Alaska. The government stands itself suspicious of the forces by which
it is surrounded.

The trouble about conservation is that the government of the United States
hasn't any policy at present. It is simply marking time. It is simply
standing still. Reservation is not conservation. Simply to say, "We are
not going to do anything about the forests," when the country needs to use
the forests, is not a practicable program at all. To say that the people
of the great State of Washington can't buy coal out of the Alaskan coal
fields doesn't settle the question. You have got to have that coal sooner
or later. And if you are so afraid of the Guggenheims and all the rest of
them that you can't make up your mind what your policies are going to be
about those coal fields, how long are we going to wait for the government
to throw off its fear? There can't be a working program until there is a
free government. The day when the government is free to set about a policy
of positive conservation, as distinguished from mere negative reservation,
will be an emancipation day of no small importance for the development of
the country.

But the question of conservation is a very much bigger question than the
conservation of our natural resources; because in summing up our natural
resources there is one great natural resource which underlies them all,
and seems to underlie them so deeply that we sometimes overlook it. I mean
the people themselves.

What would our forests be worth without vigorous and intelligent men to
make use of them? Why should we conserve our natural resources, unless we
can by the magic of industry transmute them into the wealth of the world?
What transmutes them into that wealth, if not the skill and the touch of
the men who go daily to their toil and who constitute the great body of
the American people? What I am interested in is having the government of
the United States more concerned about human rights than about property
rights. Property is an instrument of humanity; humanity isn't an
instrument of property. And yet when you see some men riding their great
industries as if they were driving a car of juggernaut, not looking to see
what multitudes prostrate themselves before the car and lose their lives
in the crushing effect of their industry, you wonder how long men are
going to be permitted to think more of their machinery than they think of
their men. Did you never think of it,--men are cheap, and machinery is