“ By whatever name we call it, fire prevention, reforestation, or more vague yet, forest Conservation, we are really offering prosperity insurance. It must be paid for by the community in currency of individual and collective effort, by individual care with the forest and by public policies enforced at public expense. To make the community pay for this commodity requires the same methods that make it buy life insurance; the same devising of a sound, attractive policy that the buyer can see and understand, the same skilful advertising, the same personal persuasion by its agents. ”

“ We return Thee thanks for Thy great kindness, for the bountiful harvest, for the resources with which Thou hast stored the earth. We thank Thee for the revelation of Thy love, for the redemption that speaks of the worth of Thy children. We thank Thee for all the impulses Thou hast set in motion for bringing good out of evil, for bringing men to their best. We pray for the guidance of the divine spirit that in all these councils which have for their purpose the good of our kind, we may have such guidance and be sustained by such grace that permanent good shall come. ”

“ We have become a great manufacturing people because of this genius, because of our ability to draw together not only the tangible machinery of great enterprises but also the intellectual machinery of great enterprises, and we have been so proud of the mere multiplication of the resources of the Nation, so proud of its wealth, so proud of the ingenious methods by which we have increased its wealth, that we have been sometimes almost in danger of forgetting what the real root of the whole matter is. ”

“ It would be almost like assuring you that I was a thoughtful and rational being to say that I am in profound sympathy with the whole work of this great Congress, and that I am in particular sympathy, in keenest sympathy with that part which affects the conservation of the vital energy of the people of the United States. (Great applause.)
We have prided ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, upon our inventive genius; we have prided ourselves upon the ability to devise machines that can almost dispense with the intelligence of man. ”

“ I come, therefore, to Indianapolis today to put my mind at your service, merely to express an attitude, merely to confess a faith, merely to declare the deep interest which must underlie all human effort, for, when the last thing is said about human effort, ladies and gentlemen, it lies in human sympathy. Unless the hearts of men are bound together the policies of men will fail, because the only thing that makes classes in a great nation is that they do not understand that their interests are identical. ”

“ In the ways which I have so hastily outlined and in other, and perhaps better ways, that may not yet have occurred to us, our great work of Conservation is destined to continue its triumphal march upward and on—in the name of the great principles upon which it is founded, and in the name of patriots, living and dead, who have labored and sacrificed to make of this, our fatherland, what, under God, it is, has been, and ever must remain—the greatest nation on earth. ”

“ The individual who will not keep account of his expenses is in danger of bankruptcy, no matter how great his resources; and the State which refuses to count the cost of any institution or system which tends to debauch morals, and corrupt the young, is on the way to destruction. For there is no avoiding the payment of the cost, whether we keep account or not; and that cost is not merely the dollars and cents, but starved children, blasted lives, broken hearts, ruined homes, increase of poverty and an increase of criminality, which is beyond the possibility of mathematics to compute. ”

“ The spirit of commercialism, of money worship, about in the land, is fast sapping the resources of our great country and begetting a selfishness that makes a willing sacrifice of the rightful heritage of future generations. It would seem in the order of things in this work of Conservation, that the men of our land should give special concern to its material needs, its lands, its waters, its mineral resources, and that the conservation of life should appeal as nothing else to woman, the transmitter of life—Life, a priceless boon. ”

“ Almost all the best governed cities in the world are on the other side of the water; almost all of the worst governed cities in the civilized world are in America. And the thing that is most taxing our political genius is making a decent finish, where we made such a distinguished beginning. We show it. You can feel it under you as you traverse a city; you can feel it in the pavements. They are provisional, most of them, or have not been laid at all and in jolting in the streets that are not the main thoroughfares of an American city, you feel the jolt of unfinished America. ”

“ In America, we hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early, or drop into a mean and lean old age, at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe. ”

