Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Patricia Limerick On 20th Century West Federal... 20171125

The most intense experience on the ground, being in that community, still very divided over that takeover. First, the guessing game. Somebody who said a lot of things that i think people may. Forgotten, including ive forgotten some of the things. , the publicquestion domain has been a force of profound importance in the nationalization and development of the government. The person who said that is probably not someone you would have expected, because it was somebody who said a lot of things and he or she didnt and up getting credit. Who said that . Isnt it fun to be told you are going to be tricked . Come on, suckers. Its in your reading. I said it no. Its something i could have said, because public land they are the core of how the federal government grows. The west in the 19th century expansion was the key to expanding the power of the federal government. [indistinct] no. [indistinct] Frederick Jackson turner said that. He has benefited from you folks being here, because i reread the significance of the front tier in American History. I dont know what was going on, besides the off quoted packages takes him off the road and puts him in a canoe. Theres a few things like that that everyone reads and remembers. This time, i thought i might as well read every word. There is a lot of stuff about indians and their. Who knew . Apparently anyone who reads it would know that. Requent references not necessarily to the significance of them, but to their presence and the importance of settler responses to them and the national thernment, responding to presence of indians, the importance of indian trails. I actually thought what i think might have triggered the 1986 Patricia Limerick response was that it is so much. That essay is so much about the eastern and midwestern United States. It is really focused on the notfar west. I think that might have been what set me off in portland days. In olden days. What was interesting is he taughtat utah state, he yes, mr. Logan. It is a lovely drive. Turner loved beautiful, open spaces. Think he enjoyed going there. In his papers at the time of his death, there was an early draft of nsa call the significance of mountains and deserts in American History. Essay called the the significance of mountains and deserts in American History. I hope im giving a demonstration of how to kill your it is to say that you know something, then when you read the whole thing of how peculiar it is to say that you know something, then when you read the whole thing i owe his family and apology. It was a wondrous thing. That brings us to the world 1893. Ian exposition, there it is, the great white city, a famous episode in american cultural and political history. Frederick Jackson Turner was there, and he gave his front tier speech there. It has more in it than i realized. It certainly leaves this question hanging. What a cliffhanger that thing is. The front tier is over, and era era of American History was over. Turner. Op there, mr. Please keep going. Over hisdidnt lifetime, he would make various efforts to find equivalents. He pushed education. A form of continuing opportunity and continuing recruitment of people from outside into the american world. He did try to find it, but they were nowhere near as compelling as this. Also, the columbian exposition. As buffalo bill cody they were not on a Panel Discussion, which is a shame, because that would have been great. They didnt need to have a Panel Discussion because wrote this great essay in the front tier in american culture, where he compares turner and cody, and really brings them into a conversation. In essence, he sees both of them this is my phrase, not his workers, coworkers in the overproduction of front tier nostalgia. That turner and cody had their differences. They were both major practitioners of nostalgia in the west that had gone away. We are prettyt much in the same spirit. Remember, we are never supposed to say that is how you tell the world you are sophisticated. If you say buffalo bill codys wild west show, that makes it clear you are an outsider. Because cody never said the word show, and he didnt want people to collect that. It was the wild west. Did you know you could betray your outsider status so easily . Would you all like to say it together . Wild west. That was very effective. You will find that gets you someplace in very limited circles. Dont expect to move out in the world and everybody will be, look how sophisticated this person is. The west thatthat was seeing as lost and departed was a much wilder, wilder and unsettled west. Theer was feeling sad about word the word tame keeps coming up. The taming of the west. It started as wilderness, turned ,nto the site of log cabins which turned into big, comfortable farm houses. T is the western process he makes a fine point about how turner didnt need to have visual illustrations in his text, because if he said log cabin, everyone had it in their mind at that time. He had key terms. Stagecoach, what wagon trainer, log cabin. They all showed up in peoples minds and it would be silly to say, here is a log cabin. Sot is why the text can be provocative and effective without illustrations, because the readers dont mind, in the 1890s and many years afterwards. . O, here are two nostalgiacs is that the word . They are both successful in their own way. Richard essay is good about saying, lets not have one be the sophisticated, serious express her of the meaning of the west. They are both equally effective and creative and thoughtful in how they do that. Has anyone read these essays echo a while ago. I read it a while ago, more of a while ago, given the difference in our ages. Ago, and many whiles reread it. It is really good. Gives you something to do turner, who was that guy . There is a woman sitting at his desk. If you want to pairing him with cody does give you that angle. Interesting comparisons between them, and sees them as a kind of coworkers. It is this broad, cultural movement. Oh, this is important. [laughter] i mean, its like was saying, deal with it. I dont know why someone couldnt research this. Im looking at you, brendan. Someone can look into that. Its interesting that they were in chicago at the Columbian Exchange in some proximity, that is interesting. That this is really interesting and important for our understanding of regional conversations. So, this is an important point. This is the term that uses, a helpful term in a helpful book. Frontier anxiety. It is not