Rightful Heritage: The Renewal of America

by Douglas Brinkley

  II

  Roosevelt’s Committee on Wildlife Restoration first convened in Washington on January 6, 1934, and held a press conference, at which Darling joked that the New Deal’s conservation objective was a “duck for every puddle.” (The allusion was to Huey Long, who, as governor of Louisiana, had promised “a chicken in every pot”—a phrase also attributed to Henry of Navarre around 1600.)27 With waterfowl populations reaching the lowest point in U.S. history, and the drought persisting, the president tasked his three conservationists to write a visionary report offering recommendations for rehabilitation. Worried about the extinction of North American species of ducks and geese, the committee, after consulting with congressional leaders, immediately set a goal of $50 million for the purchase and restoration of submariginal lands for wildlife, with a special emphasis on migratory waterfowl.28

  To devote their attention to the task full-time, Darling and Beck moved to Washington, D.C., in early 1934. Leopold stayed in Madison to honor his spring semester teaching commitments at the University of Wisconsin. Roosevelt hoped that the committee’s final report, due that February, would become an activist blueprint for securing millions of acres of waterfowl habitat—using drought relief funds—and reversing failed drainage projects. It had to be assumed that the waterfowl situation would worsen without emergency government intervention. Praying for rain simply wasn’t working. The 1934 Yearbook of Agriculture documented the fact that 100 million acres of formerly cultivated land had lost most, if not all, of its topsoil. Only two states—Maine and Vermont—had escaped the ecological disaster. As Donald Worster wrote in The Dust Bowl, the financial repercussions of the drought in 1934 alone equaled 50 percent of all the money Uncle Sam spent in World War I.29

  At their makeshift Washington office Beck and Darling sifted through two thousand plans submitted by well-intentioned wildlife lovers.30 Seeking a consensus, they haggled over the report’s final recommendations. Darling unearthed scores of problems created by lax state hunting laws, allowing too much “take.” The most divisive issue was the morality of artificial insemination and egg incubators as methods to bring back waterfowl populations. Leopold and Darling were vehemently opposed, while Beck thought hatch-and-release wild duck factories were an idea worth considering.31 “Generally speaking,” Darling recalled, “Beck advocated the theory, held by the More Game Birds crowd, that the way to restore ducks was to hatch them in incubators, and turn them loose into the flight lanes, in other words, restocking by artificial methods, and I held to the principle that nature could do the job better than man and advocated restoring the environment necessary to migratory waterfowl.”32

  Searching for the language of consensus and ironing out legal details for the U.S. government was frustrating for Darling, who wrote the committee’s final report. Frequently refereeing the “violent squabbles” between Beck and Leopold, Darling stayed focused on federal acquisition of habitats for migratory birds.33 Beck felt that the Republican Iowans—Leopold and Darling—had ganged up on him because he was editor of Collier’s and was an aristocratic friend of FDR’s. Later Beck complained that he sensed “some little peevishness, some little jealousy, some little selfishness about my coming in on this work” from Leopold and Darling.34 Beck was mistaken to feel victimized. His notion of a “duck factory”—of raising waterfowl in captivity rather than making an all-out effort to repair marred landscapes—was just wrongheaded. Speaking at the twentieth American Game Conference, which was held in late January, Beck even suggested that the Biological Survey could be abolished, blaming it for undermining habitat acquisition initiatives by tapping resources for endless study and little real estate action. Such shortsighted thinking made Darling and Leopold apoplectic. “I cannot believe that the conservation movement,” Leopold wrote, “is naïve enough to stomach such an absurdity.”35

  When Beck, Darling, and Leopold visited the White House for an assessment of the troubles within the committee, Roosevelt’s considerable personal charm won the day. “I remember Dad coming back from the trip and telling the family that he was asked to come in and talk with Franklin Roosevelt,” Luna Leopold, son of Aldo Leopold, recalled. “He thought that Roosevelt was one of the most impressive men he had ever talked to, even though he didn’t agree with FDR.”36 After weeks of compromise, the committee’s “threshold document” was outlined for the press. Knowing he had been outgunned by the Leopold-Darling alliance, Beck fell into line, telling reporters that “the time for conservation has passed” and that “the time for restoration has come.”37

