put down that first State rights rebellion in the name of the Government of all the people (applause). Then came the special interests defiance of the laws of the General Government in Andrew Jackson's day, and Andrew Jackson's voice, like the voice of Washington, was the voice of all the people against the voice of the special interests who tried to exploit the people. Next came the special interests that thrived on human slavery, and, in the name of State rights tried to destroy the Government they could not control. But again the National sentiment responded to Abraham Lincoln's call to arms (great applause), and a million bayonets wrote across our Constitution these words of the American people's immortality: THIS IS A NATION! (Applause)

Then came the special interests that robbed and poisoned the people by lotteries, that destroyed the morals of the people by obscene literature. They flourished under State protection. Only the Nation could. stop them. Those special interests denied that the Nation had the power to stop them. But the Nation did stop them, and the Supreme Court of the Nation upheld the Nation's power (applause). Then came the special interests that sold to the people diseased meats. poisoned foods, and adulterated drugs. Again they flourished under State protection. Again the Nation only could protect the lives of the Nation's people. And again those special interests denied that the Nation had the power, but the Nation exercised the power, and today National laws protect the lives and rights of the American people from special interests that were plundering and poisoning and killing them. (Applause)

And it is the same conflict between the National and the provincial idea, for and against the great, necessary, and inevitable reform of the National control of corporate capitalization, on which so largely depend just prices and rates to the people. (Applause)

These are examples of the evils; but nearly every step of progress we have taken has been due to the success of the National idea. For example, President Madison vetoed the first internal improvement bill. He said, in one of the ablest messages ever written-far abler than the diluted State rights doctrine we hear today-that the Constitution gave the Nation no power to build roads, bridge rivers, improve harbors; but the people needed these things in order to win that righteous prosperity which only they can have acting as one people. under one flag-and so Congress passed the internal improvement bill over Madison's veto, and today no one dares question the Nation's power to make internal improvements; the only question today is how we can best do that work. (Applause)

Again, for a hundred years, the provincial idea kept the quarantine of the Nation's ports exclusively in the hands of the States; but if pestilence entered at a port of one State it attacked the people of other States. The germs of yellow fever did not know State lines

when they saw them, any more than a forest fire knows the boundaries between States when it sees them. And so the open grave, the dead on the street, the people's past and future peril, asserted the National idea again for the Nation's safety, and today we have substantially a National control of National quarantine to keep pests and death from our shores, and the States are cooperating.

So you see that the history of the American people has been merely the narrative of the making of the Nation, merely the record of the compounding of a people, merely the chronicle of the knitting together of one great brotherhood. It is an inevitable process, and it is a safe process except for special interests that seek to exploit all the people. For the American people can be trusted (applause). The combined intelligence and composite conscience of the American people is the mightiest force for wisdom and righteousness in all the world, and no ancient and provincial interpretation of State rights in the name of development must impede our general welfare (applause), no plea for hasty local development must impair our healthy general development (applause), no temporary State politics compelled by the wealthy few must prevent permanent National statesmanship for the general good. of all. (Applause)

Affairs that concern exclusively the people living within a State are the business and the problem of that State. Affairs affecting the general welfare of the whole people are the business and problem of the Nation (applause). And even in solving its own problems, every State must remember that its people are an inseparable and indivisible part of the whole American people (applause). Of States as of men it may be written, No State liveth unto itself alone. (Applause)

Just as the idea of provincialism has caused most of our National evils in the past, so it has wrought the waste of our National resources. The provincial idea was that the National resources belonging to all the people should be handed over for nothing to special interests. This was done under the plea of encouraging individual enterprise and the hastening of local development. And so forests, which once belonged to all the people, have been ruthlessly slaughtered, and upon their ruins have risen the empires of our lumber kings (applause). Priceless deposits of coal and iron and copper and phosphates have been freely surrendered to special interests, and those sources of the people's revenue, which should have flowed into the people's treasury to help pay the expenses of the people's government, have been diverted by the ditch dug by the provincial idea into the treasury of special interests until the multi-millionaire constitutes one of the gravest problems confronting American statesmanship. (Applause)

All this waste and robbery of the people's property must be stopped! (Applause) The hand of waste or theft must not be strengthened

by any legal technicality that plays into the hands of special interests and out of the hands of the American people! (Great applause)

Had we kept all the property that belonged to all the people, and compelled special interests who exploited it to pay us a reasonable price for it, that income today would be paying most of our National expenses. Our resources would have been developed and not exhausted, and our whole material evolution would have been rational and sound instead of unbalanced and defective. Had this been our policy from the start, we would have enjoyed all the benefits from our natural resources, and our children today would inherit colossal National wealth and small National burdens instead of the special interests enjoying all the benefits of the people's property and their children inheriting colossal fortunes and small private burdens. (Applause)

The Nation must keep and administer for the benefit of all the people the property yet remaining to the people (applause). Every State should help and not hinder the Nation, in doing this great duty (applause). Every State should administer the public property within it, and belonging to it, for the public good. Every municipality should keep and administer the property belonging to it for the public good; and both State and municipality should aid the Nation in keeping and administering for the people the property that belongs to all of them.

