Certainly most of the members of the House committee were predisposed to give San Francisco what it desired. With skillful lobbying and Secretary Lane's administrative assistance, the city lined up the support it needed. The San Francisco delegation testified for the bill, buttressed by the appearance of Secretary Lane, but strong support came from Chief Forester Henry Graves, Gifford Pinchot, and directors of the Geological Survey and the Reclamation Service. Pinchot, always influential, pronounced his dictum that "the fundamental principle of the whole conservation policy is use," and he could see no "reasonable argument against the use of this water supply by the city of San Francisco." With regard to aesthetics, Reclamation director Francis H. Newell proclaimed that "there is nothing more beautiful than a well built dam with a reservoir behind it." James Phelan would second Newell's assumption, arguing that by "constructing a dam at this very narrow gorge . . . we create not a reservoir but a lake, because Mr. [John] Freeman has shown that by planting trees or vines over the dam, the appearance of the dam is entirely lost." The concept of beauty offered by Newell and Phelan would be repeated again and again as San Francisco's congressional supporters excerpted the Freeman Report to prepare their statements.9
Edmund Whitman, speaking for the Eastern Branch of the Society for the Preservation of National Parks, gave impassioned testimony, but he had never visited the Hetch HetchyValley and was clearly outmaneuvered by the assemblage of pro-city supporters. The defenders of the valley were particularly injured when William Denman, a San Francisco judge and charter member of the club, testified that the Sierra Club was quite divided with regard to Hetch Hetchy, negating any impression that the club spoke with one voice. The anti-dam forces did not arrive in Washington. They had been caught off guard by the suddenness of the hearing, and political communication seemed to be like many of the defenders-on vacation. Raker's ability to get the issue quickly before the House in the middle of summer was a strategic bit of political finesse that practically guaranteed success.
The only chance of slowing the city juggernaut came in early July, when Eugene J. Sullivan, president of the Sierra Blue Lakes Water and Power Company, testified before the House Public Lands Committee. Sullivan argued that the Mokelumne River could fulfill San Francisco's water needs and that former city engineer Marsden Manson had suppressed a report that would prove his contention. The committee members were interested, but later, when asked to produce the report, Sullivan lamely explained that it was not yet ready and his assistant, engineer Taggert Aston, was ill and unable to come to Washington. On direct questioning, Sullivan reluctantly named city engineers C. E. Grunsky and Manson as two of the conspirators who buried the report.1'
During the lunch break Sullivan spoke with his lawyer, and by the afternoon his accusations had softened. Congressman James Graham of Illinois, O'Shaughnessy's ice cream parlor pal, was also busy consulting with the city engineer. At the appropriate moment, Graham attacked, plunging into Sullivan's background and successfully revealing him "as a petty confidence man whose word was utterly worthless." However, two crucial statements in Sullivan's testimony turned out to be true. It was unfortunate that his past was so vulnerable. The report on the Mokelumne River was real, researched and written by a Max J. Bartell, a young assistant in the city engineer's office. Manson did suppress it, but on the basis that it would be difficult to secure the necessary water rights. Not until the 1920s, when the cities of Oakland and Berkeley would tap the Mokelumne River for their water supply, was the truth of the study revealed. 11 In retrospect, the Sierra Blue Lakes Water and Power Company presentation was a viable alternative. But again, the messenger was every bit as important as the message. In 19o6 the city had turned away the Bay Cities Water Company proposal because it was tainted by the graft trials.The Blue Lakes proposal died because Eugene Sullivan made a fool of himself and, in turn, made the proposal look foolish.
