together by the common problem of water resources. Its last report in 1914

envisioned a development project of the Columbia River, which only now is being actualized. It is suggestive indeed of the profound change in western sentiment that conservation wrought that the State of Oregon should afford an

Probably the most active of the State conservation commissions was the Oregon agency which published reports in 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912, and 1914. Its first report contained a regional map of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, closely knit

exceptional continuity of interest in conservation, as appears from the following tabular analysis of its published reports for the years 1908-14:

1908. Regional map of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho; water transportation; conservation and use of water resources; water laws; lands and land reclamation; forests; minerals; fisheries.

1909. Prize papers (forests, irrigation institutions, roads, soils, dry farming, fish); new water law; reclamation; lack of physical data; forest fire protection.

1910. Conservation; forests; lands and stream survey; good roads; water transportation. 1912. Forests; water; mineral; fish and game.

1914. Forests; roads; lands; minerals; homestead laws; water power; Columbia River projects: fish and game.

In the preparation of these programs conservation drew upon

the best working cooperation for cumulative results of the State's best thought, the institutions and agencies of development of the State. It affords a basis and purpose for cooperation not only within the State, but of State with State, and of the States with the Nation. It will thus tend to do away with friction and conflict of interests between the States and relieve the National Government from a fatal overburdening and become the salvation of our Federal system.

When given a historical prespective of 1908-37, however, these early efforts of comprehensive planning of resources by the States showed little immediate continuity. All the 48 States became sufficiently interested in conservation as a new governmental activity to send a representative (of a kind) in response to Roosevelt's call for a Joint Conservation Conference in Washington, December 1908, or to one of the subsequent meetings of the quasi official National Conservation Congresses (1909-11). At least 29 States reported an official conserva tion commission at one or another of these meetings. (See fig. 10.) But only 17 States have left any written traces of their activities. Only 12 States established their conservation activities on a legislative foundation. Out of these 12, 4 have endured beyond the war period into the present time (Louisiana, New York, Nebraska, and Wisconsin).

Baldly told in such terms, the significance of the State conservation movement is grossly understated. Among its accomplishments which cannot be listed statistically was the establishment of the precedent of "conservation" as poten tially a regular function of State government, paving the way for the post-war emergence of strong conservation departments in such States as Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, and Minnesota. Secondly, the 4 States of Louisiana, New York, Wisconsin, and Nebraska demonstrated that conservation could actually develop as a permanent function of the State government. From an immediate practical point of view, the State conservation movement may have seemed to have accomplished little. From a long-run point of view, it actually broke down the traditional American attitude toward natural resources as inexhaustible and inaugurated on a practical scale the doctrine of public trustee. ship of all natural resources.30

The subsequent growth of State agencies consolidating in one administrative unit the primary responsibility for the management of natural resources has proceeded along two directions: (1) As part of the State administrative reor ganization movement; (2) as an integrating tendency quite independent of Statewide administrative reorganization, including State promotion. There has been a marked tendency in very recent years to establish new integrated agencies for the management of State resources.

31

Orthodox principles of State reorganization apparently did not provide for the establishment of a conservation agency, for the pioneer act of Illinois in 1917 placed most conservation functions in the Department of Agriculture, as was

"Surely, the present generation will not wish to go down into history as the generation that robbed their children and their children's children." Report of the Oregon Conservation Commission, 1908, pp. 6-7.

"In the biennium 1935 five States (Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Rhode Island, and Tennessee) established State departments of conservation or natural resources. See table 4.

also done by Tennessee in 1923, and South Dakota in 1925. When Illinois in 1925 set up a separate conservation department, it was questioned by Buck in his State Administrative Reorganization. On the other hand, the Massachusetts reorganization act of 1919 and the Michigan act of 1921 provided for the establishment of a State department of conservation, consolidating the forestry agency with the fish and game commission. The Washington reorganization act of 1921 established a department of conservation, but its scope was confined to the water and mineral resources, while a separate department of fish and game was also provided for. The reorganization act of Minnesota in 1925 estab lished a conservation department, but it apparently was not actively organized tili 1931 when a comprehensive Conservation Act was passed placing all conservation activities in one department.32

The reorganization acts of Pennsylvania, Maine, and Maryland failed to touch the problem of the integration of resources agencies. Pennsylvania retained three separate departments of game, fish, and lands and waters; Maine kept its three separate agencies for forests, sea fisheries, and inland fisheries and game; while the Maryland act employed the term "conservation", it failed to make of the commission anything more than a wildlife agency.33

Starting with the State of Indiana in 1919, however, a series of States undertook to integrate into one unified department the variety of State agencies in the resources field, quite apart from administrative tendencies in the rest of the State government. In 1925 Illinois created its department of conservation, as already noted. In 1927 California created a department of natural resources and Oklahoma, a conservation commission; in 1933, Florida and West Virginia a conservation department and commission respectively; and in 1937 Georgia set up a department of natural resources, while Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky (part of administrative reorganization) set up conservation agencies. (See table 3.)

