The Roots of the Conservation Movement, 1890–1919 83
intelligent minds in every part of this country,
and giving form to a national feeling which is
gradually rising to a new plane of equity. The
questions will not down.... How shall they find
answer? The ethical doctrine of Conservation
answers: by a nobler patriotism, under which
citizen-electors will cleave more strongly to their
birthright of independence and strive more vig-
orously for purity of the ballot, for rightness in
laws, for cleanness in courts, and for forthright-
ness in administration; by a higher honesty of
purpose between man and man; by a warmer
charity, under which the good of all will more
fairly merge with the good of each; by a stronger
family sense, tending toward a realization of the
rights of the unborn; by deeper probity, matur-
ing in the realizing sense that each holder of the
sources of life is but a trustee for his nominal
possessions, and is responsible to all men and
for all time for making the best use of them in
common interest; and by a livelier humanity, in
which each will feel that he lives not for himself
alone but as a part of a common life for a com-
mon world and for the common good....
Whatever its material manifestations, every
revolution is first and foremost a revolution in
thought and in spirit.... The American Revolu-
tion was fought for Liberty; the Constitution was
framed for Equality; yet that third of the trinity of
human impulses without which Union is not made
perfect—Fraternity—has not been established:
full brotherhood among men and generations
has not yet come. The duty of the [Founding]
Fathers was done well according to their lights; but
some new light has come out of the West where their
sons have striven against Nature’s forces no less
fiercely than the Fathers against foreign dominion.
So it would seem to remain for Conservation to per-
fect the concept and the movement started among
the Colonists one hundred and forty years ago—to
round out the American Revolution by framing a
clearer Bill of Rights. Whatever others there may be,
surely these are inherent and indefeasible:—
1) The equal Rights of all men to opportunity.
2) The equal Rights of the People in and to
resources rendered valuable by their own
growth and orderly development.
3) The equal Rights of present and future gen-
erations in and to the resources of the country.
4) The equal Rights (and full responsibilities)
of all citizens to provide for the perpetuity of
families and States and the Union of States.
The keynote of all these is Fraternity. They look
to the greatest good for the greatest number and for
the longest time; they are essential to perfect union
among men and States; and until they are secured to
us we may hardly feel assured that government of
the People, by the People, and for the People shall
not perish from the earth.Source: WJ McGee, “The Conservation of Natural Resources,”
in Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association
3 (1909-1910): 376-79, in Roderick Frazier Nash, ed., Readings
in the History of Conservation (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1968), pp. 45-46.Document 72: Jane Addams on Garbage (1910)
The Chicago social worker Jane Addams was one of the leading advocates of improved sanitation in the homes
and the neighborhoods of the poor. Here she notes that the problem of garbage in lower-class neighborhoods
was greater than in wealthier neighborhoods. More than a hundred years later, the lack of environmental justice
continues to be an issue [see Document 136].One of the striking features of our neigh-
borhood twenty years ago, and one to which
we never became reconciled, was the presence
of huge wooden garbage boxes fastened to the
street pavement in which the undisturbed refuse
accumulated day by day. The system of garbage
collecting was inadequate throughout the city
but it became the greatest menace in a ward such
as ours, where the normal amount of waste was
much increased by the decayed fruit and vegetables