Conservation As A National Duty Speech By President Theodore Roosevelt

In Osawatomie, Kansas on August 31, 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt gave his Conservation As A National Duty Speech. Roosevelt gave this speech to consider the question of the conservation and use of the great fundamental sources of wealth of this Nation.

This is the first time in the Untied States’ history the chief executive officers of the States separately, and of the States together forming the Nation, have met to consider this. With the governors come men from each State chosen for their special acquaintance with the terms of the problem that is before us. The Senators and Representatives in Congress; the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and the Inland Waterways Commission have likewise been invited to the Conference, which is therefore

Yet our fathers, though they knew so little of the resources of the country, exercised a wise forethought in reference thereto. It was in Philadelphia that the representatives of all the States met for what was in its original conception merely a waterways conference; but when they had closed their deliberations the outcome was the Constitution which made the States into a nation. The Constitution of the United States thus grew in large part out of the necessity for united action in the wise of one of our natural resources. We want to take action that will prevent the advent of a woodless age, and defer as long as possible the advent of an iron less age. Since the days when the Constitution was adopted, steam and electricity have revolutionized the industrial world, nowhere has the revolution been so great as in our own country. Much of what Roosevelt says is so familiar to us that it seems commonplace to repeat it; but familiar though it is, he does not think as a nation we understand what its real bearing is. Moreover, this unexampled development has had a determining effect upon the character and opinions of our people. The demand for efficiency in the great task has given us vigor, effectiveness, decision, and power, and a capacity for achievement which in its own lines has never yet been matched. Disregarding for the moment the

Any right thinking father earnestly desires and strives to leave his son both an untarnished name and a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life. So this Nation as a whole should earnestly desire and strive to leave to the next generation the national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted. Such a policy will preserve soil, forests, water power as a heritage for the children and the children’s children of the men and women of this generation. The opinion of the Maine Supreme Bench sets forth unequivocally the principle that the property rights of the individual are subordinate to the rights of the community, and especially that the waste of wild timber land derived originally from the State. The Court says that there are two reasons why the right of the public to control and limit the use of private property is peculiarly applicable to property in land: First, such property is not the result of productive labor. The Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey has adopted a similar view, which has recently been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States. The State as quasi sovereign and representative of the interests of the public has a standing in court to protect the atmosphere, the water, and the forests within its territory, irrespective of the assent or dissent of the private owners of the land most