A different approach was suggested by the State of New Jersey in 1915, in terms of "conservation and development," stressing "development" and State promotion somewhat along lines developed by chambers of commerce. In its 1917 report the New Jersey Department of Conservation and Development outlined its program for setting "New Jersey far beyond any position it ever has occupied as a food producer," as follows:

FIRST. To advertise our farm attractions as other States do and secure farmers by our merit. SECOND. To counteract the movement from the farms to the cities by lessening the hardships and uncertainties incident to farm life, and increasing its attractions.

THIRD. To meet the labor problem in a positive way.

FOURTH. To locate and list every farm, or part of a farm, that is for sale or for rent and be prepared to find a place for every man and every family that is attracted to us.

FIFTH. To inaugurate actively and at once a campaign to exterminate the salt marsh mosquitoes.

"Whereas formerly the various subdivisions of the State government which dealt with matters of conservation acted independently and cooperation between these subdivisions was entirely voluntary on the part of those who directed the division affairs, and was not always to be had, under the new law this cooperation is assured * * *. Progress in conser vation prior to the 1931 act was sporadic; a scientific conservation program was utterly lacking." Minnesota Conservation Commission, First Biennial Report, 1931-32, p. 1.

In Idaho the reorganization act recognized the magnitude of the water problem by providing for a separate department of reclamation.

In the second report of the North Carolina Department of Conservation and Development (established 1925), the State frankly admitted that the department was functioning "in the nature of a State chamber of commerce" by undertaking to "point out in broad terms existing conditions for the guidance of trade bodies in promoting the growth of their communities and of the State at large." 34 A similar agency was set up by Virginia in 1926.

The promotional approach to resources development has also been typified by a series of State development commissions, more or less short-lived, including an Alabama Industrial Development Board, the Massachusetts Industrial and Development Commission, the South Carolina Natural Resources Commission, and the Maine and New Hampshire Development Commissions. With the exception of the latter, all of these promotional agencies were abolished or ceased to exist during the course of the depression.35

Even in those States having consolidated departments of conservation other agencies may be found performing overlapping functions. The Michigan Conservation Department, which performs some functions with regard to all the natural resources, shares the field of water with three other independent agencies and the field of parks with two other agencies. The same diversity of State control over natural resources is also characteristic of California, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The six States of Georgia Kentucky, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Vermont appear to have reduced to a minimum the number of independent agencies functioning with reference to some phase of natural resources; and if the functions of the agricul tural experiment stations with reference to land and those of the State health department with reference to water are excluded from consideration (since they constitute a fairly universal pattern of State administrative structure), the two States of Tennessee and Vermont appear to have no other administrative agencies competing with their principal conservation agencies.

The complexity of administrative agencies and functions, even in the States having conservation agencies, may be indicated by table 4, which has been prepared with the assistance of the State planning boards. Of the 27 States reporting a "principal agency" for the management of natural resources, 1 State (Kansas) reported 11 independent agencies; 2 States, 9 agencies; 2 States, 7 agencies; 6 States, 6 agencies; 5 States, 5 agencies; 5 States, 4 agencies; 4 States, 3 agencies; and 2 States, 2 agencies. The average number of independent agencies in the 27 States is 5. In all the 27 States, independent agencies are reported in the land and water fields, in 17 States in the mineral field, in 10 States in the wildlife and park fields respectively, and in 7 States in the field of forests. From this distribution it is apparent that the oldest fields of the Government of resources-forests and wildlife-tend to be subsumed under the principal resources agency, in fact frequently constitute the very nucleus of it. It is most unlikely that the fields of land and water, or even minerals in the more important mining States, will ever be completely subsumed under a principal resources agency, because of the magnitude of State activities in these fields. But the tendency clearly appears for parks to be so administered.

Report, 1927-28, p. 12. The Brookings Survey expressed "some doubt whether a considerable portion of the work carried on by the division of commerce and industry (in the department of conservation and development) constitutes a legitimate State service." p. 263.

"

3 For citation, see supra, p. 45. State advertising dates back to the State immigration agencies created in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In 1925 the State of Arkansas established a commissioner of conservation for the inspection of animal feed. Laws 1925, c. No. 42, but the office was abolished in 1933.