The Fight for Conservation | Page 5

opinion, as the man with a permanent stake in it, as the man who
owns the land from which he makes his living.
Our country began as a nation of farmers. During the periods that gave
it its character, when our independence was won and when our Union
was preserved, we were preeminently a nation of farmers. We can not,
and we ought not, to continue exclusively, or even chiefly, an
agricultural country, because one man can raise food enough for many.
But the farmer who owns his land is still the backbone of this Nation;
and one of the things we want most is more of him. The man on the
farm is valuable to the Nation, like any other citizen, just in proportion
to his intelligence, character, ability, and patriotism; but, unlike other
citizens, also in proportion to his attachment to the soil. That is the
principal spring of his steadiness, his sanity, his simplicity and
directness, and many of his other desirable qualities. He is the first of
home-makers.
The nation that will lead the world will be a Nation of Homes. The
object of the great Conservation movement is just this, to make our
country a permanent and prosperous home for ourselves and for our
children, and for our children's children, and it is a task that is worth the
best thought and effort of any and all of us.
To achieve this or any other great result, straight thinking and strong

action are necessary, and the straight thinking comes first. To make this
country what we need to have it, we must think clearly and directly
about our problems, and above all we must understand what the real
problems are. The great things are few and simple, but they are too
often hidden by false issues, and conventional, unreal thinking. The
easiest way to hide a real issue always has been, and always will be, to
replace it with a false one.
The first thing we need in this country, as President Roosevelt so well
set forth in a great message which told what he had been trying to do
for the American people, is equality of opportunity for every citizen.
No man should have less, and no man ought to ask for any more.
Equality of opportunity is the real object of our laws and institutions.
Our institutions and our laws are not valuable in themselves. They are
valuable only because they secure equality of opportunity for happiness
and welfare to our citizens. An institution or a law is a means, not an
end, a means to be used for the public good, to be modified for the
public good, and to be interpreted for the public good. One of the great
reasons why President Roosevelt's administration was of such
enormous value to the plain American was that he understood what St.
Paul meant when he said: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
To follow blindly the letter of the law, or the form of an institution,
without intelligent regard both for its spirit and for the public welfare,
is very nearly as dangerous as to disregard the law altogether. What we
need is the use of the law for the public good, and the construction of it
for the public welfare.
It goes without saying that the law is supreme and must be obeyed.
Civilization rests on obedience to law. But the law is not absolute. It
requires to be construed. Rigid construction of the law works, and must
work, in the vast majority of cases, for the benefit of the men who can
hire the best lawyers and who have the sources of influence in
lawmaking at their command. Strict construction necessarily favors the
great interests as against the people, and in the long run can not do
otherwise. Wise execution of the law must consider what the law ought
to accomplish for the general good. The great oppressive trusts exist
because of subservient lawmakers and adroit legal constructions. Here

is the central stronghold of the money power in the everlasting conflict
of the few to grab, and the many to keep or win the rights they were
born with. Legal technicalities seldom help the people. The people, not
the law, should have the benefit of every doubt.
Equality of opportunity, a square deal for every man, the protection of
the citizen against the great concentrations of capital, the intelligent use
of laws and institutions for the public good, and the conservation of our
natural resources, not for the trusts, but for the people; these are real
issues and real problems. Upon such things as these the perpetuity of
this country as a nation of homes really depends. We are coming to see
that the simple things are the things to work