy of national conservation de feated the latest selfish attempt of organized power interests to obtain in perpetuity and for nothing the unregulated control of water powers of navigable streams in the national forests and on the public domain.
Recently the Federal government has begun active participation in the reclamation of and lands by irrigation projects which were first begun by private corporations as early as 1880. The national irrigation policy emerged from disputes of western farmers with the large private water companies which by 1900 had secured and developed the best irrigation sites, and also from the necessity of protecting rivers and lakes from which irrigating waters were drawn. The Federal government has en couraged irrigation by the desert land laws of 1877 and 1891, by the later Carey act of 1895 (modified in 1901 and 1908), and by the more important Newlands reclamation act of 1902, by which the government began to reserve from settlement many areas of water supply and could hold the mountain streams necessary to fill reservoirs and use the water drained from the dams. Congress advanced $20,000,000 for
the construction of irrigation dams to be satis fied from the proceeds of the sales of the improved land.
Congress has gone far toward committing the government to the policy of control by authorizing the President to withdraw public lands from private use whenever important for conservation of forest or grazing lands, water power, irrigation possibilities or scenic beauty, but has not yet determined the terms on which mining and development rights will be conceded. Little effort has been made to pro tect mineral resources from waste or improper exploitation. In 1900, Congress enacted a law authorizing the President to withdraw tem porarily from settlement and sale and to re serve for public purposes any lands in the United States and Alaska or to reserve as government property the coal and other min erals beneath the surface. The National Con servation Commission advocated the disposal of coal lands only under leases safeguarding the interests of both the mining investor and the public. Steps were taken to withhold from private ownership the coal deposits in Alaska, and thc government undertook the construction of a railway leading to the Matauska coal field. This is the beginning of a new system in line with the example of many European countries.
Anothcr illustration of the new policy of conservation is found in the guarding of the north Pacific seal fisheries by an international agreement of 1896 between the United States, Great Britain and Russia, and by a later treaty of 1911 in which Japan Joined.
To make resources safe from waste and unregulated monopoly, the advocates of con servation still urge legislation for the develop ment of water power of the national forests and other public lands on terms fair both to the people and to the power interests, for im provement of public grazing lands by regulated use, for preventing by adequate penalties the needless pollution of streams, and for the utilization of the resources of Alaska for the benefit of the people.
Bibliography.— (American Year Book' (1910); Gregory, (Checking the Waste' (1911); Newell, (Irrigation in the United States' (1906) ; Pinchot, Gifford, 'Conservation of Natural Resources' (1908) ; id., (Fight for Conservation' (1910); Spahr, (Distribution of Wealth in the United States' (1896) ; Treat, P. J., (National Land System) (1910); United States National Conservation Commission Re port (1908-) ; Van Hise, (The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States' (1911); Weyl, (The New Democracy' (1912).
jAmEs M. CALLAHAN, Professor of History and Political Science, West Virginia University.