These lands, because they form a National asset, are as emphatically national as the rivers which they feed, and which flow through so many States before they reach the ocean.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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We should acquire in the Appalachian and White Mountain regions all the forest lands that it is possible to acquire for the use of the Nation.
The only trouble with the movement for the preservation of our forests is that it has not gone nearly far enough, and was not begun soon enough.
But only a savage would, in his private affairs, show such reckless disregard of the future; yet it is precisely this reckless disregard of the future which the opponents of the forestry system are now endeavoring to get the people of the…
I do not blame these men nearly as much as I blame the supine public opinion, the indifferent public opinion, which permits their action to go unchecked.
A big lumbering company, impatient for immediate returns and not caring to look far enough ahead, will often deliberately destroy all the good timber in a region, hoping afterwards to move on to some new country.
They are to be blamed for thus sacrificing the future of the Nation as a whole to their own self-interest of the moment; but heavier blame attaches to the people at large for permitting such action, whether in the White Mountains, in the…
It is this attitude which permits the self-interest of a very few persons to weigh for more than the ultimate interest of all our people.
Yet we seem as a nation to be willing to proceed in this matter with happy-go-lucky indifference even to the immediate future.
Surely, when these facts are so obvious, there should be no delay in taking preventive measures.
But forests, if used as all our forests have been used in the past and as most of them are still used, will be either wholly destroyed, or so damaged that many decades have to pass before effective use can be made of them again.
Forests can be lumbered so as to give to the public the full use of their mercantile timber without the slightest detriment to the forest, any more than it is a detriment to a farm to furnish a harvest; so that there is no parallel between…
About 20 per cent of our forested territory is now reserved in National forests; but these do not include the most valuable timber lauds, and in any event the proportion is too small to expect that the reserves can accomplish more than a…
The preservation or replacement of the forests is one of the most important means of preventing this loss.
But there are certain other forms of waste which could be entirely stopped--the waste of soil by washing, for instance, which is among the most dangerous of all wastes now in progress in the United States, is easily preventable, so that…
The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it to-day means that our descendants will feel the…
We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.
It is this small ranchman, this actual settler and homemaker, who in the long run is most hurt by permitting thefts of the public land in whatever form.
Our prime object is to secure the rights and guard the interests of the small ranchman, the man who plows and pitches hay for himself.
The Government should part with its title only to the actual home-maker, not to the profit-maker who does not care to make a home.
The destruction of the public range will continue until some such laws as these are enacted.
The unlawful fencing of public lands for private grazing must be stopped, but the necessity which occasioned it must be provided for.
But it is an outrage that the law should necessitate such action on the part of the Administration.
All these fences, those that are hurtful and those that are beneficial, are alike illegal and must come down.
Some of them represent what is in itself a proper effort to use the range for those upon the land, and to prevent its use by nomadic outsiders.
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