und
the world, visited Japan and China, and was received with keen interest
everywhere. It came home early in 1909, having made a record for holding
together without breakdown or accident.

While the fleet was going round the world and business was adjusting
itself to the new constructive laws, an old problem was formally ended.
The tribal sovereignty, which had made the Indians a problem, was
terminated. The Dawes Act of 1887 had substituted severalty for tribal
landholdings among the Indians. Out of the first cessions which followed
the act Oklahoma Territory had been made in 1890. This had developed
more rapidly than any previous Territory because of the railroads that
crossed it in every direction. By 1900 it demanded statehood. In 1906 it
was enabled, and during 1907 it was admitted, with the longest and most
radical of state constitutions. Fear of the activities of corporate
wealth and distrust of the agents of government were written into nearly
every article.

In the spring of 1908 nearly all of the forty-six governors met with
President Roosevelt in the White House and registered another problem
upon which agitation and revelation had led to public reflection. The
coal strikes of 1900 and 1902 had drawn attention to the possible
relation of government to the coal supply of the people. The beginnings
of reclamation in 1902 had revealed the fact that public reclamation was
impeded by large private and corporate water rights. The natural
resources of the country were seen to be following the course of all
business and settling into the control of great corporations. The waste
of coal and timber and water and land itself was unreasonable. The
denudation of the hills led to terrible floods along the rivers. The
future was being darkened by the organized selfishness of the present. A
movement for conservation grew out of the conference of governors, but
Congress for the present would not encourage it.

In popular education, in initiation of new administrative policies, and
in the passage of constructive laws efforts were being made to adjust
government to the needs of modern industry and to safeguard society. The
business interests affected by the changes obstructed the process when
they could, and were intensified in their opposition by the series of
prosecutions brought by Attorney-General Knox, and his successor Charles
J. Bonaparte, under the Sherman Law. At no time in the earlier history
of this law had there