Publicity is the essential and
indispensable condition of clean and effective public service.
Since the Forest Service called public attention to the rapid absorption
of the water-power sites and the threatening growth of a great
water-power monopoly, the attacks upon it have increased with marked
rapidity. I anticipate that they will continue to do so. Still greater
opposition is promised in the near future. There is but one
protection--an awakened and determined public opinion. That is why I
tell the facts.
CHAPTER XI
THE NEW PATRIOTISM
The people of the United States are on the verge of one of the great
quiet decisions which determine national destinies. Crises happen in
peace as well as in war, and a peaceful crisis may be as vital and
controlling as any that comes with national uprising and the clash of
arms. Such a crisis, at first uneventful and almost unperceived, is upon
us now, and we are engaged in making the decision that is thus forced
upon us. And, so far as it has gone, our decision is largely wrong.
Fortunately it is not yet final.
The question we are deciding with so little consciousness of what it
involves is this: What shall we do with our natural resources? Upon the
final answer that we shall make to it hangs the success or failure of
this Nation in accomplishing its manifest destiny.
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