anxiety felt by frontier people, but by people who were not frontier people, who were around in the late 19th ,nd early 20th century americans who were anxious about the hanging question of what will happen to the United States without a frontier . The anxiety are. His is who we that is going to be a rough transition. There may not be anything on the other side. So, this is a really good book. The end of, american exceptionalism. Among other great aspects is that it is clear about how that fits in cody and turner and many , thatcontemporaries something important had shifted in American History. Many of the Franklin Roosevelt new deal stories in the federal ,eadership had that same sense sometimes very explicitly. Henry wallace, particularly, with the end of the frontier, government had better get bigger because government has to step in and supply the services that the frontier needed. If you dont have free land, you had better have some other rce of wildly available widely available understanding and opportunity. The search of this seemed to be hard for some people to deal with this. Translate, a growing conviction among some sectors of American Society that westward expansion had produced mixed results, some of which were very troubling. I dont know how extremely troubling, and really undesirable. To use one of many examples, a phrase at the time that would influence many of the things that come up in the next few minutes, timber famine. I mean, really, if you are not the beaver, it is hard to be hungry for timber. It is a weird word to associate. The notion that the United States, which has been the most wonderfully wondrously forested part of the continent, the astounding forest resources. In some parts of north america, they had been ripped through. Wisconsin, michigan, the upper midwest. Just chopped. Cut over. So that anxiety, fear, terror, whatever, but that might continue with the far west. The pacific northwest, the rockies, the same calamity might happen there. The extraordinary riches of the continent would be a bunch of stumps. Notionber famine, the that the United States has been astoundingly timber rich, might end up timber impoverished, that scared people. Not just people interested in the profession of forestry, but anyone who saw a picture of the cut over lands in upper michigan and upper wisconsin. Concerns,kinds of what are we going to do with this affliction of frontier anxiety. Are we going to feel miserable . Is there something we could do . And action we could take . So, one weirdness of reading him so closely is that i realized that i have quite an enthusiasm for phases and arrows phases and eras. Like doing that, turner and i. We both like saying this was his cumberland gap, the ranch and grazer so we have that in common. I like this quite a bit. , like it because it is well it is an experience we have all had, having to do other drafts. Is there anyone who writes so wondrously that the first draft is excellent and everyone says dont touch a thing . Its perfect. Would you care to identify yourself . Relative hostility from everyone else, you might not want to share that with us. Any halfway normal person has to keep going, even with limericks. Youll need three or four drafts. That is a great habit to have in classes. I have told my students that before i met Jeff Limerick and got that surname, i used to sit in classes when i was bored writing limericks. Its brilliant as a technique, pretend you were writing a limerick. Youre thinking really hard. Turner, burner, so it. You say, in a moment, ive got it now. You write it down, and you look like the most thoughtful notetaker in the room. It has worked really well for me as a strategy as a student. I have told classes of students that, and some have adopted this technique. Thats fine, it is better than drowsing. I think one of the great things this is not on the main track i did write some beautiful limericks about Warren Harding when my professor was lecturing on the harding administration. One, it has the most beautiful internal rhyme that appears in any limerick. You know that he was his slogan was a return to normalcy . And he was retreating firm retreating from International Engagements from the first world war. There was an old man named warren who hated all things foreign. Normally,o live drunken informally, and spent his time gambling and whoring. Thank you, thank you. I think people were skeptical when i said it had the most beautiful internal rhyme. But wasnt it . Normally, drunk and informally . Theres a good strategy i have given you for the rest of your life. You can certainly use it today if it will help you get ready for the party. Notion of thes three drafts of the American West the americanized west. The first draft of the americanized west and we dont know when it starts and ands westward expansion is the first draft. We havent talked about the timber logging business, but it is in there. So, the second draft is what we are seeing with this session coming into being. The progressive era. That first draft didnt really come up. Minds that were once full of activities, abandoned. Maybe there is something we should be thinking about. Extinct . Ost hmmm. Various forms of looking at the. Utcomes of the first draft utah, salt lake city, with the forested hillsides and mountainsides. Its hard to think where you would look if you didnt want to have that moment of thinking, this didnt really seem to come out exactly as i would have liked. So, the progressive era is the second draft. The third draft is still in progress. , it has tos features take into account the rise of environmentalism, continued population growth to the point where we have to say it is hard to say where westward expansion started, it might be harder to say where it ended. World war ii and military expansion, continuing into the cold war, i dont know where you would say, period. Still significant issues of the Fastest Growing regions in the country and the west in the last 30 years. I think this is tied to environmentalism, but a more inescapable reckoning some of it was in the second draft, but it goes much deeper and wider. Legitimacy and authority to define progress. Legitimacy, who is really a deserving westerner . Who qualifies as a person who can make decisions for the people in new jersey. What is the public land to them . Today have legitimacy . Who gets to say what progress means in these transformed times . Of sayings one way how crucial the progressive era was for the west. It is the second draft, a big deal. And i believe this is true, if we had more time