Support for Hetch Hetchy defenders came from Representative Halvor Steenerson of Minnesota. He attacked Freeman's presumptions regarding reservoirs, stating that during low water visitors would view "a dirty, muddy pond . . . and probably some dead fish and frogs in it." 12 Steenerson also raised the issue of a dominant, imperial San Francisco holding sway over the hinterlands. He was "opposed to the eternal drawing upon the Federal Government resources and of the people to make cities more attractive at the expense of the country." He admired such men as Muir, Robert Underwood Johnson, and Liberty Hyde Bailey because they "are deploring the fact of the influx to the city from the country." Steenerson defended sentiment, giving the legislators an aphorism to think about: "It is a wise saying that the man who writes the songs of a people has more influence than he who writes its laws."13 With his "back to the land" philosophy, Halvor Steenerson voted against the wishes of the city.
All of this debate seemed to matter very little. The House Public Lands Committee members had congealed to the point that they were almost hostile to the nature lovers. No valley defenders could make the trip, and the Eastern advocates were suspect as they called for preservation of an unfamiliar area. Many congressmen agreed with Representative Charles Thomson of Illinois who confessed "not to have a great deal of patience with gentlemen who sit by their firesides in the East and discuss the plan . . . without a better knowledge . . . of the facts."The Public Lands Committee moved the bill onto the House. On September 3 the Raker bill won approval by the full House by the comfortable margin of 183 to 43.14
The San Francisco delegation were pleased. They assumed that President Wilson would sign the bill into law, which left only the Senate to frustrate their plans. Michael O'Shaughnessy and Percy Long went home after the hearing, hoping they would not have to come back again. Each, according to O'Shaughnessy, returned to cool San Francisco "lighter in weight by about ten pounds after the torrid Washington temperatures." 15 City Clerk John Dunnigan, however, stayed until the end of the year, working on the Raker bill when necessary and lobbying during the intervening time.
As Dunnigan lobbied and labored on the Raker bill, he found that his most cordial and receptive ally was Congressman William Kent. The Marin County representative opened his home to Dunnigan, inviting him to stay as long as he was in Washington. Dunnigan gratefully accepted. No doubt he found his quarters quite satisfactory, but from the viewpoint of the Hetch Hetchy controversy, it was perfect. Kent had strong preservation credentials, particularly because he had taken the lead in a winning fight to preserve Lake Tahoe from a disastrous private power plan that would lower the lake level, at times, some So feet.
In the eyes of Muir and the Sierra Club defenders, Kent's reputation rose to new heights when he purchased a large grove of redwood trees in Marin County and then transferred title to the United States. This spectacular grove, soon to be known as Muir Woods National Monument, was destined to be cut by loggers and then the valley dammed for a reservoir.16 Kent could not tolerate that possibility. In January i9o8 he explained to Muir that the purchase was an "uncontrollable impulse":
The hideous heedless wickedness of trying to butcher those trees put me in a frame of mind where I wondered, how far a trustee ought to go to protect such a trust. I am sure the danger is passed now and hope I can forgive Jos [James] Newlands and William McGee, who for a few dirty dollars would have deprived millions of their birthright.
Such passionate, moralistic purpose bonded Kent to the older mountaineer. Muir wrote Kent that his magnificent gift would make him "immortal like your Sequoias, & all the best people of the world will call you blessed."17
When in 1910 Kent's Marin County constituents elected him to Congress, Muir and the Sierra Club felt certain that they could count on his sup port. However, William Kent had another side that the valley defenders did not fully understand. When he campaigned for Congress, he assured his neighbors that he did not believe in locking up natural resources. He was a Pinchot conservationist; indeed, he admired the forester and often corresponded with him. One of the principal reasons he ran for Congress was that he opp
osed the policies of Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger and William Howard Taft. He felt a "giveaway" was taking place and that the concepts of the public lands and public power were being undermined by the current administration. He favored national parks, and even fought for park recognition for MountTamalpais, adjacent to his home country. However, tourist value motivated his thought, rather than preservation of a unique ecosystem. He was, in effect, a human-centered conservationist, who admired greatly the Pinchot-Roosevelt program.18
Not only did his brand of conservation fall on the utilitarian side, but he had compassion for the down-and-out of human society, developed earlier when he lived in Chicago. In the windy city, waste, poverty, and human misery influenced his social philosophy. He became a benefactor of Hull House, and as a Progressive patrician, his sensitivity toward the plight of the poor marked him as an active social reformer. He cared about nature and parks, but he could not turn his back on the needs of San Francisco and its people. Knowing his background, it should not have surprised the Hetch HetchyValley defenders to see him defending the rights of the people of San Francisco. Speaking in favor of the Raker bill, he stated: "My idea of conservation would teach that if Niagara Falls could be totally used up in alleviating the burdens of the overworked sweatshops of NewYork City I should be glad to sacrifice that scenic wonder for the welfare of humankind." 19 Translated to Hetch Hetchy Valley, that sentiment meant that he was quite willing to give the area over to San Francisco, if it would improve the lives of the many thousands who lived there. His concern for urban needs and his commitment to a mildly socialist philosophy trumped his preservation tendencies. Kent's dilemma, of course, represented that of many legislators enamored with nature and the parks but beholden to their constituencies and the public welfare.