“ I wish to point out to you the attitude of the administration as to the Federal regulation of water power in our navigable rivers.
It is needless to remind such a body as yours of the importance of that sphere of Conservation. All our other present sources of power—such as coal, wood, oil, and the like—are limited, and will be eventually exhausted. Water power alone is permanent. And just as we are coming to learn more and more the value of that permanence, we are simultaneously, through the development of electricity, learning to transmit its energy to greater and greater distances. ”

“ It is very fitting that the State of Indiana should have this Congress within its borders because of the immense interest shown and all the valuable help given by its citizens in the conservation of all natural resources, especially of human life and soil fertility.
To become the best, to do the best for all in a community, we must each develop the best within us, and must find our greatest reward in something far beyond the mere accumulation of dollars. Our community of interests recognizes a reciprocity of duty each to and for the other. ”

“ I have touched merely the high places of the subject of human efficiency. I have endeavored to say that if the generation which is to follow us and carry on our work is to be efficient, the children must be well born and well fed, protected from the vampires that endeavor to suck their lifeblood, and must have an opportunity to develop their natural capacity by an education and training—physical, mental and moral—that will enable them to do the world’s work with profit to themselves and their fellow-man. ”

“ I want us to consider this for a minute, not as an economic problem, but what it means in the old fashioned terms of human suffering, the agony and loss of family happiness and joy, that two hundred thousand little babies should die and leave the hearths to which they come every single year of the world in this country. And when we think that already, doctors tell us, we know enough so that that waste is very largely the fault of our carelessness and selfishness and greed, it makes us blush to think we are not all working hard to save the lives of these children. ”

“ But the building of a Dreadnought to fire away the product of labor in thin air is to bring all that has gone to prepare for that achievement to nought. The chain of production is broken; henceforth mankind is so much the worse off for that loss of money, labor and its products. But in the true conservation of resources, the labor and its products employed in peaceful and constructive enterprises achieve benefits that flow on continuously in an ever-widening stream, till the entire humanity is made to feel the blending of each man’s labor in the commonweal. ”

“ The term Conversation has become so all embracing, from the viewpoint of a Daughter of the American Revolution, it is as much a work of patriotism as that of our own great organization—the one dealing with the present and the future, the other with the past, the present and the future. The motto of the Daughters of the American Revolution is “Home and Country,” and so lofty is its ideal, so practical its work, it will be felt throughout all time, as will this broad, wise work of Conservation. ”

“ There is ample law for present and probably for future needs, and the control of national health remains, after all, today where it has remained in the past, and where it always will remain, that is, with the American people, not solely with the government, nor with the State or municipal health agencies. Each of the great nations of the world has gone about the direction of its public health work in its own way, and always with the realization that the ideal is not necessarily the practical, and what is best today may be supplanted by better tomorrow. ”

“ I would leave to the individual the largest freedom in everything that is good, and restrict his activities to the lowest minimum in everything that is bad. I would not make of man a machine, nor would I desire that he should live in an environment which in any way would tend to affect his evolution and progress injuriously, and so I preach what seems to me the only solution of all these evils—education, temperance, legal restriction of abuse, and leave the rest to the manly part of humanity. ”

“ By no other method can our civilization be perpetually maintained upon the highest level and the Republic kept in the forefront of the nations of the world. The man who owns and tills the soil, who owns and fells the forest, who owns and mines the coal, has no moral right to abuse his ownership; no one has a moral right to waste patrimony which must support not only the owner but the man who is not the owner, and whose continued comfort and existence must depend upon the wisdom with which the owner of the soil and forest and mine uses them. ”

“ His problems, then, are the Nation’s problems and his welfare, the Nation’s welfare. No nation is stronger than its farmers. If the farmer is poorly nourished, if the Government is negligent of his rights, indifferent to his mental development and moral soundness, the way will be surely blocked to our national march forward.
It is to the vital interest of America to cultivate intensively not only the farm, but—what is more important—to cultivate intensively the farmer. What use to conserve our resources, unless we conserve the man behind the resources? ”

