Unreasonable Men by Michael Wolraich

Author:Michael Wolraich
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137438089
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

8

THE INSURGENCY

Adam and Eve were insurgents and ate of the forbidden fruit expecting to become gods. They only learned to see their own nakedness. Judas was an insurgent and sold his master for 30 pieces of silver; I have no doubt he would have been applauded by the newspapers of Jerusalem had there been any in that day.

—Uncle Joe1

WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 2, 1907

Gifford Pinchot worried about the future. The forests that once blanketed the continent had nearly vanished from the East and were rapidly receding from the West. The coalfields and iron mines were petering out. The topsoil was washing into the sea. “When the natural resources of any nation become exhausted,” he warned, “disaster and decay in every department of national life follow as a matter of course.”2

Most Americans were oblivious to the catastrophe. Like Pinchot’s grandfather, who had made a fortune stripping timber from Pennsylvania’s green mountains, they treated wilderness as a boundless resource to be exploited and discarded at will. As Pinchot recalled in his autobiography, “What talk there was about forest protection was no more to the average American than the buzzing of a mosquito, and just about as irritating.”3

But one man understood very well. The first time Pinchot met Theodore Roosevelt, the irrepressible governor of New York challenged the lanky forester to a wrestling match. Roosevelt won, but when they boxed, Pinchot’s long arms knocked him “off his very solid pins.” They were much alike. Born into money and educated at the best schools, they rejected the “ignoble ease” of the New York social scene for what Roosevelt called “the strenuous life.” Roosevelt hiked and hunted, raised cattle, and ran for public office. Pinchot climbed mountains and slept outside on a wooden pillow to toughen himself. Instead of becoming a socialite or a businessman like his father, he studied forestry in France and took a job at the Department of Agriculture.

When Roosevelt moved to Washington, he and Pinchot grew close. They hiked together through Rock Creek Park, swam in the Potomac, and swatted tennis balls on the White House court. Pinchot became a privileged member of Roosevelt’s “Tennis Cabinet,” an informal group of friends who advised him during post-match lunches. Not that Roosevelt required any convincing. As an avid outdoorsman, he had championed forest conservation since his days as governor. At White House strategy sessions, he and Pinchot prepared to revolutionize the nation’s environmental policies.4

At the time, the General Land Office in the Department of the Interior managed the bulk of federal property. Throughout the nineteenth century, the office operated as a farm distribution machine, dangling cheap land as bait to draw settlers westward. By the twentieth century, there wasn’t much land left. The remaining mountains and deserts held little appeal to pioneer farmers. But others were interested. Lumber companies, mining corporations, railroads, and speculators conspired to acquire cheap land from “settlers” who applied for homesteads with no intention of farming them. One notorious speculator in Oregon described how he would visit a saloon, buy the patrons a few rounds, and distribute land applications for them to sign.

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