maintenance of permanent homes." During the trip a letter was
prepared by a group of men interested in the conservation
movement and was presented to him, asking him to summon a
conference on the conservation of natural resources. At a great
meeting held at Memphis, Tennessee, Roosevelt publicly announced
his intention of calling such a conference.

In May of the following year the conference was held in the East
Room of the White House. There were assembled there the
President, the Vice-President, seven Cabinet members, the Supreme
Court Justices, the Governors of thirty-four States and
representatives of the other twelve, the Governors of all the
Territories, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, the
President of the Board of Commissioners of the District of
Columbia, representatives of sixty-eight national societies, four
special guests, William Jennings Bryan, James J. Hill, Andrew
Carnegie, and John Mitchell, forty-eight general guests, and the
members of the Inland Waterways Commission. The object of the
conference was stated by the President in these words: "It seems
to me time for the country to take account of its natural
resources, and to inquire how long they are likely to last. We
are prosperous now; we should not forget that it will be just as
important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time."

At the conclusion of the conference a declaration prepared by the
Governors of Louisiana, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Utah, and South
Carolina, was unanimously adopted. This Magna Charta of the
conservation movement declared "that the great natural resources
supply the material basis upon which our civilization must
continue to depend and upon which the perpetuity of the nation