Under the umbrella of different federal departments. Okay. So heres our exploration of progressive era responses to the what it was understood to be the end of the frontier and if we have time well get to a massive adventure in applied history where i got to go to Harney County where the National Wildlife refuge was taken over by the bundy brothers so i get ill have a presentation on that if time permits because that was probably really the most intense experience on the ground of being in the place. Community still very divided by that takeover. I hope i can get to that, as well. So, first a guessing game. This is somebody who said a lot of things that i think people have forgotten. Including me. Including me. Ive forgotten some of the things. So heres the question i guess for the sake of wider audience. Ill read it. The Public Domain has been a force of profound importance in the nationalization and development of the government. And the person who said that is probably not someone you would have expected to have said that because, in fact, it is somebody who said a lot of things and then he didnt he or she didnt end up getting credit for that. So who said that . Isnt it fun to be told that youre going to be tricked . Come on, suckers. Come on. Essentially. It is in your reading. You did. I said that . No. No. But in fact, it is so much something i could have said because the public lands are theyre the core of the way the federal government grows. Thats one of those bed rom reasons for saying the west and the westward expansion is key to the growth of the power of the federal government so i felt that. [ inaudible ] no. Though he would turner . Yes, yes, yes. I was going to say ive sat at his desk. Matt got it. Frederick Jackson Turner said that. I am he is totally benefited from you folks being here because i reread the significance of the frontier of American History and i dont know what was going on. Theres like, what . Seven of the quoted passages of the frontier strips the pioneer of his formal dress and puts him in a canoe. Theres few things like that everybody reads and all remember and this time i thought, i might as well read every word. Theres a lot of stuff about indians in there. Who knew . Apparently anyone who reads it would know that. But frequent references to the not necessarily to the significance of indians but to their presence and to the importance of settlers responses to them and to the national government. Responding to the presence of indians. The trails, the importance of indian trails. I actually thought, oops. What i think might have triggered my the 1986 patricia limericks response is that it is so much that essay is so much about the eastern and mid western United States. It is really focused on the not far west. And i think that might have been what set me off. In olden days. And interesting fact about fed rick Jackson Turner was that he taught at utah state a couple summer schools. He taught utah state in where is it . Yes, indeed. It is in logan, yes. And it is that is a beautiful drive. I must say. Thats a lovely drive that is not here or there but it is because turner loved beautiful open spaces. In his papers at the time of his death was an early draft of an essay called the significance of mountains and deserts in American History. So, something had come there making him think i need to pay more attention to the place where i have taught summer school. Well so this is all to say that i hope im giving some kind of demonstration of how peculiar it is to think you really know something and then when you actually read the whole thing with care you think, oops. 30 years or more how many years . 35 years of misrepresenting frederick Jackson Turner. I owed the family an apology i think. Oops. But its good. It was actually a very reviving and wondrous thing. That brings us to the worlds columbian exposition 1893. There it is. The great white city. Very, very famous episode in political history, i suppose. Frederick Jackson Turner was there and he gave his frontier speech there that has more in it until i realized recently. When a cliff hanger that thing is to just the frontier is over. Era of really World History has closed. The frontier took strangers and transformed them into americans. It is over. Dont stop there, mr. Turner. Dont stop there, please. Please keep going. He didnt. Over his lifetime he would make various efforts to make equivalence. He thought education might be the form of continuing opportunity and continuing recruitment of people from outside into the American World so he did try to find but they were nowhere near as compelling a set of statements, nowhere near that as he was with this. And also, at the columbian exposition was buffalo bill cody. They were not on a Panel Discussion. Which is a shame. It is really a shame because that would have been great but they didnt need a Panel Discussion because Richard White wrote this great essay in the frontier in American Culture where he compares turner and cody and really brings them into a conversation. And n lots of ways so in essence he sees both of them as well, this is my phrase, not his, but workers, coworkers in the overproduction of frontier nostalgia, that turner and cody heaven knows had their differences, and they were both major practitioners in nostalgia for a west that