The Paducah evening sun. [volume] (Paducah, Ky.) 1906-1929, 1909-12-28
PINCHOT RAPS
LAND GRADERS
NATURAL RESOURCES PROPERTY
OF THE PEOPLE.
Efficiency Of Forestry Commission In
creases-Enors Of Corporations
Ia Muzzlc Press Denounced.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL

New York, Dec. 2S.-Gifford PIN
chot, chief forester of the United
States, declared in a speech here be-
fore a number of prominent publish
ers at the University club, that spe-
eial interests have made repeated at
lacks on the United States forest
service, and these attacks have in
creased in violence Just in proportion
as the service has offered effective
opposition to predatory wealth. Mr..
Pinchot said:
"The American people have evil
IDENTITY made up their minds that our
natural resources must be conserved.
That is good, but II settles only half
the question. For whose benefit shall
they be conservation the benefit of
the many, or for the use and profit of
the few? The great conflict now be-
ing fought will decide. There is no
other question before us that begins
to be so important-or that will be
40 difficult to straddle-as the great
question between special interest and
equal opportunity; between the privi-
leges of the few and the rights OF the
many. between government by men
for human welfare and government
by money for profit, between the men
who stand for the Roosevelt policies
and the men who stand against them.
This is the essence of the conserva-
ton problem today.
THE conservation issue Is a moral
issue. When a few men get posses
sion of one Of the necessaries of life.
either through ownership of a nat
ural resource OF through unfair busl-
ness methods, and use that control to
extort undue profits, az in the recent
cases of the sugar trust and the beef
packers, they injure the average man
without good reason. and they are
guilty OF a moral wrong.
Equal Opportunity.
81 believe in one form of govern
ment and / believe IN the Golden
Rule. Bat we must face the truth
that monopoly of the sources Of pro-
duction makes II impossible for vast
numbers Of men and women to earn
a fair living. Right here the con-
servatlon question touches the daily
life OF the great body of our people.
who pay The cost Of special privilege.
And the price is heavy. That price
may be the chance TO save the boys
from the saloons and the corner gang
and the girls from worse. and TO
make good citizens of them instead
OF bad, for an appalling proportion OF
the tragedies of life spring directly
from the lack OF little money. Thou
sands of daughters of the poor fell
into the hands OF the white slave
traders because their poverty leaves
them without protection. Thousands
of families, as the Pittsburgh survey
has shown US. lead lives of brutallzing
overwork in return for the barest
living.
''The people OF this country have
lost vastly more than they can ever
regain by gifts of public property.
forever and without charge, to men
who gave nothing In return. II is
true that we have made superb ma
terial progress under this system. but
il is not well for US to rejoice too
freely in the slices the special inter-
ests have given us from the great loaf
of the property OF all the people.
Raps Predatory Wealth.
THE people OF the United States
have been the complacent victims of
system of plumber often perpetrated
by men who would have been sur
prised beyond measure to be accused
of wrongGoing, and many Of whom
In their private lives were model citi-
zens. But they have suffered from a
curious moral reryersion, by which IT
becomes praiseworthy TO do for cor
poration things which they would re-
fuse with the Hottest scorn to do for
themselves. Fortunately for us all,
that delusion is passing rapidly away.
ut Is the honorable distinction OF
the forest service that 1t has been
more constantly. more violently and
more bitterly attacked by the repre-
sentatives of the special interests In
recent years than any other govern