The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-11-01
WOOD AND WATER
No Forests, No Rivers, Declares
Clifford PinchOt
In Address Before the Deep
Water Ways Convention.
LIKE FATHER AND SON
Are the Intimate Connections of
the Two.
Advocates a Commission to Deal
With Rivers Needs.

New Orleans. Nov Addressing
the convention of the Deep Water
WAY association here this afternoon,
clifford Pinchot, Chief of the United
States Forest service spoke in part as
follows:
The connection between forests and
rivers is like that between father and
son. No forests, no rivers. So for
ester may not be wholly beyond his
depth when he talks about streams.
The conquest of our rivers is one of
the largest commercial questions now
before US.
The commercial consequences OF
river development are incalculable.
It's results cannot be measured by the
yard stick of present commercial
needs. River improvement means
better conditions of transportation
than we have now, but it means de-
velopment too. We cannot see this
problem clearly and see it wholly in
the light of the past alone.
The actual problems of river develop
ment are not less worthy of our best
attention than their commercial results
Every river is unit from its source
to its mouth. If it is to be given its
highest usefulness to all the people, and
serve them for all the uses they can
make of it, it must be developed with
that idea clearly in mind. To develop
q river for navigation alone, or power
alone, or irrigation alone, is often like
using a sheep for mutton. OF steer fof
beef and throwing away the leather
ard the wool. A river is unit, but its
uses are many, and with our present
knowledge there can be no excuse for
sacrificing one use to another If both
can be SuhserveG.
Work for n Commission.
progressive plan for the develop
ment of our waterways is essential.
Pending the completion of that plan,
which should neither be weakened by
excessive haste nor drowned in eX-
cessive elaboration, work should pro-
coed at once on some of the greater
projects which we know already will be
essential under any plan that may be
devised. FIRST and foremost of these by
unanimous consent is the Improvement
of the Mississippi river.
A comprehensive and progressive
plan of the kind we need can be made
in one way only, and that is by COM
mission of the best men in the United
States appointed directly by the presi-
dent of the United States.
1 believe in dividends for the people
as we'll as taxes. Fifty years is long
enough for the certainty of profitable
investment in water power, and to fix
on the amount of return that will be
fair to the public and the corporation
is not impossible. What city does not
regret some ill-considered franchise?
And why should not the nation profit
by the experience of it's citizens?
There is no reason why the water
power interests should be given the
peoples property freely and forever
except that they would like to have 1t
that way. I suspect that the mere
wishes of the special interests, al
though they have been the handspring
of much public action for many
years, have begun to lose their COM
polling power. A good way to begin
to regulate corporations would be to
stop them from regulating us
AT the Acute Stage.
Now that the fight is passing into an
acute stage it is easily seen that the spec
ial interests have used the period of public
indifference to maneuver themselves into
a position of exceeding strength. In the
first place, the constitutional position of
property in the United States Is stronger
place. it is well understood that the in
fluence of the corporations in our law
making bodies is usually excessive, not
seldom to the point of defeating the will
of the people steadily and with ease. In
the third place, cases are not unknown in
which the special interests, not satisfied
with making the laws, have assumed also
to interpret them, through that worst of
evils in the body polite, an unjust Judge
When an interest or an enemy Is en-
trenched in a position rendered impregna-
BILE against an expected mode of attack
there is but one remedy, to shift the
ground and follow lines against which no
Separation has been made.