had gone away. So cody shows were pretty much in the same spirit as the frontiers clothes, what will we do next . Well see the wild west. Well go see remember, never supposed to say show. That shows thats how you tell the world youre sophisticated and western culture studies. Because if you say codys wild west show that makes it clear youre an outsider. Because cody never said the word show and he didnt want people to call it a show. It was the wild west. It was the wild west. So, did you know that you could betray your outsider status so easily . Would you all like to say it together . Wild west. That was really very effective. You will find that gets you some place in very limited circles. Dont expect out in the world and everybody will be, oh man, how sophisticated this person is. Thats great. And richard does point out that the west that cody was seeing as lost and departed was a much wilder and unsettled kind of west and turner was feeling sad about the word tame seems to keep coming up here but the tamer, the taming of the west, that it started as wilderness. It turned into the side of log cabins. The log cabins turned into big, comfortable farmhouses. Thats the western process that is turner. And Richard White makes a very fine point about how turner didnt need to have visual illustrations in his text because his if he said log cabin, everybody had it in their minds. At that time. He had some of his key terms, stagecoach, wagon train or log cabin. Those the log cabin just showed up in peoples mind and it would be silly to say and heres a log cabin. So as to why that text can be so evocative is because the readers own mind in the 1890s and for many years after would supply that. So here are two nostalgics. And they are representing theyre both successful in their own way and if richards essay is really good about saying lets not have one be the sophisticated, serious expresser of the meaning of the west. Theyre both equally effective and theyre both equally creative and thoughtful in how they do that. Has anybody read this essay of yeah . I read it a while ago. Its i did i read it really a while ago. More of a while ago than given difference in our ages. I read it many whiles ago. And i reread it. And its really good. It really gives you something to do if the poor students are, oh, turner, who is that old guy . Theres a woman sitting at his desk. Oh. So, if you want to pep that up, pairing him with cody really does give you that angle. So, he does draw some very interesting comparisons between them and sees them as again kind of coworkers in this really broad Cultural Movement of what oh, this is important. I mean its what eliot would say several times. Deal with it. I dont know why someone couldnt research this. Im looking at you, britain. That something could look into that. Im on it. I mean, its pretty interesting that they were at in chicago at the Columbian Exchange in a proximity and thats interesting but this is really interesting. And really important for our understanding of regional conversations and so on. So, okay. Good. So, anyway, so back. Well, now back to the point. This is a really important point. So this is the term that david rebel uses and it is a helpful term and a helpful book of frontier anxiety. Frontier anxiety not anxiety felt by frontiers people but people not frontiers people who were around in the late 19th century and early 20th century, americans who were anxious about that hanging question. What will happen to the United States without a frontier . The anxiety of this is explained who we are. Thats going to be a rough transition and may not be anything on the other end of the transition but the unity and trouble and puzzlement and confounded people. So, this is a really good book. David wrobel. The end of american xengsal, frontier anxiety from the old west to the new deal and among aspects of it is its clear of that sense and cody and turner and many of their contemporaries that something really important had shifted in American History and something really important had better respond to that, that many of the Franklin Roosevelt new deal sorts in the federal leadership had that same sense. And sometimes very explicitly. Henry wallace apparently with the end of the frontier government had better get bigger because government has to step in and supply the services that the frontier once provided. If you dont have free land, you better have some other source of widely available understanding and opportunities. So, so the upsurge of this it seems to have been hard on people to deal with so i think its okay to call it an aapplication of frontier anxiety and produced mixed results and some of those rumts were very troubling. I dont know how extremely troubling and really undesirable. So to use one of many examples, ive put the phrase of the time that will influence many of the thing that is come up the next few minutes for us, timber famine. I mean, really, thats a hard if youre not a beaver, its hard to be hungry for timber so its a weird word of associating timber with famine but the notion that the United States was the wonderfully forested part of a continent, the astounding forest resources, in some parts of north america had been ripped through, wisconsin, michigan, especially the upper midwest, just chopped. Cut over. Stumps. So that