we could do this as a card game tonight. I believe this is true. Wherever you look in the American West today, wherever you direct your gaze, you will see something that is a legacy of the progressive era. I thought we might do it as a party game, and you could try to suggest something ski slopes. So, this is the remarkable outcome. This and the picture, the progressive era just gets of itsing in the scale importance. Much of the west becomes the home of millions of people, and much of that is now owned as private property, and even more of the west is still under public ownership. It is a Pretty Amazing thing, we have quotations from turner. We didnt know that was what he was saying, but that the Public Domain was the key to nationalization and the government. Thing io go back to the was saying early on. What is happening is that progress, from first draft to second draft, westward expansion to progressive era, progress is changing its course. The adjustment, the earthquake of that, the rattling of assumptions and expectations, that rattling continues. That shift from westward expansion, the definition of progress, centering the Public Domain into private ownership. To theat definition progressive era definition, maintaining that land and permanent federal ownership, that was a giant, disorienting change. It was, i think, mistakenly, almost the full reversal. The progressive era still has plenty of enthusiasm for finding resources in the west and developing them. I dont know how far i would go in saying how much shorter it is of a 180 degree reversal, but it is big. We cannot be surprised that this shift, even though it was underweight 130 or 140 years ago , we cant be surprised that this shift leaves some people unsettled and rattled. Technique that has been incredibly helpful to me. I learned about it in february of last year. Person named randy olson, one gifted communicator. He is a biologist, a tenured professor of biology at the university of new hampshire. He became more and more concerned about the troubles that scientists have communicating to wider audiences. He left his tenured job and went to film school at the university of southern california. Are we all breathing normally . It is scary to think about that. He wrote his second book, and he knows my husband. Houston, the person, really likes this book. And houston the person Reading Houston the book is pretty funny. What he offers in his book, and i have found it to be almost too useful, the method of communication. Randy is a scientist, and he has looked to different public figures and how they did or did not use that method. He has really seen i guess you could say correlation. More than that, i would say causation, of the effectiveness presenters, writers, and speakers who use the abt method. Has led to of this uncharacteristic brevity. Sometimes if you use that method , the audience is sort of, ok, stop. I got your point. We aret do that because here for a while longer. Here we have the abt of this session. The progressive era was a time of disorienting change, and farmers responded with vigor and grit, but have to get that dynamic some features of our heritage have proven to be troubling in our own in their own right. Therefore, we are invited to reckon with the complex and productive ways. With the necessary skills to accept that invitation of working with progressives. So, i will say this. A person who represents any Political Party in 2016 is a person who says and, and, and. Wont use any gendered pronouns for anything, but it is quite striking when you start to think about what happens in political public expression, who was using and but therefore. It has nothing to do with the quality of the thought, but how effectively it gets through. Tohink academics are prey the and and and. Fight over the public lands, but at least we have pulled the have public lands to fight over, and a wonderful gift to have occasion for dispute. Here are two or three other frameworks conversational frameworks. Historically derived romances, and i think it is right to use the word romance. They are appealing, seductive. They pulled people in in a process that has as much sentiment and emotion as it has reason and evidence. They have to learn to live together. They are not doing great at that. The romance of centralized authority and expertise is the legacy of the progressive era, that we would do better and avoid these unhappy outcomes we saw in the first draft of western history. Much less of those if we can hand decisions and authority over to a centralized, federal government. It could be an agency, part of the department of the interior. There will be experts, and they will think, and offer solutions and resolutions that will guide better behavior. That is a powerful romance and it is so intense when it comes into play. I think is the best example of somebody who really seems to dr Roosevelt Skerrit friend, roosevelts great friend, charismatic, smart and thoughtful. He represents that. But many acts of legislation, executive decisions all rest on that someone in the department of the interior or someone in those situations has a very smart thought and that will make things work better. For centralized authority is very strong, and the romance for local control is about as strong. That is the light of the westward expansion. Locals go to a place, they know it intimately, they are the legitimate ones, the ones who got there first, who know what should happen there. Those two romances are very powerful, and neither is going to go away, and they need to be friends. Not going so good right now. Thats what happens with friendships. How many people in the room have had a good friendship that has turned into a bad situation, but then came back as a good one . How many have had that . You do have your green, yellow, and red cards. Uncertain if i ask this other question, how many had a friendship that went poorly and remained poorly, i would get a lot of those. Im not asking that. I think i can take that on blind faith. You guys are pretty quick on the draw. But you also were there, youve had friendships that yes. Im not going to say this cant ever happen. I think this has happened. In ways that few people would ever know about. Its happening on the ground level all around the west. I will just go with Harney County, nationally famous for armed people taking over public land. That, a20 years before group called the High Desert Partnership met. They were several officials from the wildlife refuge, ranchers, environmentalists from portland, oregon, and they met and fought