by Eric Rutkow
As demand for forestry services grew, the dearth of qualified American foresters quickly became a problem. By 1900, Pinchot had grown his division from 10 to 123, but many of his employees lacked any meaningful forestry education. The nation’s only training facilities at the turn of the century were Fernow’s program at Cornell and one at Biltmore. Both of these, however, were struggling with administrative and financial difficulties that would soon prove their undoing. Pinchot appealed to his parents, proposing that they endow a new forestry school at his alma mater. Ever supportive, they agreed and provided an initial $150,000 endowment for the Yale School of Forestry, which opened in the fall of 1900 with an entering class of seven. That same year Pinchot also founded the Society of American Foresters, an organization designed to bolster his inchoate profession.
In hindsight, the first three years of Pinchot’s reign at the division, though unprecedented in terms of impact, were merely a warm-up for what was to follow. His true political career did not begin until September 14, 1901. That day, President McKinley died as a result of a gunshot wound he suffered from an assassination attempt the week before. McKinley’s replacement was his vice president, forty-two-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, an unflappable politician who had built his reputation with the “Rough Riders,” a U.S. Cavalry regiment, during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt quickly demonstrated that he was committed to reform and happy to use his office as a bully pulpit. Near the top of his agenda were the country’s long-neglected natural resources, and the person he would rely on most to shape his policy was Pinchot.
The two men were already close friends at the time of McKinley’s assassination. Roosevelt had first won Pinchot’s affection in 1897 by sponsoring his election to the Boone and Crockett Club, an exclusive society of big-game hunters that Roosevelt cofounded. This was but one of the manly pursuits that united the two men, who both reveled in contests of strength and athletic prowess. Once, during a get-together in 1899, Roosevelt, who had recently been elected governor of New York, challenged Pinchot to a wrestling match. The stockily built politician won handily, but Pinchot exacted his revenge during a round of boxing that followed. He proudly noted, “I had the honor of knocking the future President of the United States off his very solid pins.” Their friendship, however, was equally grounded in a shared sensibility about the proper role of government. Each felt that it was an engine of reform, a tool to curb the excesses of corporations and expand equality. And both were willing to stretch the limits of their mandate to garner results they felt achieved this. When Roosevelt ascended to the presidency, he informally elevated Pinchot from a midlevel bureaucrat to one of his chief advisors, a member of his “Tennis Cabinet,” the new center of power in Washington.
Pinchot’s priorities became Roosevelt’s priorities. And near the top of the list, at least initially, was the expansion of practical forestry. Pinchot considered this essentially a matter of principle, the only rational approach between the extremes of wanton forest destruction and strict preservation. And the surest way to achieve this was through transfer of the western forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to Pinchot’s bureau (recently elevated from division status). Roosevelt, the forester’s new champion, stressed these points in his first message to Congress, delivered in early December 1901. Like many of the president’s future speeches, it bore Pinchot’s fingerprints:
Public opinion throughout the United States has moved steadily toward a just appreciation of the value of forests. . . . The great part played by them in the creation and maintenance of the national wealth is now more fully realized than ever before. Wise forest protection does not mean the withdrawal of forest resources . . . from contributing their full share to the welfare of the people, but, on the contrary, gives the assurance of larger and more certain supplies. The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use. Forest protection is not an end of itself; it is a means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and the industries which depend upon them. . . . [Usefulness of the forest reserves] should be increased by a thoroughly business-like management. . . . [Responsibility for the reserves] should be united in the Bureau of Forestry, to which they properly belong. The present diffusion of responsibility is bad from every standpoint.
Roosevelt’s December message was but the opening salvo in a multiyear campaign that Pinchot spearheaded to elevate the status of practical forestry and gain control of the reserves. The chief forester turned his bureau into a propaganda machine, churning out endless reams of proforestry literature. This was necessary, since his plan was initially under attack from all sides: The Department of the Interior did not want to cede control; the lumber industry and countless western interests staunchly opposed any government actions that would bring tougher regulations; and the preservationist strain of the forest lobby, a group that included Sargent and Muir, worried that Pinchot’s plan, intentionally or not, would undo the protectionist measures that they had fought so hard to enact. To make matters worse, many charged that Pinchot’s aggressive lobbying was a misuse of government funds. The president, however, offered his full support, writing, “It is doubtful whether there has ever been elsewhere under the Government such effective publicity—publicity purely in the interest of the people—at so low a cost.”
Pinchot’s offensive culminated with the American Forest Congress, a five-day event held in Washington in early January 1905. Sponsored by the president, it brought together the leading voices from all sides of the forest debate, almost four hundred delegates in total. The agenda was broad, with more than fifty featured speakers, but for Pinchot and Roosevelt the primary objective was to build a final consensus about transferring the reserves.