anxiety is to i mean, fear, terror, whatever, that that might continue. That with the far west with the pacific northwest, with the rockies, that the same calamity might happen there and the extraordinary riches of the continent would be a bunch of stumps. That timber famine, the notion that the United States that had been astoundingly timber rich might end up timber impoverished, that scared people. That scared not just people interested in the profession of foresty, but people who anybody who saw a picture of the cut over lands in upper michigan and upper wisconsin had a tremor to see that. So, those kinds of concerns, what are we going to do with this affliction of frontier anxiety . Just feel miserable . Something we can do . Is there Something Like an action to take . So, one weirdness of reading turning so closely is i realized that the fellow and i share quite an enthusiasm for phases and eras. And i had not realized until i was reading again about what kin folk, birds of a feather, we like doing that. Turner and i both like saying heres the Cumberland Gap thing. Heres the indian, the rancher, the grazer, lining things up in phases and sequence, and so, we have that in common. I like this quite a bit. I like it because it is a well, an experience that we have all had of having to do other drafts. Is there anyone in the room who writes so wonderfulfully the first draft is beyond excellent and you would stop there and everyone says dont touch a thing . Would you care to identify yourself or reach such ruse of who hostility it is good not to raise it. Even with limericks. Excellent limericks. The lincoln limericks were three or four drafts. Ill say what you already know. Its a great habit to have in classes. I have told my students that. Before i met Jeff Limerick and got that surname, i sat in classes when i was bored writing limericks and it is brilliant as a technique because, well, well just cast you, bill. Pretend youre writing a limerick. You are thinking really hard. But youre sort of going, hmm, turner, burner. So youre thinking very hard and you might adds well look at me not and then think i have it now and then write it down. You look the most thoughtful note taker in the room. It worked really well for me as a strategy of a student. I have told classes of students that and they have adopted the technique which is fine which is better than drowsiness and i will say one of the great things, sorry, i know this is not quite on the main track here but i did write very beautiful limericks of warn harding when there was a lecture on the administration and one has the most beautiful internal rhyme this appears in any limerick. So you know that he was his slogan is a return to normalcy . And that he was retreating from all the International Engagements of the first world war. So, wait. Okay. There was an old man named warren who hated all things foreign. He liked to normally, drunken informal and spent his time gambling and whoring. Good one. Thank you. Thank you. And it is i mean, i think everyone was skeptical when i said it had the most beautiful internal rhyme. You were probably skeptical. Was it the most beautiful internal rhyming . The english teacher among us. So theres a strategy ive given you for the rest of your lives to use there. You can certainly use it today if it helps you get ready for the party tonight. So, i like this notion of the three drafts of the American West, of the americanized west. So, the first draft of the americanized west, we dont know when it starts and when it ends but thats what weve been talking about. Westward expansion. Thats the first draft. We havent talked about the timber logging business but its in there with farming and mining and grazing and so on. So the second draft is what we are seeing with this session coming into being. The progressive era. The sort of, hmm, that first draft didnt really come out right. Cut over lands. Hmm. Mines that were once full of activity, abandoned. Hmm. Maybe theres something that we should be thinking about. Bison. Almost extinct. Hmm. So, various forms of looking at the outcomes of the first draft. Floods. In utah. Salt lake city, with deforested hillsides and mountainsides and floods. It is hard to think where you would look if you dont want the moment of thinking of this didnt seem to come out exactly as i would have liked so the progressive era is the second draft. And the third draft is still in progress. Whatever its features of the third draft, it certainly has to take into account the rise of environmentalism, continued population growth to the point where we have to say if its hard to say where western expansion started, it might be harder to say where it ended because word war 2 and military expansion and continuing into the cold war. That i dont know where you would say, well, period. Westward expansion. Completed, done. Still very significant issues of some of the Fastest Growing regions of the country in the west and the last 30 years. This is i guess tied to an environmentalism and a more conscious and inescapable reckoning. There was some of that in the second draft and it goes much deeper and much wider and this continued puzzle over legitimacy and authority to define progress. Whos really a deserving westerner who qualifies as a person who should be making decisions . As people in new