and reached a consensus plan for the management of the wildlife refuge. Did anyone see that in the newspapers for press coverage . I think there is a problem that no one is going to be interested in a positive story. Lets get more on dan and. More on steve bannon. That cohabiting, getting back together. I have no idea why that wouldnt figure in anyones national reporting, but maybe it did and i missed it. Whothese are several people have an interesting view of westward expansion. I dont know if they would ever use the phrase progressive era, thinking of what that might mean to them, but they have an interesting and imaginative view of western history, that there was a time lets take Harney County where ranchers were very prosperous and collaborative. Very goodnatured. They had complete control of the land and used the land widely. In Harney County, there was astounding tension and anguish 19th century and 20th century. There was a guy named pete french, a powerful cattle rancher. To have a notion that you would forhere and you would speak the importance of returning the im notthe ranchers making them come and go. Thats not what im doing. Imaginative form of history, and it makes buffalo bill cody look like a real accuracy kind of guy in some ways. Here is the progressive legacy. I dont know if they ever got it. I think ranchers in the area try to say we have a complicated history, but i got to speak in Harney County. That was my first question to them. Does it give you an advantage in dealing with contention to have had such a contentious history 100 years ago . A good share of them thought it did. They know they have had a contentious history. Here is the progressive legacy. A great map that shows you the percentage of the land and land in individual states still under public ownership. It is a little bit like the water precipitation maps we saw before. If there is anyone who would like me to help you interpret s map, as to which region its pretty striking. If you wondered, doesnt it seem like nevada is really cloudy . Yeah, that could be part of it. This does not include indian reservations, but it does include because those were sovereign lands. But that is not what happened there, we could certainly describe the historical process that led to that, that much is these lands were high elevation, had limited precipitation, they were rugged and uneven terrain. They were remote, difficult to get to. The phrase sometimes used is left over land. The land that nobody wanted. Land that didnt go into private ownership because homesteaders were not that goofy. They were full of hope, but they didnt say, ive got an idea, how about the middle of the nevada desert. There are plenty of other areas where homesteading might have occurred, but people gave up. Theres reason for that, and it is the progressive era reckoning with the first draft of western expansion, and saying maybe there is a different way of possessing and directing and owning those lands. Here are the different agencies that create that pattern that you just saw in the percentages. The smallest one is probably orange, the fish and wildlife service. The National Park service, the second smallest. Olive green. The olive green ones. Yellow is the best one, the bureau of land management, the nations largest landlord. Behind,st service is quite sizable in lime green. The Forest Service people are very charming and they refer to their Forest Service uniforms as their pickle suits. It is actually the green we have for park service here. They are interesting. They have a phrase they dont when they want to know when did you really feel like you were Forest Service person, when you think thats who i am, my identity. They will phrase that as when did you get your green underwear . I used to say federal agencies and culture . You would have to be people who live in a community for ages, but now i dont think so. In gray the department of because military lands are important. Sometimes they are interesting environmental preserves, because if you bomb them and then stop forhase, that is a animals to take home. It has been quite a pattern of ornithologists wanting to go study at the nevada test site, which is not where everyone would want to go. That would be one stupid bird that would say i dont care to be there because they were as bad history in this area. So they are sometimes, not always, functional wildlife refugees. So we are going from the outcome adjustprogressive era to the creation, all of these ,gencies are not precisely directly in the progressive era. A little more complicated chronology. So, im going to have several heritages that we are going to go through in the second draft, progressive era. The first of them is the most unmistakable. The way things are now and not the way they always have been or will be . In the progressive era, when the federal government is claiming all this land, has there been a time in the 100 years since then that the federal government has claimed land and said maybe we should sell that to private . A littled rewrite that bit, the federal government in the progressive era was not claiming land. It was taking land in the Public Domain. What happens this is a little bit tedious, but formation of the United States requires the first states to seed to cede their lands. It is not the federal government taking land, it is the federal government reclassifying land that is already in their possession. In terms of your question of the last hundred years, yes, there have been lots of land swaps. I dont know if you would put that in that category exactly, but if you are trying to consolidate a special part and there is private Land Holdings that got caught up in the designation of public land, National Park land, there will be flaws sometimes. You swap some federal land for that. One of the most interesting stories is ive heard wonderful talks months ago about how jerrod farmer has this article that comes out soon about how for defense work, military research and testing and personnel locations, how can the new deal, land got redesignated as military land. Weve talked about National Monuments and the antiquities act. This is a casual thing. Franklin roosevelt wants to military land for land, and the attorney general says you cant do that. You dont have executive authority. The attorney general then says you can do that. It is an amazing story. All of these, oh, National Monuments, saying that we are having now. This changing status as to whether there is much to occasion and saying here is a big block of land. The federal government certainly