The congress served as a showcase for the effectiveness of Pinchot’s proforestry propaganda. Several years earlier it had been commonplace to dismiss the profession as impractical and misguided, a European concern with no place in tree-rich America. Now many industry leaders embraced it wholeheartedly, at least in public. N. W. McLeod, president of the National Lumber Manufacturers’ Association, said during his address, “The Bureau has in a large measure succeeded in convincing the lumbermen that forestry is not antagonistic to the lumbermen’s interest, but in line with it.” Frederick Weyerhaeuser, who wasn’t able to attend, conveyed a similar message through his son: “Mr. Weyerhaeuser wishes me to say that he sincerely regrets his inability to be here, and further to assure those present that he and his associates in the lumber business are thoroughly in sympathy with the work and plans of the Association and the Bureau of Forestry, and stand ready to do whatever is in their power to cooperate in them.” Railroad magnate James Hill added his voice to the chorus: “Irrigation and forestry are the two subjects which are to have a greater effect on the future prosperity of the United States than any other public questions, either within or without Congress.”
At the conclusion of the five days, the delegates passed a resolution calling for the transfer of the reserves. The legislature responded almost immediately, and Roosevelt signed the Transfer Act into law on February 1, 1905. The new legislation finally gave Pinchot control of the reserves, and in its wake came two important symbolic changes. First, the reserves were renamed as “national forests,” something Pinchot felt cleared up any confusion over their purpose as a public resource to be used. Second, the Bureau of Forestry became the United States Forest Service, reflecting its new role as steward of these national forests.
Passage of the Transfer Act signaled a new era for America. Congress had given Pinchot a mandate to implement the ideas of practical forestry on a scale unknown anywhere in the world—by the time of the transfer, the reserves, which Roosevelt and Pinchot were constantly expanding, had reached 86 million acres, an area roughly the size of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined. Pinchot explained:
For us in the Forest Service the transfer meant a revolutionary change. Before the Forest Reserves came into our hands, all we could say to whoever con
trolled a forest, public or private, was “Please.” . . . After the transfer the situation was radically changed. . . . We had the power, as we had the duty, to protect the Reserves for the use of the people.
Shortly after gaining control, Pinchot set forth his philosophy on management in a letter to the secretary of agriculture. The centerpiece of this was a modified version of a utilitarian maxim: Questions would “always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.” Thus, the national forests would be fully open to meet the needs of the people, with an eye to sustainability. The details of administration were soon spelled out in a publication aptly dubbed the Use Book, which every forest ranger carried with him. It assured, “Forest reserves are open to all persons for all lawful purposes.” The early administration efforts were thus a far cry from the punctiliously curated forests in Nancy, France, but they did finally put qualified public servants in charge of grazing rights, logging activities, fire prevention, and a raft of other issues.
While Pinchot attempted to placate the westerners who used the national forests, the constituency could not be appeased. The battle was more ideological than pragmatic, rooted in a fundamental difference over the meaning of public land and the role of the government. One westerner wrote: “In a word, the Federal Government must constitute itself a gigantic feudal landlord, ruling over unwilling tenants by the agency of irresponsible bureaus; traversing every local right, meddling with every private enterprise.” Another critic colorfully added: “The poor sawmills! They have borne more abuse than the early Christians.” As the Forest Service expanded the scope of its programs and Roosevelt continued to proclaim new national forests, these voices of opposition gained strength throughout the West. They finally won a victory in 1907, when a caucus of western congressmen pushed through the legislation that Pettigrew had foiled ten years earlier, terminating the president’s right to create new national forests across most of the West.
Never one to be bullied, Roosevelt declared 16 million acres of new national forests in the period before the law took effect. Known as the “midnight forests,” these were the last pieces in an unprecedented six-year-long expansion of federal authority to protect the nation’s trees. Pinchot and Roosevelt, in the final tally, had increased national forests almost fivefold, from just over 40 million acres to nearly 200 million. The president proudly noted in his autobiography that this represented a greater increase “than during all previous and succeeding years put together”—this statement remains as true today as when it was first written in 1913. But more than simply expanding the network of national forests, they had finally provided a foundation for their effective administration, ensuring some degree of protection from the threats of an industrialized society.
The legacy of this early forestry movement, however, reached far beyond the nation’s trees. From it grew the idea of “conservation,” an overarching philosophy that all natural resources ought to be managed with an eye to sustainability and efficient use. Roosevelt, a major exponent of this new ethic, described it as “nothing more than the application to our other natural resources of the principles which had been worked out in connection with the forests.” The goal of conservation was soon applied to everything from water and soil to minerals and coal. It became one of the pillars of Progressivism, the movement that brought sweeping reforms to many aspects of life in the early twentieth century. Pinchot, who was widely credited with first articulating conservation in 1907, was perhaps its greatest champion. He explained, “In its broad sense conservation applies to the handling of almost every human problem.”