jersey. What are the public lands to them . Do they have any legitimacy . Who gets to say what progress means . In these transformed times. So, that is one way of saying how crucial the progressive era was for the west because its the second draft. Its a big deal. And i believe this is true. If we had more time, maybe we could do it as a party game tonight. I believe this is true. Wherever you look in the American West today, wherever you direct your gaze youll see something that is a legacy of the progressive era. And i thought we might do it as a kind of party game and you have to suggest something i have to go, hmm. Ski slopes. Hmm. Well, and i can certainly do that one. So, this is the remarkable outcome and with this in the picture, the progressive era just gets astounding in the scale of its importance. Much of the west is the home of millions of people and it is now much of that is now owned as private property. And, even more of the west is still in public ownership. Which is a Pretty Amazing thing that quotation from turner. Turner didnt see it coming and didnt know thats what he was saying when he said the Public Domain is the key to nationalization and the growth of government. But i want do go back to this thing i was saying early on that what is happening here is that progress from first draft to second draft, from westward expansion to era is progress is changing the course and the adjustment, the earthquake of that, the rattling of assumptions and expectations, that rattling continues. So that that shift from the western expansion definition of progress transferring the Public Domain into private ownership going from that definition of progress to the progressive era one, maintaining that land in permanent ownership, that is a giant disoriented change. It is i think unmistakably almost a full reversal in the meaning of progress. It is not a full reversal because it has enthusiasm for finding resources in the west. I dont know how far i would go with how much short of 180 reversal it is but its big. We kabt be surprised that the shift even though it was under way 130 years ago, 140 years ago, we cannot be surprised that this shift still leaves some people and communities in the west unsettled and rattled. Heres a technique that has actually been incredibly helpful to me. I just learned about it in february of i guess it was a year ago february. This is a person named randy olson, one gifted commentator. He is a biologist. He was a tenured professor of biology at university of New Hampshire. He became more and more concerned about the troubles that scientists have in communicating to wider audiences. He left, a tenured job at the university of New Hampshire and he went to film school at the university of Southern California which scares me. Oh, scary. So, are we all breathing normally again . It is scary to think of that. He wrote, this is his second book and he knows my husband houston and likes my husband houston but its just too funny because houston the person likes this book and to houston the husband sitting Reading Houston the book is funny. Houston, we have a narrative. What he offers in it and i really have found this to be almost too useful, the abt method of communication. And but therefore. Randy is a scientist and hes looked at different public figures and how they use or do not use the abt method and hes really seen a very its i guess you could say a correlation and may be more than that. I think its probably causation. Of the effectiveness of presenters, writers as well as speaker who is use the abt method. Heres mine. My adoption of this. And it does lead me to uncharacteristic brevity. Sometimes if you use the abt method, i think this is a fairly effective one, then the audience is sort of, well okay, stop now. We got your point. You cant do that because were here for a while longer so anyways here we have the abt of this session. The progressive era was a time of change and so then you use your and, reformers responded with vi gar and grit to social, political, and Economic Conditions that troubled them. But some features of our heritage from the progressives have proven to be trouble in their own right. Therefore, we are invited to reckon with the complex heritage of the progressives and productive ways. We can map the escape route of a sense of inevitability because we are quick with the necessary skills to accept that invitation of working with progressives. So i will say this. A person representing one of the Major Political parties in 2016 is a person who says, and, and, and, and, and. And i wont use any gendered pronouns or anything like that but its quite striking when you start to think about what happens in political conversation. It doesnt have anything to do with the quality of thought but the effectiveness of how it gets through. Academics have the and, and, and. Or just leaping to the therefore. Very handy thing. This is the core of the inheritance of the progressives that we may fight over the public lands but at least we have public lands to fight over and its a wonderful gift to have such an occasion for dispute. Heres two or three big frame works to install in our conversational frame work. These are two historically derived romances and i think its right to use the word romance because theyre appealing. Theyre seductive. They pull