it is never anywhere near the scale of the situation. But great question. Here are two famous bureaucrats. Lewis and clark. They were on a federally funded and mandated expedition. They were bureaucrats. I have a Campaign Going that is going poorly to take the word bureaucrat and just make it a word of neutrality, someone who works for the state or federal or county government. Number of other kinds of agencies and organizations. Im trying to do that because why would you take up such a cause . Because what we do as a society, and i have done it myself, when you find a person who works for an agency or bureau and you admire them, you go to the department of Motor Vehicles and you are treated well and move quickly, and the forms are simple, and the person is helping you, you think that is a great person. But if you were going to have to classify them professionally, you would say that is a great public servant. As soon as you find a bureaucrat that you like, you take them out of that category and you reclassify them as a public servant, which leaves only dredges. Petty tyrants and bureaucrats. [indistinct] you could just say bureau worker. Ive never thought of the word rat. So, get your cards. Well, i have my own answer. If you agree with me that i should make use of the idea, that i could do something with that and apply history of public communications, then put up a green. If you think i will just take a conversation and make it worse if i Start Talking about rats, put up rate or yellow. To townhink i should go with this insight that has never come to me before, that the word rat is conspicuous, i would like to see green. And oh, dont make this more complicated, red for that. The reds are not holding back. Might have as narrow edge on it. Interior,ary of the james watts, has a habit when talk about prairie dogs, they are not dogs. They are rodents. So the secretary always called temporary rats. Rats d them very prairie rats. Im trying to do Something Like this. Heres two bureaucrats, youve heard of them. Just to see if i can repopulate that category. We had a woman who works in the National Park service she was never anything but enraged by my efforts to use the word bureaucrat. , so ilt that she wasnt must acknowledge that not everybody is coming on board. It is an important and underrecognized aspect of the legacy. Expansions my wonderful comrade at the university of washington went through the census for the western states and territories from 1870 to 1890, and looked at peoples professional occupational categorizations. He defined them probably. He had clerks, somebody working for a governmental agency, someone working in a mercantile operation. Clerks, not just in government or business. , he made that brought in ways that would be disturbing to some. Anyone who works with livestock. Sheep raisers are there, too, which did not go well with the cowboys. He did that year after year for those 10 year periods, and look at that. There is only one census, just collapsed cattle boom , just when it was at its peak in 1880, when there were likely inowboys than clerks 1870, there are more clerks than cowboys, and in 1890, look at who is coming out ahead. Inclerks are important notern history, and im sure i would want to get a prize for this, but with someone named a Great Western film where the main character is a clerk . Usually, what they are doing is cowering. You see them, but they are not i could have played the clerk. Here i am. Happenedis what has with all of these agencies. Somewhere or another, i think it is fine to tie them to the progressive era, though the timing is a little complicated for a few. There were reformations created in 1902 the dam building federal agency, which we will speak of more later. The Forest Service. Well, terrain, i guess well call it that. The forest had been the forest preserves were created in 1891. The president gets the power to create forest reserves. Originally, you could just do it as the president. Congress did not like that and fought back on it. The First Service came into being because they were all these designated areas that were forest reserves. They found the land distributing agency that didnt make sense. Different your and to be in to be inion yearned the position to get out of the General Land Office. He had strong feelings, as he might. There was evidence that interior had problems with corruption. Agents,ffices, indian the land office it was a going byer of money appointed officials, and dipping into that was tempting. So different people had reasons to get the forest reserves out , ande General Land Office over to the department of agriculture with the Forest Service. There is a little bit of substance, because gifford thought of trees as a crop, so they should be in agriculture. I think that is different get it out of interior, to another agency where it is not beholden to the history of that troubled department. National park service . 1916 is the original enabling act, but there are parks that perceive that. That precede that. Before there was a National Park , 1916 was its official creation fish and wildlife chronology is too complicated. There are agencies that exist, merge. Becomes big in obvious ways, Theodore Roosevelt. He designated the national it comes into a more forceful era with the progressive era. The bureau of land management, good luck. It goes back to the General Land Office from the early 1800s, which passes that land, distributes it, and it becomes an ineffective steward of forest reserves. People have often noticed, favorite Jackson Turner tells us that not necessarily successful claims, made after this. 1930s, the late arriving progressive era action, the grazing act, created the service that regulates and allocates access to grazing lands. Is a nation the lobbying force, the dustbowl. For it doesnt look like progressive era timing, but it goes back. Students love this, when you start giving them the history of federal agencies echo my lord. Well, there is a video game waiting to happen. People with children will just go, man, this is fun. I get to be a bureaucrat today. A bureau rat . So, they have lives of adventure. I call them hairraising tales from the department of the interior, because they are hairraising tales. People who were involved in interior, but you walk into an area where the locals have used the forest as they wanted to, and you as a federal agent will say, actually, there is not that many that is hairraising. It is not for people who want an easy life. Sometimes they work in with bureaucracies that look much more