“ If we only were endowed with a larger share of that priceless attribute—the constructive imagination—we should be able to see the untold resources which still lie latent, waiting only to be discovered, developed and enjoyed in the mysterious precincts of that laboratory of the soul—that forging-room of character, that fountain-head of those subtle forces which add temper and edge and distinction to our ordinary human attributes—that civic and social Holy of Holies—which we call Home. ”

“ Now, imagine, ladies and gentlemen, imagine as merchants and manufacturers and bankers, what would happen to the industrial supremacy of the United States if all her workmen worked in that spirit. Would there be goods anywhere in the world that could for one moment match the goods made in America? Would not the American label be the label of spiritual distinction? ”

“ Conservation is comparatively new in the vocabulary of our modern domestic economy, but it is a great word. It has come to be one of the greatest words of the human language from a practical standpoint. It is a continent-wide word in America. Conservation in some aspect of the subject touches every community, every city, every State and every individual. In other words, in a vital degree, it touches the welfare of one hundred millions of American citizens. Its importance is just beginning to be appreciated. Great today, but greater tomorrow in the progress of affairs. ”

“ President White—This is a proud day for the officers of this Congress, for its delegates from the different States, and for the friends of Conservation everywhere, to be welcomed so hospitably, not only for ourselves who are strangers within your gates, but generously because of your sympathy in the great cause for which we stand. The citizens of your great city are noted for their public spirit, for their broad culture, and as being always found in the van with the army of those of progressive ideas. ”

“ That is, a plant carefully cultivated, spreading freely, its roots drawing sustenance from the soil beneath, its leaves drawing sustenance from the air and sunshine, bracing itself against the storm; the daughters the cornerstones of the home, with all the adornment that we bestow on a palace fit for the abode of royalty. ”

“ I challenge any of my distinguished audience to mention a single phase of commerce, one feature of trade, the smallest detail of actual subsistence that does not eventually trace back to the man plodding out there on the acres.
Napoleon said an army traveled on its belly. He could have said, with equal truth, that civilization travels on its belly. And the farmer is the factor that fills the Great American Stomach, and that keeps full every dinner pail, regarding which we have heard so much during political campaigns. More than that, he also clothes the armies of development. ”

“ A fair wage scale and reasonable hours of labor have done as much to elevate the American citizen and furnish the ties that bind him to home and State as have all the libraries and universities in the land, and I say this without any disparagement of these magnificent institutions for public good. But if you stop to think for a moment, the library can only be used by those who have a reasonable leisure to enjoy it; colleges have closed doors for those who do not receive something more than a living wage. The welfare of this Nation depends not on the accumulation of great wealth in the future ”

“ This conservation movement that is so strongly taking hold of the minds of thinking men and women, is so big, so broad and so comprehensive that it covers every phase of human thought and activity in what is best and highest for the individual as well as organized society. It is education in the broadest sense.
The Golden Rule is not only a statement but a living principle. To teach that a just distribution of nature’s gifts to each individual who is willing to earn and conserve his share is a recognition of that principle. ”

“ Avarice, ignorance, waste, have linked arms to the detriment of civilization.
We must strive for the necessities of food, clothing and shelter. These sustain animal life, which is worth while; but animal life, endowed with the highest moral and mental strength, is the goal to be reached, for the summit of man’s ambitions should shine with human comfort and happiness. Conservation is the road to that summit and this National Congress has convened to further blaze the path and light the road. ”

“ It might not be a bad idea to consider pensioning mothers, as we pension soldiers after the battle is fought, after they have gone through the valley of the shadow, after they have slaved, and toiled and suffered and reared their children to manhood and womanhood, to guarantee them a peaceful, happy old age by providing a “pension.” But while they are engaged in the service of the State, in saving the State by saving the child, I insist, where it is necessary to enable them to do their part in the battle, they should be paid—they should be compensated. ”