people in this a process that has as much sentiment and emotion as it has reason and evidence. And they have to learn to live together. Theyre not doing great. At that. The romance of centralized authority and expertise is a legacy of the progressive era. That well do better, well avoid less of these unhappy outcomes we saw in the first draft of western history, avoid much less of those if we hand decisions and authority over to a centralized federal government place. It will be an agency, thats a good chance part of the department of the interior. And there will be experts and they will think and they will then 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 gifford pinch 10 the best example of somebody who really seems to offer that dream. The first chief forester, Theodore Roosevelts great friend, the really ways first founding leader of the Forest Service, charismatic, really smart, really thoughtful. So, Gifford Pincho. Represents that. But many, many, many acts of legislation, many executive branch decisions all rest on that notion that someone in the department of the interior or Forest Service and agriculture, someone in those two agencies will have a very smart thought and that will make things work better. So the romance of centralized authority is very strong and the romance of local control is just about as strong and that is the legacy of westward expansion, they know the place, they develop the place, they know it intimately. Theyre the legitimate ones. They got there first. They really know what should happen there. So those romances are both very powerful and neithers going to go away and they need to be friends. Not going so good right now but that will happen with friendships, right . I mean, just ask. How many people in the room have had a good friendship that turned into a bad situation but then came back as a good friendship . How many have had that . Yeah. Yes. Thats right. You have green and red and yellow cards and one among us remembered that. Im sure if i asked this other question, how many had a good friendship that went poorly and remained poorly, wed probably have plenty of that. Im not asking that. I could take it on blind faith. You were pretty quick on the draw. But you also were there with the friendships that okay. Yeah. So im not going to say, well, this cant ever happen. I think it has happened. I think that in ways that few people would ever know about. Its happening on the ground level all around the west. In the ill just go with harny county. Nationally famous for armed people taking over public lands. Right . For ten, maybe 20 years before that, a group called the High Desert Partnership met. There were federal officials from the wildlife refuge, bur of Land Management, ranchers, townspeople, environmentalists of portland, oregon, and they met and fought and then reached a consensus plan for the management of the wildlife refuge. Did anybody see that in the newspapers or press coverage or blogs . So i think theres the problem of heres a positive story. Well, no ones going to be interested in that. Lets get some more armed men. So, so theres a lot of that would be a place, High Desert Partnership is where that cohabiting came back together. I have no idea of why wouldnt figure anybodys National Reporting or maybe it did and i just missed it. But okay. So, these are several people who have interesting view of both westward expansion. I dont know if theyd use the phrase progressive era. What that might mean to them. But they certainly have a colorful and interesting and imaginative view of western history that there was a time, for instance, Harney County where ranchers were very prosperous and collaborative and good natured and they had complete control of the land and they used the land wisely. In Harney County theres astounding tension and anguish in the early period in the 19th century and early 20th century. Theres a guy pete french, a cattleman out of my way kind of guy and to have a notion that you will go there and you will speak for the importance of returning returning the land to the ranchers hmm. Well, im not making them come and go. Im not doing that. Thats not what im doing. Its imaginative form of history and makes buffalo bill cody look like a fact and accuracy kind of guy in many ways. Heres the progressive legacy. I dont know that they ever got it particularly about i think ranchers in the area tried to say, we have a complicated history. When i got to speak in Harney County, that was the first question to them. I asked the audience there, does it give you an advantage in dealing with contention to have had such a contentious history 100 years ago. They said they thought it did. The bundys were from elsewhere and they didnt know that. Heres the progressive legacy in really quite great map that shows you the percentage of the map in individual states thats still under in federal ownership, public ownership. Little bit like the water precipitation maps we saw before. Is there anybody to like me to help you interpret this map as to which region pretty striking and if you wonder, doesnt it seem like nevada is often really, really crabby . Well, okay. That could be part of it. It does not include indian reservations. But it does include because i mean reservations are sovereign lands. But thats not not of course what happened