like bureaucracies. Places, you just work away at your desk. That is a bureaucrat. Control and the competing romances of local control and centralized authority and expertise, this is the second big idea of thinking about this big picture that i would like to put forward. This is the notion of thinking of public lands as a grand experiment in testing the compatibility of conservation and democracy. Is thatean by that every day in the west is generating new findings in a planetary experiment. It is of great consequence. Is thating premise here much of what we consider the amongces of conservation, europeans and european americans, started with very very concentrated authority. Colonial governors going to far off outposts, taking naturalist scientists with them. They get to know a few species and say the local people are endangering the wellbeing of these creatures. Could we keep the local people from cutting wood in this area, so these creatures will not be reduced . So, there is that, colonial governors. Quite early on, they were limiting the activities of the local Indigenous People on the half of conservation goals. In europe, theres kings and aristocracy, with their Hunting Areas and parks. That is a centralized authority of limitations on what the peasants and locals can do on that land. Conservation comes with some bad political baggage. Colonial governors were very popular. Aren wanted to grow up wonderful story about that. He went to a party when he was in graduate school, and his date it was a costume party. He had to come is what he really wanted to be in life. His date wanted to live in france and the french, so she came as the eiffel tower. She was unhappy, because coming as the eiffel tower, she had to lie down in the back seat to get to the party. Terrible time, because there were quite a few international students, and my advisor grew up in alabama. He loves hot weather. But he goes to this party and he is dressed he wants to look like somebody from the tropics, because he loves that weather. He comes to the party and he looks like a white imperialist. He says, i would rather talk to the eiffel tower than the white imperialist. That is my story about that. He didnt want to be a white imperialist, but some people had gone to costume parties and seen that. So, topdown authority and the origins of the practices of european and euroamerican conservation who did gifford learn his techniques from . His management keys . I thought our technician was going to want to answer that. He said he didnt want to answer it, but there is a hand. Someone knows who giffords teacher was. Someone with earphones. Maybe he is getting it sent to him in the earphones. I shouldnt call attention to the metastructure we had here. [laughter] i think we are going to wait a little bit before we tell you who his mentor was. That is the experiment, when the progressive era hit. It takes that experiment and gives us those public lands, the incredibly Important Role of the laboratory, where this experiment proceeds. You get to see if you can get democracy and the compatibility withdemocratization conservation processes. You alsod socialized that centralized authority, as you had with colonial governors and aristocrats and the king. An important thing to say before we live the before we leave one of thes most important aspects of this thing i have brought to your attention about the control exercised by people of power in , itpe over their estate draws attention to the importance of gamekeepers who regulate the poachers and so on. You will notice, everybody is getting that encourages you to read Lady Chatterleys lover. The main character is a gamekeeper. You may read quite a stimulating book, but you are reading it because it gives you such insights into the history of conservation. I will work on that for some of those other books that we always passed around as children to enjoy. , of whichcartoon there were many, that makes this point. Gifford make a lot of people mad and resentful, and this happened to him. He would be portrayed in a way that echoes what i am saying, that he has that cultural baggage to carry. You dont even know yet who his mentor was, but you will hear more about that. There is this guy who really tries to make the bureaucrat an interesting figure. Governorhe territorial its not so easy to make governor, but i guess he tried. I dont know if Popular Culture helps or hurts with that. With the first complicated heritage of these bureaucrats of consequence, heading west in many directions. The complicated heritage that we by science. Eering progressives are all about science. Feel strong, warm emotions for science, if we could have that paradox. I will use the word faith. Ofe as the bedrock of positive belief, that it is hard orjust call a thought understanding, but something that does come into faith. That we will send scientists out in field explorations, and they will graph and chart and note. We are about to Thomas Jeffersons instructions to Meriwether Lewis had a broader social program. There is a hope update, a belief that they will be very , and provide centralized authority with guidance. Nature turns out to be extremely complicated. Pinchot felt fire could be eliminated from the forest. Because for mege it was the moment of thinking this is out of my conceptual range. I have always given it a good shot to understand for street for street forestry. I hang out with these people and try to follow that. When i read the wonderful book about the management of the thatts in eastern oregon, is where i read three paragraphs about how significant soil organisms are for the forest. Goodu replant, there is a chance it will not work because the organisms. These tiny things are working away. Cut,the Forest Service they left the soil exposed. When they replanted, it did not work. Unattractiverather creatures. They are not beetles. They are not anything that was on my mind before. When i read that paragraph in nancy langstons book, it was getting out of my cognitive zone. Everything is complicated. The entomologists may not be speaking to the hydrologists. They may not have met each other. The dilemma of taking on complicated outdoors situations methods, we try to help with the dueling experts problem. That was not supposed to happen if you were deferring to science. The experts were not supposed to fight each other. They were supposed to think, confer, give you solid, trustworthy findings. Our world today is different because scientists can determine things, but what to do with those things is what Public Officials have to