  On February 8, 1934, Beck officially submitted the committee’s ambitious, twenty-seven-page “National Plan for Wild Life Restoration” to the White House. This was no routine Washington white paper. For the report’s frontispiece, Darling drew a cartoon depicting a Noah’s ark of North American animals—bear, deer, goose, trout, rabbit, and duck among them—posting, on a dying tree, a banner that read “Help.” The drawing set the tone for the lucid and concisely formulated report, which held nothing back as it recommended $50 million in immediate congressional appropriations. The types of land submitted for federal consideration included habitats that had been used and typically abandoned by farmers: natural nesting marshes, broader marshlands rich in food, lands on the shores of lakes or rivers used by breeding birds, low-valued flatlands adapted to nesting, and heavy alkaline lakes that would have to be freshened or drained.38

  The Beck Report (as it was known), urged the U.S. government to immediately start purchasing land critical to wild animals: four million acres for migratory waterfowl and shorebird nesting grounds; two million acres for restoration of mammals; one million acres of breeding and nesting areas for insectivorous, ornamental, and nongame birds; and, more tentatively, five million acres of lands that were home to “upland game.” A new position, commissioner of restoration, was also sought to monitor and optimize all wildlife recovery efforts at the federal level.39

  Thomas H. Beck, editor of Collier’s magazine, after delivering a speech in Washington in 1939. Largely on his own initiative, Beck had launched a campaign to reintroduce and manage native animals in Connecticut. To foster the same work on a national scale, FDR appointed him chair of a new Committee on Wildlife Restoration in 1933. The other members were Aldo Leopold and Ding Darling.

  Roosevelt, worried about creating interagency havoc, nixed the idea of a commissioner before it could gather any momentum and he slashed the requested $50 million down to a more realistic $8.5 million. But he adopted the report’s overarching recommendations to buy marginal stretches of waterfowl habitat and then have the CCC “plant that land with game.”40 Not only would new federal migratory refuges be established in the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central, and Pacific Flyways, but existing refuges would be restored and expanded. Nesting areas where food was once abundant would come back if water was restored, and invasive plants like Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed could be eradicated with enough manpower.41 If nothing else, the sheer ambition of the Beck Report got veteran conservationists excited about the New Deal’s potential to help waterfowl and improve refuges by constructing water-level controls.

  Because both Darling and Beck were celebrities involved in the media, the report garnered considerable attention. However, FDR, preoccupied with the New Deal for people, didn’t act immediately on the Beck Report.42 An impatient Darling, perplexed by Roosevelt’s stalling, almost threw in the towel. Couldn’t the president accord his Committee on Wildlife Restoration more respect?43 Part of the reason Roosevelt was slow to implement the Beck Report was that Secretary of Agriculture Wallace had told him that the recommendations were “too ambitious to be feasible in the immediate future.” He was right. Neither the president nor Wallace had a strategically simple means of funding an extensive program for wildlife habitat. The political climate dictated that human needs were paramount, with the Depression hanging on despite the first wave of New Deal programs. Wallace, however, had an idea that tapping Darling, beloved by the public,
to head the Biological Survey would be a windfall for wildlife restoration. But Wallace didn’t know if FDR would agree to his unusual request. Wallace later told an interviewer for Columbia University’s oral history project that the president’s tactics were a mixture of “intuition and indirection.” He observed, “I’d say he had a golden heart, but I wouldn’t want to be in business with him. . . . He was a truly great man, there’s no doubt about that—but very unpredictable.”44 In the case of the new chief for the Biological Survey, Wallace calculated correctly; Roosevelt saw the merit of an unpredicted candidate.

