first, and the new policy went through Congress as though on well-oiled
wheels. Only six months passed between its first statement in the
Presidential message and its enactment into law. Conservation, on the
other hand, had to begin by withholding the natural resources from
exploitation and extravagant use. It had, first of all, to establish in
the national mind the principle that the forests and mines of the nation
are not an inexhaustible grab-bag into which whosoever will may thrust
greedy and wasteful hands, and by this new understanding to stop the
squandering of vast national resources until they could be economically
developed and intelligently used. So it was inevitable that conservation
should prove unpopular, while reclamation gained an easy popularity, and
that those who had been feeding fat off the country's stores of
forest and mineral wealth should oppose, with tooth and nail, the very
suggestion of conservation. It was on the first Sunday after he reached
Washington as President, before he had moved into the White House, that
Roosevelt discussed with two men, Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, the
twin policies that were to become two of the finest contributions
to American progress of the Roosevelt Administrations. Both men were
already in the Government service, both were men of broad vision and
high constructive ability; with both Roosevelt had already worked
when he was Governor of New York. The name of Newell, who became chief
engineer of the Reclamation Service, ought to be better known popularly
than it is in connection with the wonderful work that has been
accomplished in making the desert lands of western America blossom and
produce abundantly. The name of Pinchot, by a more fortunate combination
of events, has become synonymous in the popular mind with the
conservation movement.

On the very day that the first Roosevelt message was read to the
Congress, a committee of Western Senators and Congressmen was organized,
under the leadership of Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, to
prepare a Reclamation Bill. The only obstacle to the prompt enactment
of the bill was the undue insistence upon State Rights by certain
Congressmen, "who consistently fought for local and private interests
as against the interests of the people as a whole." In spite of this
shortsighted opposition, the bill became law on June 17, 1902, and the
work of reclamation began without an instant's delay. The Reclamation
Act se