n which the saving of
the resources on the public domain for public use became the leading
principle. There followed the withdrawal of coal lands as already
described, of oil lands and phosphate lands, and finally, just at the
end of the Administration, of water-power sites on the public domain.
These withdrawals were made by the Executive in order to afford to
Congress the necessary opportunity to pass wise laws dealing with their
use and disposal; and the great crooked special interests fought them
with incredible bitterness.

Among the men of this Nation interested in the vital problems affecting
the welfare of the ordinary hard-working men and women of the Nation,
there is none whose interest has been more intense, and more wholly free
from taint of thought of self, than that of Thomas Watson, of Georgia.
While President I often discussed with him the condition of women on
the small farms, and on the frontier, the hardship of their lives as
compared with those of the men, and the need for taking their welfare
into consideration in whatever was done for the improvement of life on
the land. I also went over the matter with C. S. Barrett, of Georgia,
a leader in the Southern farmers' movement, and with other men, such as
Henry Wallace, Dean L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and Kenyon Butterfield.
One man from whose advice I especially profited was not an American, but
an Irishman, Sir Horace Plunkett. In various conversations he described
to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm life which had
been accomplished by the Agricultural Organization Society of Ireland,
of which he was the founder and the controlling force; and he discussed
the application of similar methods to the improvements of farm life
in the United States. In the spring of 1908, at my request, Plunkett
conferred on the subject with Garfield and Pinchot, and the latter
suggested to him the appointment of a Commission on Country Life as a
means for directing the attention of the Nation to the problems of the
farm, and for securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions
of life in the open country. After long discussion a plan for a Country
Life Commission was laid before me and approved. The appointment of the
Commission followed in August, 1908. In the letter of appointment the
reasons for creating the Commission were set forth as follows: "I doubt
if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount
of attention given by