  One afternoon in February 1934, Roosevelt unexpectedly telephoned the Des Moines Register newsroom looking for Ding Darling. Within seconds, FDR had the legendary cartoonist on the line. The president asked whether Darling would be willing to replace the retiring Paul Redington as chief of the U.S. Biological Survey starting in early March.45 Even though Darling would lose income by quitting his lucrative syndicated cartoons, he agreed. “A singed cat,” Darling later said about accepting the job, “was never more conscious of the dangers of fire than I was of the hazards in trying to get anything done in Washington.”46

  That March, Darling was sworn in as bureau director of the Biological Survey, hoping that he could implement the Beck Report’s recommendations. The anti–New Deal cartoonist from eastern Iowa, to the surprise of many reporters, had formed an alliance with the president for the sake of restoring North American wildlife. However, Darling felt duped when he heard a few weeks later that President Roosevelt had absentmindedly lost the Beck Report (he had misplaced it somewhere in his White House bedroom). Because of all the lore about the “Hundred Days” in 1933, Darling didn’t comprehend that there was a limit in 1934 to the president’s executive power vis-à-vis Congress. A tedious government process had to be followed, with Congress being brought into the discussion, before the report’s suggestions could be implemented.47 Finding a way to do so constituted Darling’s job description. And he did, badgering other bureaucrats for money out of various New Deal pots.

  III

  On March 6, 1934, the president signed the Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act (commonly referred to as the Duck Stamp Act). It took a combination of manipulation and talent to make this tax feel good to hunters. Promoted heavily by Senator Frederic Walcott of Connecticut and Representative Richard Kleberg of Texas, the new law required all Americans over sixteen years of age to purchase a special $1 stamp before hunting ducks, geese, or swans and to acquire a valid state hunting license. The stamp was to be sold at most U.S. post offices. Bird hunters were required to affix it to their hunting licenses or else risk arrest and a heavy fine for poaching. Approximately 98 cents of every Duck Stamp dollar collected would go toward the purchase, maintenance, and development of “inviolate” wetlands and wildlife habitat for inclusion in what would be known by 1940 as the National Wildlife Refuge System (though the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 made many improvements). The remainder of the revenue would be spent to hire USDA wardens to stop poachers on public lands from mistreating nature.48 Furthermore, Roosevelt, to Darling’s delight, issued a federal ban on baiting and live decoys.49 Never were two men more perfectly suited to optimizing an otherwise rather mundane program. The Duck Stamp might easily have been nothing more than a bureaucratic mechanism, about as intriguing as a rubber stamp that inked “Paid” on a license—which is about all that it was. FDR, the passionate philatelist, loved stamps too much to allow each year’s duck issue to be anything but irresistible. And Darling, who communicated best through art, was equally determined that the duck stamps not only support the effort to save wild birds but invoke their beauty. At FDR’s request, Darling illustrated the inaugural Duck Stamp as two striking mallards in flight descending on a lake. “There was no one else available,” Darling recalled modestly, “to make a design.”50

  A Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp—better known as a “duck stamp”—issued in 1934. Political cartoonist Jay “Ding” Darling oversaw the first government program to sell such stamps in order to raise funds for habitat conservation. They could be purchased not only to validate hunting licenses but also to support America’s migratory birds. Darling drew the stamp (pictured) that was used during the first year of the program.

  On August 22, 1934, a highly publicized Duck Stamp ceremony was held at the main post office at Twelfth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. There is a fine photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt, eyebrows arched, grinning warmly and pointing at the first sheet of stamps—Mallards Dropping—for the benefit of the shutterbugs that August afternoon. He was proud of his own ingenuity, and his eyes danced with a kind of controlled humor. At such public events, Roosevelt was almost luminous, his charisma especially strong. Speaking informally to reporters, showing off his philately, Roosevelt reiterated the importance of wildlife conservation. Over 650,000 of the Duck Stamps—“miniature pieces of art”—were sold within weeks. During the first year, the Duck Stamp added $600,000 to the funds available for the national program. Between 1934 and 2009, more than $500 million went into the fund to purchase approximately five million acres of waterfowl habitat.51

  Darling looked at a sheet of the first duck stamps at a post office in 1934. Darling was a nationally known cartoonist, but his work on behalf of wildlife gained him the respect of Roosevelt. FDR was not dissuaded by Darling’s background as a staunch Republican, and appointed him to the post of chief of the Bureau of the Biological Survey (later the Fish and Wildlife Service).