there . As we certainly describe the historical process that led to that, that much of the lands were high elevation, they had limited precipitation. They were rugged. And uneven terrain. They were remote. It was difficult to get to them. They were sometimes the pharase is leftover lands. A good share of the land is land that didnt go into private ownership because homesteaders werent that goofy. They were full of hope but they wouldnt have said, ive got an idea. How about the middle of the nevada desert . Heres my hope. There are ranchers there. There are people that take that up and plenty of other areas and homesteading might have occurred and then people gave up. Too hard. So theres reasons for that. And its theres, of course, the progressive era reckoning with the first draft of western expansion. And then saying, maybe theres a different way of possessing and directing and owning those lands. Heres the different agencies that create that pattern that you just saw, the percentages. So this smallest one is probably orange. Fish and wildlife service. The National Wildlife services. I guess the National Park service is second smallest, the olive green ones and then the yoel low is the vast one, the bureau of Land Management. Sometimes called the nations largest landlord. The largest unit of Land Management. Forest service behind and quite sizable. The lime green, light green which i have come the Forest Service people are very charming. Many of them. They refer to the Forest Service uniforms as the pickle suits. Its very funny. Its a darker green. It is the green for park service here but theyre very theyre theyre pretty interesting. They have a phrase not all of them use but some of them used it. I heard them use it. When they want to know when did you feel like a Forest Service person and think i thats who i am, they phrase that as when did you get your green underwear . So, pretty funny. So i used to say, oh, federal agencies and cultures, i dont think so. I think cultures are something you have to be people who live in a community for ages but now i think, okay, cultures. Okay. So and then we also have in here the gray, the department of defense. Because military lands are very important. Military lands are sometimes very interesting environmental preserves because if you bomb them, and then stop bombing them, for a phase, that is a wonderful opportunity for wild fowl, birds, animals to take hold so theres actually been quite a pattern of orion thol gists wants to study at the Nevada Test Site which is where not everyone want to go but thats one stupid bird to say, oh, i dont think id care to be there because theres bad history in this area. So ill say they are sometimes not always but kind of sometimes functional wildlife refuges. Okay. So were going from this as the outcome of the progressive era. Just the creation all of these agencies are not necessarily precisely. The Forest Service certainly is and the Forest Service would land directly in the progressive era. Bureau of Land Management, well get to that in a second. Little bit more complicated chronology. I have heritage dos go through of the second draft progressive era second draft. So the first of the heritages is the most unmistakable. Yeah . When we studied history, the way things are now are not how they always were or will be. The federal government is claiming the land, has there been a time in the 100 years since the progressive ra where the government said we should sell it to private or has that thats a good question. First of all, i would just rewrite that a second draft, little bit that the federal government and the progressive era was not claiming land. It was taking land in the Public Domain because what happens just a little bit tedious but formation of the United States as a nation requires that the first states to cede their lands to the west and that becomes Public Domain and then louisiana purchase, that becomes Public Domain so it is not the federal government taking land. It is the federal government reclassifying land already in their possession. So, so but in terms of your question over the last 100 years, yes, there have been lots of land swaps. I dont know if youd take that exactly in that category but trying to consolidate a National Park and theres private Land Holdings that got caught up in the designation of public land as National Parkland, theres swaps sometimes where you swap some federal land for that. One of the most interesting stories of wonderful i heard a wonderful, wonderful talk a couple months ago about it. Jared farmer has an article which i hope comes out soon on how for defense work, military research and testing and personnel locations how in the new deal land got redesignated as military land and that we talked about National Monuments and the antiquities act, Franklin Roosevelt wants to designate land. The secretary general says you cant do that. People talked to the attorney general and the attorney general says you can do that. So, its amazing story. So its interesting that all the, whoo, no, National Monuments, the designation of military lands is really interesting so theres changing status as of whether theres an occasion of saying heres a big block of land. Well acquire that. The federal government certainly acquires land to round autoborders and never near the