Kent's Washington home became the de facto headquarters for the San Francisco organizational effort. Dunnigan was there almost every evening. Phelan, Long, John Raker, and other San Franciscans often joined the two men. They talked strategy. The group not only worked on fine-tuning the Raker bill but also made valuable connections with Kent's political friends, especially among both Democrats and the Rooseveltian group of Republicans. Later John Freeman, who languished in Europe during most of the fight, would credit Kent and Dunnigan for the bill's passage.20
After the decisive defeat in the House, the Society for the Preservation of the National Parks, under whose masthead the Sierra Club and Eastern supporters worked, knew they must do better if there was any chance to forestall a San Francisco victory in the Senate. Muir, home from his 1912 world travels to South America and Africa, was again willing to take up the fight, but declining health diminished his energy and his willingness to travel. He did, in May 1913, make the short journey from Martinez to Berkeley to receive an honorary doctorate. As University of California president Benjamin Ide Wheeler heaped praise on the naturalist as a man "uniquely gifted to interpret unto others [nature's] mind and ways," it must have troubled Muir to be hooded and honored by a university president who had strongly favored the city's position on Hetch Hetchy, even to the point of suppressing open debate and the free expression of ideas within his own faculty.21
Increasingly the leadership of the friends of Hetch Hetchy fell to Robert Underwood Johnson. Muir encouraged his friend and urged him to "strike hard and very fast." The result was a number of booklets and leaflets which suggested that much more was at stake than just the valley. Although money was tight, the society printed more than 20,000 pamphlets, booklets, leaflets, and circulars. Volunteers mailed them not only to various friends and organizations but also to the entries in Who's Who in Arnerica.22 The city of San Francisco, their argument went, claimed almost half the land withinYosemite National Park in its wish to control the entire Tuolumne River watershed. If the city was successful,Yosemite would be effectively cut in half, with hiking and overnight backpacking severely limited.