decide. Scientist always says we can find out how many out there e lk there are iraqi National Park, but they cannot say how many there should be. That is where the scientists have to hand off the baton. There are five heritages. Halfway through the last part of the lecture. This is a tough one because this has massed ramifications. They are hard to track because the progressive era coincides with the native american Race Relations. Segregation, installed after reconstruction ended. Signs around the southwest. The lowest population of indian people. Supreme Court Decisions that have exerted plenary power over indian tribes. Chinese exclusion. Alien land laws that keep from owningigrants land. You can go through a list of things that are not progressive, as we would use the word, that would be hard to count as progress. That is the era of Theodore Roosevelt. Not an impressive person, really. He clearly thought white women should be having more babies or they would be outproduced. There are border issues of public lands. There are places to put our attention. Managed andwas operated by the army before the National Park service was created. Black soldiers were there. Nearly everyone who goes to yellowstone in the early years, privileged whites, often have black servants there. That is an interesting place to be. There is diversity in the story, but it is certainly not in the decisionmaking way. , this is theice project to make sure the history of slavery gets horribly properly attended to much more broadly. Imagine doing the same kind of project. That legacy is there. The society of american s has the tiniest percentage of ethnic minorities. As of a few years ago, it was around 5 . It might be better now. They have a very effective program. When they have a convention, they work with the Public Schools to make sure there are kids of diverse backgrounds. The era of Race Relations in these matters is serious and difficult to pin down. Numberated heritage four, susceptibility to nostalgia. Was awash inve era nostalgia. All of these folks, the brussels, the remington, very visible in public culture manifestations. We look for that because it is a or. Gment distort you it does confuse judgment. Past youoals of a lost dream of recreating. Good luck with that. It may not have been that great anyway. If you recreated it, it might be bad. Be careful what you wish for. Are suffering from a severe form of nostalgia and probably be owned treatment beyond treatment. Heritage, buted it is sort of heritage number five. Point of reckoning with the word paradox coming into its own. Is as a salute this salute to a wonderful historian at cornell university. A spectacular person and wonderful thinker about popular memory who served for years on the National Park Service Board in very creative and influential ways. He died a few years ago. He wrote a book called people of paradox. I miss him. A wonderful person. I would sometimes find myself picking up his book to be in the company of his book. I was reading the preface again. I thought what a spectacular quotation michael has given us here. I mean, really. What i would not give. A put the definitions in case anyone needs to be the definitions. It is not something you want on your mind. Paradox, two things that seem impossible, actually true and possible that seem to say opposite things. The paradox of progressiv ism, we will go through some last items. They had unusual level of confidence in themselves. Be the thinnest veneerst th over something that looks like that. Not that Theodore Roosevelt had doubt. But what were they . The paradox. Pinchot and roosevelt. Were they utilitarians, nature lovers, or hybrids . You can see how complicated pichot was. Loved really a person who. Eing in natural environments his children and grandchildren had that quality. I had the privilege of speaking and there were two people in the front row where nametags wearing nametags. Pinchot. Wonderful people. There is no reason to be scared of them, but i was scared of them. They are mixed. I guess there was some value in the clear do you thought you pihchott if you put over here and mr. Preservationist there and had them separate. I guess people dream of that kind of clarity, but you have to work hard to maintain it because they will fight you on it about what they are doing. If they aree supposed to be purely utilitarians. On the other side, the occupational paradox. He has to be a progressive in this lecture because he is making my point about paradox. What a great thing to contemplate. s occupational paradox. What a way to escape the paradox that can often immobilize us. What did he do for a living . He did in the uprising. Before that, what did he do for a living . Some manual labor when he first got to california. We talk about how smart military officers are to marry wives who write well. Marrying spouses can be an interesting and valuable thing to do if you are going to make ways. Living in other stayathome dad . No. Went interesting experience it would have been what an interesting express it would have been for children. And married into a family in california that had orchards. Was quite an admired horticulturalist. Paradox. Trees,u say john muir these are the ones you think of. And these other ones he spent his work life with. You was remarkable. He would climb he was remarkable. He would climb trees in windstorms. Tamed,re the most domesticated of trees and he worked well with them. That seemed to me a very helpful thing that john muir did for us to remind us of that and then scale down purity on untouched nature. Reading his works will get us stirred up on that. The founder of the National Park service who was the first director of the National Parks service, a wellconnected person, a very effective. Dvocate for the parks what would have happened with the National Park service if Stephen Mather were not in the picture . He was a forcible presence in the creation of the park service. How did he get to be such a wellconnected person . Borax miner. Miner of the material borax used in cleaning. He made his fortune in borax mining. That position tim to go into himcacy that positioned to go into advocacy for the parks. Pinchot was an opponent of alcohol. Oresters, people who work for the Forest Service and in private land for street forestry are not proponents of alcohol. Servicen the forest admire pinchot. When you go to a big leadership thing, you will often find an impersonator. You are laughing now. He is sitting on a stump. Sitting at the table next to the chief officer. Five feet away is pinchot