relationship on the part of the Federal Government to the
nation's natural wealth.

Reclamation and conservation had this in common: the purpose of
both was the intelligent and efficient utilization of the natural
resources of the country for the benefit of the people of the
country. But they differed in one respect, and with conspicuous
practical effects. Reclamation, which meant the spending of
public moneys to render fertile and usable arid lands hitherto
deemed worthless, trod on no one's toes. It took from no one
anything that he had; it interfered with no one's enjoyment of
benefits which it was not in the public interest that he should
continue to enjoy unchecked. It was therefore popular from the
first, and the new policy went through Congress as though on
well-oiled wheels. Only six months passed between its first
statement in the Presidential message and its enactment into law.
Conservation, on the other hand, had to begin by withholding the
natural resources from exploitation and extravagant use. It had,
first of all, to establish in the national mind the principle
that the forests and mines of the nation are not an inexhaustible
grab-bag into which whosoever will may thrust greedy and wasteful
hands, and by this new understanding to stop the squandering of
vast national resources until they could be economically
developed and intelligently used. So it was inevitable that
conservation should prove unpopular, while reclamation gained an
easy popularity, and that those who had been feeding fat off the
country's stores of forest and mineral wealth should oppose, with
tooth and nail, the very suggestion of conservation. It was on
the first Sunday after he reached Washington as President, before
he had moved into the White House, that Roosevelt discussed with