scale of this situation. But great question. So bureaucrats. Here are two very famous bureaucrats. Lewis and clark. And they were on a federally funded and mandated expedition. They were bureaucrats. I have a Campaign Going thats going quite poorly to take the word bureaucrat and just make it a word of neutrality that says someone who works for a state or federal or county government. Or, any number of other kinds of organizations. Im trying to do that because i can imagine at the states people are going, really . Why would you take out such a cause . Im doing it because what we have done as a society and i have done it myself because when you find a person who works for an agency or brew row and admire them, you go to the department of Motor Vehicles and treated well and move quickly and the forms are simple and theyre you think, and the person whos helping you with that, you think, well, probably you think thats a great person but if you were going to have to classify them professionally, you would say thats a great Public Servant. As soon as you find a brth bureaucrat you like, you take them out of the category as bureaucrat and reclassify them as Public Servant and only leaves petty tyrants. Yes . I think its the word rat. I never thaubt about that. But wrreau worker i never noticed the rat in there. Okay. So get your cards here. Is that well, i have my own answer. You can answer however you want. If you agree with me i should make use of laurens word there and applied history and public communication, then you would put up a green. If you think i will just take a tough conversation and make it worse if i Start Talking about rats thats a possibility. Sorry, lauren. Or yellow. I dont know. Its possible it might work. If you think i should go to town with this insight thats never come to me before that the word rat is conspicuous there, i would like to see the green for that. And for the oh please, dont take a complicated world and make it more complicated bringing in rats who are not popular so then red for that. Okay. The reds are not holding back. The reds are im sorry, lauren. Im sorry. But the greens might. I think have a narrow edge on it. Its secretary of the interior james watt has a habit when people are getting sentimental of prairie dogs, really, theyre not dogs and they are rodents and so secretary watt and others who share this point of view always call them prairie rats which is sort of ugh. I dont think id care very much about a prairie rat. So its a very powerful term. Prairie dogs . No. That wont work either. How interesting. Im trying to do Something Like this going theres two bureaucrats. You have heard of them just to see if i can repopulate that category. Last year we had a woman who worked for the National Park service in sometimes and she was never anything but enraged by my effort to use the word bureaucrat. She felt she wasnt a bureaucrat. Worked for the park service. So i must acknowledge that not everybody is coming on board with this though i would say this represents an important and underrecognized aspect of westward expansions legacy. Taylor, my wonderful comrade at the university of washington, he went through the census for the western states and territories 1870, 1880, 1890. He looked at peoples professional cat gorizations and defined categories broadly, clerks, somebody working for a governmental agency, somebody working in a mercantile operation, so clerks, not just in government or in business but the package together, cowboys, he also made very broad in ways that would be disturbing to some, anybody who worked with livestock, so sheep raisers are in here, too. Did not go over well with the cowboys to have that in there. So he did that year after year after year for those tenyear periods, and look at that. Theres only one census, just before the just a few years before the cattle boom collapsed, so just when the cattle boom was in the peak, 1880, where there are slightly more cowboys than clerks. And in 1870, there are more clerks than cowboys. And in 1890, look whos coming out ahead here. Thats really striking thing. There, so clerks are important in western history and im not sure i would want to give a prize for this but would someone name a Great Western film where the main character is the clerk . Whats the man who shot liberty bell . Theres a thought. Theres a thought. Right, yeah. Usually what theyre doing is cowering. This is usually the stance of the clerk. You have seen them. [ inaudible ] so this is i could have played a clerk. Here i am. So, this is what with all of these agencies and i did leave out one of them. Some way or another i think its fine to tie them all to the progressive era though the timing is complicated for a few of them. Bureau of rela mags in 1902 and then the dam building federal agency which well speak of a little bit more later. The Forest Service, the Gifford Pincho well, terrain. Well just call it that. That the forests had been the forest reserves were created as of 1891. The president get it is power to create forest reserves. Again, thats interesting. Thats a sort of National Monument power originally to do it as the president. Congress didnt like that and fights back on it. But the Forest Service came in to being because there were all these designated areas that were forest reserves. They fell under the management of the Land Management office. The land dispersing agency. Gifford pincho yearned to be in a position to get that out of the General Land Office. I will say he had some very strong feelings. As he might they were evidence based that interior had problems with corruption. I think we have already spoken of that. That with indian offices, indian agents with the land office, that was like, a great river of money going by. Get it into another agency where its not pulled into the history of that kind of troubled department. National park service . 