|  |
Primary source: Proceedings of the Fourth Conservation Congress, 1912.
Caption: Mrs. Marion Crocker of the General Federation of Women's Clubs wholeheartedly endorsed the conservation movement, and the scientific basis on which it stood, in this 1912 speech to the Fourth Annual Conservation Congress.
[ . . . ]
If we do not follow the most scientific approved methods, the most modern discoveries of how to conserve and propagate and renew wherever possible those resources which Nature in her providence has given to man for his use but not abuse, the time will come when the world will not be able to support life, and then we shall have no need of conservation of health, strength or vital force, because we must have the things to support life or else everything else is useless. . . .
There is great work to be done with the children, in making the school the garden . . . to teach the children to know what the soil is made of and how it should be treated, to make them love the growing flower and to make them respect the property of others. There we are laying the foundation of things for the next generation . . . .
|
Proceedings of the Fourth Conservation Congress (Indianapolis: National Conservation Congress, 1912), 258–62; reprint, Major Problems in American Environmental History, ed. Carolyn Merchant (Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, 1993), 353–55.
|
| |