an d feet away is the current officer. Wasou tell people pinchot an advocate for abstinence of alcohol, that is hard in the. Forestry service is often characterized as an extremely masculine institution. He had wellconnected parents. They played a big part in creating that yale forestry school. It is quite a male theme. And then he left the Forest Service in 1910, and he got married. Cornelia, his wife, his first foriage, was a very active ce for womens rights. Forester pinchot is under the influence of cornelia. Frightens conventional holders of male power. Lifeeps moving through which is lucky for us. Of the the great part paradox here. Pay attention to the progresses and invited to give up imagined forms of purity. I have been talking so much about land and progressives. Reformation and reclamation. Probably a good percentage of the book and seen the power of reclamation. It was originally created in 1902 as part of the Geological Survey and called the geological service. Reclamation is the building of dams and the diversion of from streams to reclaim land that would not be useful agricultureure and use it for that. Why is dam building in the package with conservation . Isnt conservation about not disrupting rivers with big pieces of concrete . Theire . Reclamation doing thinking about sustainability in general. But if they are thinking we need to provide for the people who are here and we do not want them , while we are not going to clearcut a forest, we want to still use some of that. Patricia it has that utility and has the literal meaning that you are conserving the water. If you dont build the dam, the water goes down the river and into the sea. That is waste. Conservation is the opposite of waste. Build that dam, obstruct the river, hold the water, dont let the water waste itself. Water is very irresponsible. If you dont keep control of it, it will go wasting the resource. That they understand the disruption of Ecological Systems like for fish . Patricia there is little evidence that was on anybodys mind. It is not far away, the recognition. If you know what is coming, wait a few years. Yeah. Have could they not have that recognition when the person downstream suddenly does not have any water . Patricia there are forms of claiming water in the west that if you were downstream, you might have no right at all. An upstream dam would be based on claims to water that may overrule your claim. You could be quite dewatered and the existing legal structure would make that right. A really but whether you would care about the aquatic life, you might be prepared theres a very interesting quotation mark twain never said but he is quoted. Whiskey is for Drinking Water is for fighting over. You might be in a tense relationship with your downstream neighbor. In most of the areas where the reclamation dams were going in, they were not areas where settlement was significant. That was one of the blessings for getting that going. In your reading packet is an the firstcument from head of reclamation that is not him. A really interesting person who was a crusader for irrigation and federal sponsorship. He is explicitly a guy saying the frontier is closed and we have to do something. We have to give a new sense of opportunity. He is in here because his book is really good. If you want to see what the anxiety about the end of the frontier means to a program, he is your guy. There are some early dams in the reclamation service. The Rio Grande River dam. The Theodore Roosevelt dam. In arizona, one of the major ones. Help but find that beautiful. We benefit from dams in boulder, but we are not considered as beautiful. Leave outere we will coming to a conclusion. In your packet is a very cool thing. Report for1th annual the reclamation service. Ewell frederick nu doing something i did not know they had done. It is called fallacies in taint. Fallacies interchange. Fallacieslled interchange entertained. To see a bureaucrat say we did not expect Water Quality to thingsnot all of those are in his mind, but they forecast some are very explicit. To me, that is one of the most amazing bureaucratic documents ever. What he said in many different places, the human element. Engineers did not foresee the human element. They thought they would be benefiting settlers, giving them a new opportunity. The settlers were supposed to pay for the water and structure that brought them the water. The repayment plan never came together. The settlers were crappy. They had difficult the settlers were crabby. They had difficult land. Architect engineer is saying, the human being, they did not train us for that. That is a great document. My own personal, this is just complexity, of the with the dilemmas of race relation, this is where our land. Progressives and citizens responded to their troubled times with innovation and spirit. That is my last thing. Man. Ur packet, is this where a lot tacoma of local people were enthusiastic about not rainier rainierainier mount part getting created. Them, dontaid to you think you might want to Pay Attention to the ecosystem and aquatic life . Says tacoma why would youys, put these borders on parks . Those borders do not reflect what is on the land. Could you think about making those borders in some relationship to the landform . Horse albright and Stephen Mather say to this man, that is an interesting idea. They asked him to write it up and send it to them so they could think more about it. He did not get his name, and they never heard from him. Always in our company is tacoma man. Enoughor may not know abou about him. Tacoma man was around in 1915. Now, everyone struggles with the borders. All of those issues of lines and borderlands, there was tacoma man, whoever he was, turning the. Ights on it there is tacoma man turning the lights on, on this notion of there is something we are not thinking about that we should take about think about. I would like to salute tacoma man as a progressive who we cannot name but we know he is part of our legacy from the progressive era. Thank you. [applause] you are watching American History tv. Follow us on twitter or information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. Next, historian Jennifer Keene talks about troops in world war i and how military service impacted their lives and changed American Society and culture. This hourlong talk was part of a symposium hosted by the National World war i museum immemorial in kansas city, National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri. Duringe is the ability break times and mealtimes to spend time with our presenter