to the
possibilities. . . . Stifle that enthusiasm, deaden that imagination and
prohibit that speculation by restrictive and cramping conservative law,
and you tend to produce a moribund and conservative people and country."
This is an appeal to the historic ideals of Americans who viewed the
republic as the guardian of individual freedom to compete for the
control of the natural resources of the nation.

On the other hand, we have the voice of the insurgent West, recently
given utterance in the New Nationalism of ex-President Roosevelt,
demanding increase of federal authority to curb the special interests,
the powerful industrial organizations, and the monopolies, for the sake
of the conservation of our natural resources and the preservation of
American democracy.

The past decade has witnessed an extraordinary federal activity in
limiting individual and corporate freedom for the benefit of society. To
that decade belong the conservation congresses and the effective
organization of the Forest Service, and the Reclamation Service. Taken
together these developments alone would mark a new era, for over three
hundred million acres are, as a result of this policy, reserved from
entry and sale, an area more than equal to that of all the states which
established the constitution, if we exclude their western claims; and
these reserved lands are held for a more beneficial use of their
forests, minerals, arid tracts, and water rights, by the nation as a
whole. Another example is the extension of the activity of the
Department of Agriculture, which seeks the remotest regions of the earth
for crops suitable to the areas reclaimed by the government, maps and
analyzes the soils, fosters the improvement of seeds and animals, tells
the farmer when and how and what to plant, and makes war upon diseases
of plants and animals and insect pests. The recent legislation for pure
food and meat inspection, and the whole mass of regulative law under the
Interstate Commerce clause of the constitution, further illustrates the
same tendency.

Two ideals were fundamental in traditional American thought, ideals that
developed in the pioneer era. One was that of individual freedom to
compete unrestrictedly for the resources of a continent--the squatter
ideal. To the pioneer government was an evil. The other was the ideal of
a democracy--"government of the people, by the people and for the
people." The operation of these ideals took place contempor