84 The Environmental Debate
contractor must increase the number of his wagons
from nine to thirteen and from thirteen to seven-
teen, although he assured me that he lost money on
every one and that the former inspector had let him
off with seven; or of taking careless landlords into
court because they would not provide the proper
garbage receptacles; or of arresting the tenant who
tried to make the garbage wagons carry away the
contents of his stable.
With the two or three residents who nobly
stood by, we set up six of those doleful incinera-
tors which are supposed to burn garbage with
the fuel collected in the alley itself. The one fac-
tory in town which could utilize old tin cans was
a window weight factory, and we deluged that
with ten times as many tin cans as it could use—
much less pay for.Source: Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New
York: Macmillan, 1911), pp. 281, 285-86.discarded by the Italian and Greek fruit ped-
dlers, and by the residuum left over from the
piles of filthy rags which were fished out of the
city dumps and brought to the homes of the rag
pickers for further sorting and washing.
The children of our neighborhood twenty
years ago played their games in and around these
huge garbage boxes.
[My attempt to get a contract to remove
garbage from the nineteenth ward] induced the
mayor to appoint me the garbage inspector of
the ward.
... The position was no sinecure whether
regarded from the point of view of getting up at
six in the morning to see that the men were early at
work; or of following the loaded wagons, uneasily
dropping their contents at intervals, to their dreary
destination at the dump; or of insisting that the
Document 73: Gifford Pinchot on Conservation and the National Interest (1911).........
Gifford Pinchot, the first professional American forester, was appointed head of the Department of Agriculture’s
Division of Forestry in 1894. In his early years with the forestry division, he focused his attention on encouraging
the “production of the largest amount of the most valuable timber in the shortest time on a given area,”^3 but as
he became embroiled with government administrators who gave little thought to the consequences of resource
exploitation and waste, he became a fierce conservation advocate.
After he instituted charges against President William Howard Taft’s secretary of the Interior, Richard
Ballinger [see Document 69], for reversing Theodore Roosevelt’s conservation policies, Pinchot was dismissed
from the U.S. Forestry Service (which had evolved from the Division of Forestry) by Taft for insubordination.
Then, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he again served as head of the Forestry Service.The conservation of our natural resources
is a question of primary importance on the eco-
nomic side. It pays better to conserve our natu-
ral resources than to destroy them, and this is
especially true when the national interest is
considered. But the business reason, weighty and
worthy though it be, is not the fundamental rea-
son. In such matters, business is a poor master
but a good servant. The law of self-preservation
is higher than the law of business, and the duty of
preserving the Nation is still higher than either.
The American Revolution had its origin in
part in economic causes, and it produced eco-
nomic results of tremendous reach and weight.
The Civil War also arose in large part from
economic conditions, and it has had the largest
economic consequences. But in each case there
was a higher and more compelling reason. So
with the third great crisis of our history. It has
an economic aspect of the largest and most per-
manent importance, and the motive for action
along that line, once it is recognized, should be