Besides booklets and leaflets, Robert Underwood Johnson circulated "An Open Letter to the American People." The letter articulated not only the value of Hetch Hetchy but the importance of nature in people's lives. Johnson's most effective argument was to show the folly of San Francisco's argument that an alternative water source would be $20 million more costly:
Put up at auction, what would this wonderland bring? "What am I bid," the auctioneer might say, "for one superb valley, twenty miles of unique cascades, half-a-dozen snow peaks, beautiful upland meadows, noble forests, etc., now owned by a gentleman named Uncle Sam, suspected of not being able to administer his own property? Do I hear $20,000,000 to start the bidding? Remember, that these natural features are priceless.23
Johnson's letter prompted a number of responses. Former president William Howard Taft, then living in New Haven, Connecticut, wrote Johnson a long letter, opening with "I am with you in the Hetch Hetchy matter" and then setting out a strategy.24 Senator Reed Smoot sympathized with Johnson, but believed that the Raker Act would pass the Senate, mainly because "everyone opposed to it is branded as a tool of the electric light power trust." Just how influential was the so-called electric light power trust? No one has provided a satisfactory answer, although certainly such companies as Pacific Gas and Electric Company opposed the city's public utilities aspirations. Not all responded positively to Johnson. Harvard historian Albert Bushnell Hart seemed to relish tweaking Johnson's appeal, ending his letter: "After all, nature, like the Sabbath, was made for man."25
As debate opened in the Senate, the success of the circulars and Johnson's letter was quite remarkable. Senator Reed Smoot informed his colleagues that he had received at least 5,000 letters against the proposal from all over the nation. In support of Smoot, another senator stated that he had received "innumerable letters on the subject." Senator Henry Ashurst of Arizona confessed disbelief that he had received between 3,500 and 4,000 letters on the issue. Senator James Reed of Missouri wondered how a mere two square miles of land could cause such a stir, in which "the Senate goes into profound debate, the country is thrown into a condition of hysteria, and one would imagine that chaos and old night [darkness] were about to descend upon the land." The letters also descended on Secretary of the Interior Lane's office-by the thousands. Young Assistant Secretary Horace Albright and three other secretaries had to reply. They found it necessary to forge Lane's signature, and then explain why Lane felt the grant should be made. Later Albright said, "I hated this job, for I was in sympathy with the protests.."26
Why was there such an outburst over a valley that, as Senator Reed noted, no one knew? Of course the leaflets and booklets contributed, but that was not the whole answer. Knowledge of an issue and action on that issue are different. Few of us act on our knowledge. Yet in the case of Hetch Hetchy, thousands of people did, even though it might have been only a brief note. Perhaps their activism was in response to the violation of a national park. However, few people granted any sanctity to national parks. Most Americans had no idea of the difference between a national forest reserve and a national park. And for good reason, for in 1913 the differences were subtle and undefined. It is more likely that the appeals for preservation, and particularly Muir's and Johnson's eloquent expressions, struck a cord with many Americans. It was not a matter of feeling for parks or wilderness per se, but rather about nature: a nature associated with gardens, with parks, with rivers and valleys, and with natural sounds. In a way, the letter writers were reactionary, wanting to save an environment that was disappearing in American cities. The writers of letters to save Hetch Hetchy Valley were moved to reassert the importance of nature in their lives. Whether each writer could make a difference was, perhaps, not so important as clarifying their own individual values in a world of industrialization and rapid change. Put together, the thousands of letters represented a growing political and cultural force that would assert itself in the new century.
The response of the American public clearly astonished the senators, but most were not moved to reconsider their pro-San Francisco position. Congressmen Joh
n Raker and William Kent, city lobbyist John Dunnigan, and other city representatives had sown seeds throughout the year that they could now reap. By early December Michael O'Shaughnessy, James Phelan, Mayor James Rolfe, and others had returned to Washington for the final showdown. They stood ready to assist sympathetic senators in any way they could. When junior senator Key Pittman was scheduled to speak on the issue-his first major debate-he called on O'Shaughnessy. The city engineer coached Pittman, "preparing maps illustrating the irrigation benefits of the dam" that worked to make an effective presentation.27
FIGURE ii. Wapalna and Tueeulala falls, situated close together, were wonderfully exciting in the springtime. Here we can see firewood already cut, indicating that the days of the larger trees were numbered. Courtesy of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).
THE FINAL SENATE debate commenced on December L and would end on December 6, 1913. The debaters first focused on the question of irrigation, specifically the rights of the farmers who secured their irrigation waters from the Tuolumne River. Senator John D. Works of Southern California carried the standard for the farmers for a day and a half, hammering away at the city and refusing to believe that San Francisco would honor its pledge to guarantee the irrigation districts' water rights. He also claimed to speak for the taxpayers of San Francisco against the "enormous burden of debt" being placed upon them.28 The Raker bill was legally suspect and morally wrong, he argued. San Francisco should look elsewhere for its water.29
The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America's Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism Page 17