I want to give you an illustration, very concrete: Many of New York's inconceivably vast fortunes have been expanded by corrupt councils selling watercourses and other property for a mere song to private owners. Had New York kept the property which belonged to the city, instead of squandering it to already multi-millionaries, the city's debt today would not be so vast-and her great private fortunes would not be so vast either (applause). The people's taxes would have been less, and the gigantic unearned incomes of the heirs of great wealth would have been less (applause). And as between the two. the wiser policy have been for the city to keep the property that belonged to all the people of the city instead of selling it sometimes for an infamous price to private owners whose vast wealth, accumulating by the work of the city itself, has raised up in the midst of the American people one of the great questions of the age.

Cooperation of municipality, State, and Nation, in keeping and administering for the general good the property of all the people— this is the policy of common sense and common honesty (applause). Strife and dissension between municipality, State, and Nation, that the reign of pillage may go on and that mighty accumulations of wealth may be upbuilded upon the ruins of the people's resources— that is the policy of private avarice and private plunder (applause). Coal, timber, asphalt, phosphates, water-powers-all the property of the people-must be kept and administered for the people by the Gov

ernment which Lincoln said was "of the people by the people for the people" (applause). Already this greatest of our present-day National policies is well under way. Let any man beware how he retards or hinders it (applause). Already we have saved much of the people's property still belonging to the people. We must save all of the people's property still belonging to the people. (Applause and cries of "Good") "Honor to whom honor is due." (Applause) Let us not forget, in this great hour, that the man who, by thought, word, and deed, has wrought for this great reform, until today he stands its National personification (applause), that splendid, courageous, pure, unselfish young American, the President of the National Conservation Association, Gifford Pinchot. (Tumultuous applause and cheers, calls for "Pinchot"; and the audience rose, gave the Chautauqua salute, and continued cheering for many minutes)

For years and I speak from personal knowledge, because twelve years ago when I entered the Senate I was made the chairman of the then despised forestry committee-for years Gifford Pinchot has ceaselessly worked and fearlessly fought to keep for the people the property of the people which special interests were trying to steal from the people (applause). And in that Nation-wide battle he has been the field-officer of the man who first succeeded in making Conservation a permanent and practical policy of American statesmanship, Theodore Roosevelt. (Great applause. A Voice: Let us vote to give him back his job!)

The soul of our prosperity-even of our very life is in the idea of our unity as a people. Let municipality, State, and Nation, each act and, within its own province, work to keep what belongs to the people for the people, instead of the municipality, State, and Nation, each within its province, conniving at the waste of the people's property for the upbuilding of the wealth of special interests to the detriment of all the people. The wise, honest and economic administration of the people's welfare means the just advantage which individual enterprise and thrift as of right ought to have. The unwise. uneconomic and dishonest waste of the people's resources for the enrichment of the special few, this in the end, believe me, is the denial of that just advantage which individual thrift, enterprise, and integrity as of right ought to have. (Applause)

The young men of today in working for themselves individually must think and act for what the Constitution calls "the general welfare" of the whole people (applause). After all, only as the Nation is prosperous can any State be really prosperous. After all, only as the Nation is powerful can any State be really safe from foes, foreign and domestic. The young men of the twentieth century in this Republic are not the heirs of the provincial idea which we inherited. from the British kings, and which has so hindered our real progress as a people, squandered so much of the people's resources, shed so

much of the people's blood. No! The young men of today are the heirs of all the advancement that our struggling millions have made toward their common brotherhood. The young men of today are the heirs of all the victories which heroes and statesmen have won for the general welfare. The young men of today are the heirs of all the unifying influences by which the genius of man has knit this great people into one splendid family. And so the young American of today, when thinking of himself, must think in the terms of the Nation; through his veins must pulse the blood of our general welfare; his every thought and act must be for the common good of all. And only so can his individual success be well builded; and when it is builded on such foundation, though "the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow" and beat upon a house thus builded “it shall not fall, for it is founded upon a rock." (Applause)

Why was the American Nation founded? What is the purpose of this Republic? It is to create a greater human happiness than the world has ever known (applause). It is to enable millions of men and women to cooperate in building clean, honorable, prosperous homes. And so let us Americans move forward as brothers and as sisters until we shall give the whole world an example of one great brotherhood in heart and in deed as well as in words. (Great applause)

There were repeated calls for "Pinchot"; and Mr Pinchot, coming forward amidst great cheers and hearty applause, said—

Ladies and Gentlemen. Members of this great meeting: There can be in a man's life but few moments like this, in seeing policies in which he believes and for which he has tried to work so splendidly acclaimed by such a meeting, when at first they were questioned. I haven't anything to say at this time except to thank you most profoundly, and to add that the policies for which this Congress stands are sweeping the country as they are sweeping this body-and that, so far as the United States is concerned, Conservation, I believe, has won out. (Applause) I thank you!

President BAKER-Ladies and Gentlemen: We all know Conservation has, with such a leader, won out. (Applause)

We now take up "A Rational System of Taxing National Resources," by Frank L. McVey, President of the University of North Dakota, whom I have the pleasure of introducing. (Applause)

President MCVEY-Mr Chairman and Good Friends: The invitation of the President of the Congress to be present and to deliver an address on the subject of a rational system of taxing natural resources, asked that specific suggestions be made of a practical nature for the improvement of our present laws on this subject. This places upon me a heavy responsibility if the suggestions made