The potential scope of conservationist projects seemed to ensure Pinchot a bright future in the federal government, but in reality his days were numbered. The countdown clock began ticking when Roosevelt, his great advocate and defender, decided not to run for a third term and chose as his successor William Howard Taft, who handily won the election of 1908. The incoming president had shown little patience for Pinchot’s tendency to operate with more authority than the post of chief forester technically allowed. Worse, Taft simply mistrusted him, once stating: “Pinchot is a socialist and a spiritualist, a strange combination and one that is capable of any extreme act.”
Serious tensions between Taft and Pinchot first surfaced when the new president, shortly after taking office, selected Richard Ballinger as secretary of the interior. Pinchot, like many, felt that Ballinger was anticonservationist and viewed his appointment as a betrayal of Taft’s promise to continue Roosevelt’s policies. In July 1909, Pinchot’s suspicions appeared confirmed when charges surfaced that Ballinger had used his office to obstruct a government investigation into the illegal selling of mining rights in Alaska. Taft, however, soon exonerated Ballinger of any wrongdoing. This only inflamed Pinchot, who suspected that the president had acted out of fealty to corporate interests and in opposition to conservation principles. The chief forester called for congressional hearings on the matter and publicly rebuked the president. This action proved his undoing. Taft fired Pinchot for insubordination, putting a swift and inglorious end to one of the most celebrated government careers of the early twentieth century.
The dismissal, however, had a silver lining for Pinchot. Details of the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair, as it became known, dominated national headlines for months and familiarized the populace with both conservation and Pinchot’s impressive record at the Forest Service. Many came to view him as a martyr for the Progressive cause. Roosevelt was among this group; the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair precipitated Roosevelt’s 1912 presidential campaign as a Bull Moose Progressive, which split the Republican Party and delivered the White House to the Democrats. Pinchot had lost control of his beloved Forest Service, but he’d become the nation’s foremost voice for conservation.
Shortly after the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair subsided, Pinchot found himself embroiled in another major conservation fight. But this time the tables were turned. The enemy was not the resource exploiters, but the preservationists. The conflict had arisen when the city of San Francisco, seeking to increase its power supply, began lobbying Congress for the right to place a hydropower dam across the Tuolumne River, which flowed through the Hetch Hetchy Valley, the original centerpiece of the lobbying effort to create the Yosemite National Park.
The debate over Hetch Hetchy pitted Pinchot against his old friend and mentor John Muir, the very man who had helped to save the valley from destruction in 1890, now a white-bearded sage of seventy-five years. Both men’s positions had hardened since the halcyon days they’d spent together in the summer of 1896. While Pinchot was sympathetic to the valley’s sacrosanct status, he believed that the principles of conservation required the building of a dam that would provide cheap power to such a large population. Muir found this argument unconvincing: “Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.” The controversy raged for months, but ultimately Pinchot triumphed. Muir’s beloved valley was soon buried beneath the retaining reservoir of the O’Shaughnessy Dam. But as with the Ballinger-Pinchot Affair, there was a consolation for the losing side: The preservationists’ furor was an impetus for the creation in 1916 of the National Park Service.
While the Hetch Hetchy affair was the last great episode of Muir’s life, it was far from the end for Pinchot. He remained involved in the cause of forestry, serving as something of an éminence grise to the next generation of foresters. He finally married in 1914 at the age of forty-nine and fathered a son the following year. And while he never returned to federal office—despite several attempts, including an abortive presidential run—he remained in politics, serving twice as governor of Pennsylvania and jumping to the forefront of countless conservationist causes. He died at age eighty-one of leukemia on October 4, 1946.
Notwithstanding the continuous years of public service, Pinchot’s greatest contributions to his country were the changes he brought to forestry
and the resulting changes in conservation policy. He had overseen the transition from proto-forestry to actual forestry, the creation of the great majority of the national forests, and the beginnings of the regulatory state. He had abandoned an easy life of material wealth for an endless series of political battles. Perhaps Roosevelt summed up his contributions best:
Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the preservation of the natural resources of our country. He led, and indeed during its most vital period embodied, the fight for the preservation through use of our forests. . . . I believe it is but just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of the United States, he, on the whole, stood first.
WHILE PINCHOT DESERVEDLY stood first with Roosevelt, he was but one of the main players, along with Morton, Muir, Sargent, and numerous others, in the nation’s dramatic reorientation of its relationship to trees around the turn of the century. Thanks to their collective efforts, the forty-year period starting around 1870 hosted a wave of innovative programs and policies unthinkable when Marsh published Man and Nature in 1864. Trees were no longer an enemy to be chopped down or an infinite resource to be exploited without consequence. They were the protectors of watersheds, the stock for a dwindling timber supply, the promise for future generations, the site of God’s first temples.
Of course, this new consciousness butted up against the reality that trees remained central to the economic life of America. And the early twentieth century would witness the emergence of new tree-based industries and the expansion of established ones.