r public usefulness, was dealt with by
the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect
on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there--a theory
which, I regret to say, still obtains.

The place of the farmer in the National economy was still regarded
solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the
human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still
remained wholly outside the recognition of the Government.

All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and
administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government
employ were in another Department. Forests and foresters had nothing
whatever to do with each other. The National Forests in the West (then
called forest reserves) were wholly inadequate in area to meet the
purposes for which they were created, while the need for forest
protection in the East had not yet begun to enter the public mind.

Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me. I
was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry, and, after listening
to my two guests, I asked them to prepare material on the subject for
me to use in my first message to Congress, of December 3, 1901. This
message laid the foundation for the development of irrigation and
forestry during the next seven and one-half years. It set forth the
new attitude toward the natural resources in the words: "The Forest
and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the
United States."

On the day the message was read, a committee of Western Senators and
Congressmen was organized to prepare a Reclamation Bill in accordance
with the recommendations. By far the most effective of the Senators
in drafting and pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was
Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and others at
several conferences and revised in important particulars; my active
interference was necessary to prevent it from being made unworkable by
an undue insistence upon States Rights, in accordance with the efforts
of Mr. Mondell and other Congressmen, who consistently fought for local
and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole.

On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It set aside the
proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming
the waste areas of t