  Around the time the Duck Stamp was being developed, Roosevelt and Darling discussed migratory birds over cigarettes in the Oval Office. As the president told a stretched-out humorous story, Darling wondered if anyone really knew Roosevelt. Darling mustered the nerve to raise a worrisome issue: a promised $1 million appropriation to buy waterfowl habitat still hadn’t been deposited into the Biological Survey’s account. FDR, with the wave of a cigarette, quickly adopted a by-golly-I’ll-fix-it attitude, writing Darling an IOU for $1 million—literally on a scrap of paper. With theatrical aplomb and a Hollywood handshake, he handed the note over. Darling later reflected, “No small boy with a new cowboy hat and Texas boots ever felt more like a big shot than I did walking out of the White House with my first . . . [document] signed with the familiar ‘F.D.R.’ in his own handwriting!”52

  But after Darling left the Oval Office, skepticism haunted him. Where could he cash the chit? Had FDR’s three-hundred-watt grin conned him? A common refrain among Roosevelt’s brain trust of advisers became “Ding is rattling his tin cup again.”53 On learning that Darling was having a difficult time trying to cash the $1 million IOU, Roosevelt wrote to Wallace, “I hope that in addition to the million dollars already allocated, we can get from land purchase, relief, etc., another five millions. By the way, the Congressman [Kleberg] says the million dollars which I allocated has got lost somewhere. Will you conduct a search party?”54

  At one tense meeting Darling handed Harry Hopkins the $1 million IOU from FDR. Hopkins, the head of the Works Progress Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, just chuckled at the proffered IOU and then condescendingly said to Darling, “I don’t know if we’re interested in the relief of birds.” Hopkins thought that public zoos—not the Biological Survey—should be the focus of bird recovery programs. The WPA was already building laboratories and exhibit spaces at a half dozen zoos across the country—for instance, at the Toledo Zoo WPA stonemasons and carpenters were building a new “House of Birds”; with the aid of WPA money, the San Antonio Zoo would soon assist sandhill cranes and whooping cranes.

  Darling, tired of abrupt shifts and halts, felt his nervous system revving up for a fight. “Harry,” he scolded, his resentment rising like flames, “I was a trustee at Grinnell College when you were a student!” He then recounted how Hopkins had urged him to become the head of the Biological Survey and promised the Beck Committ
ee $1 million to buy land. It was too much hectoring for Hopkins to endure. “Where do I sign these papers?” Hopkins asked in retreat. Then he turned to his personal assistant and said with admiration, “See, that’s how you get things done in Washington!”55

  Eventually, Roosevelt was able to allocate $8.5 million in emergency funds to buy migratory bird habitat and construct fences, dikes, and dams. It was divided as follows: $1 million in special funds for the purchase of new waterfowl refuges; $1.5 million allocated from the submarginal retrieval fund; $3.5 million taken from drought-relief funds (for the purchase and development of lands within drought areas); and $2.5 million slated for WPA projects to improve existing refuges. This wasn’t the $50 million that Beck, Darling, and Leopold wanted, but in the depths of the Depression it wasn’t chump change.56 And Roosevelt contributed his own idea to help migratory birds recover: the creation of artificial water areas, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of the West.57

  At the same time that Darling was scrounging funds to the best of his ability, Congress was taking a parallel course, passing the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act in 1934. It created bird refuges across an array of lands and waterways under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation, and what would eventually be known as the Bureau of Land Management. As an emergency measure, it was effective, but it carried an important caveat: the main economic engine (mining, logging, grazing, etc.) of a given area would not be curbed. The act also sought to do as its name suggested, coordinate the conservation efforts of the Interior and Agriculture departments, though that was a continuing challenge long afterward. The act was a step in the right direction for conservation, but it wasn’t as proactive in establishing refuges as Roosevelt’s more personal impetus, carried forth by Darling and the Biological Survey.