Rethinking Our Relationship to Nature, 1920–1959 93
DOCUMENT 77: Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Destruction of
America’s Forests (1930)Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s second cousin, grew up in a family that venerated the outdoors
and was sensitive to concerns about conservation. In the New York State legislature, FDR served as chairman
of the Senate Committee on Forest, Fish, and Game; and as governor of the state he endorsed conservationist
efforts. FDR’s conviction that the government should take a leadership role in encouraging beneficial social
change was probably responsible for his greatest contributions to the conservation movement, the creation of
the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Soil Conservation Service.Stones, steel, concrete and asphalt, bricks
and glass meet the eye at every turn in the cit-
ies of America. Yet the products of the forest
continue indispensable to the structure of our
civilization.
A still heavier stake in intelligent conservation
of this country’s forest resources is held by the peo-
ple of rural America. Agriculture uses more wood
than any other industry. The people in the country
benefit most from the prevention of floods. They
own the lowlands where crops and property are
destroyed. They own the highlands from which
erosion sweeps away the fertility.
The small cities and towns, either as munici-
palities or through civic organizations, can make
a notable contribution to progress in forest con-
servation....
Back in 1911, as a greenhorn member of the
New York State Senate, I happened to become
chairman of the Committee on Forest, Fish, and
Game. Anxious to stir up interest in my commit-
tee’s work I arranged to have Gifford Pinchot [see
Document 73] deliver a lecture in Albany. What
he said I have probably forgotten but two pictures
that he displayed are still vividly remembered.
He threw on the screen first the reproduction
of a painting made in meticulous detail about
the year 1400 by a Chinese artist. The scene was
a beautiful valley in China, peopled with a city
of a half million. Luxuriant crops in the care-
fully cultivated fields of the valley floor indicated
a rich and well-tilled soil. A quiet river wound
along, with indications on the bank that this was
a stream of steady flow, free from periodic floods.
A deep and dense forest of pine trees covered
the mountains at either side of the valley. The
whole scene was one of peace, prosperity and
plenty.
Down the mountain at one side had been
slashed a strip in which was a wooden trough,
or flume, such as is used for sliding logs down a
declivity. This was evidence that lumbering oper-
ations had been started.
Then Mr. Pinchot flashed on the screen a
photograph of the same valley, made in 1900
from the identical spot occupied by the artist
who five centuries before had painted the scene
in photographic detail.
The mountain slopes had been completely
denuded of their forests. Not a tree remained.
Jutting rocks, deep gullies and barren spaces
were there instead.
The whole valley floor was covered with a
wilderness of rocks and bowlders that had been
swept down by floods. No crops were growing,
because no soil was left in which a seed might
sprout. There was no river—only a dry stream
bed where in season violent floods added to the
destruction of what little was left to be damaged.
A poverty-stricken village of 5,000 remained
within the still standing walls of the once pros-
perous city of a half million.
One need not be an alarmist to foresee that,
without intelligent conservation measures, long
before half a millennium passes some such con-
trasting pictures might be possible in our own
United States. Even now we are consuming five
times as much timber as is being grown. We
plant in a year an area about equal to what is
cut over in less than five days. Fortunately the