1916 is the original enabling act and parks proceed that. Congress created areas. Yellowstone. Being the most conspicuous, National Parks before a National Park service and 1916 is the creation. Fish and wild live is too complicated. Theres different agencies that exist. Operate, merge and the power to designate of refuges in play. Big and obvious ways. With Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore roosevelt, in fact, des neigh itted the malhorn National Wildlife refuge. Thats complicated timing and comes into a more forceful era with the progressive era and then the bureau of Land Management. Good luck getting the start date for that thing. Its the General Land Office. From the early 1880s which passes that land, distributed land and then becomes kind of an e ineffective steward of the forest reserves and people have often noticed that frederick Jackson Turner tells us that homesteading ended. The General Land Office continued, in some ways more claims, not successful ones after the end of the frontier than the before. 1930s, progressive era action, taylor grazing act creates the Grazing Service which regulates and allocates excess to the grazing lands. The dust bowl is one good explanation for the lobbying force that led to that. General land office, merge in 1946 and doesnt look like a progressive era timing and goes back to that. People, students love this. When you start this. When you start giving them the history of federal agencies, the students are just, oh, my lord. Theyre just [ laughter ] well, theres a video game waiting to happen that would really make that so fun. Children would go, oh, man, this is fun. I get to be a bureaucrat today. This is so fun. A bureaurat. So they do have lives of adventure. The talk i give on the department of interior. I do call it hairraising tales from the department of the interior. Because they are hairraising tales, especially people involved in, well, this is not just interior, its also agriculture and Forest Service. But you walk into an area where the locals have used the forest as they wanted to and you are the federal agent whos going to say, actually, hmmm, there isnt that many ygrazing here. That is hairraising. Its not for the people who wanted an easy life. And sometimes they work in bureaucracies. They are work away at your desk. But thats a bureaucrat. So they come in all forms. And some of them are out in the field. Now for after local 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 the public lands as a grand experiment in testing the compatibility of conservation and democracy. What i mean by that is that every day in the west is generating new findings in a planetary experiment of great consequence. My starting premise here is that much of what we consider the practices of conservation among europeans and euro americans started with very concentrated authority, started with colonial governors, going to faroff outposts. Taking a few naturalists and scientists with them. The naturalists get to know a few of the species. They say the local people are endangering the wellbeing of these creatures. Could we keep the local people from cutting wood in this area . So that these creatures will not be reduced . And so theres that. Theres colonial governors. Quite early on limiting the activities of the local Indigenous People on behalf of conservation goals, and of course in europe, theres kings and aristocracy with their game preserves with their hunting areas. With their parks. And that is a very centralized authority of limitations on what the peasants and locals can do on that land. So conservation comes with some pretty bad political baggage. Colonial governors . Theyre very popular. Children want to grow up, id like to be, my adviser, wonderful story about that. He went to a party when he was in graduate school. And his date, it was a costume party. Hundred to co you had to come as what you really wanted to be in life. So his date wanted to live in france and came as the eiffel tower. She had to lie down in the back seat to get to the party. She was not enjoying herself. Then they had a terrible time. There were quite a few International Students and my adviser grew up in alabama and he loves hot weather. Lamar loves hot weather. He goes to this party and is dressed in a pith helmet. He wants to live in the tropics he lootropics. He looks like a white imperialist. So theyd rather talk to the eiffel tower. He didnt want to be a white imperialist. But some people have gone to costume parties as them, i guess. Topdown authority and the origins of the practices of european and euro american conservation. Who did Gifford Pinchot learn his techniques from . His key, key teacher . I thought our technician was going to want to answer that. He didnt want to answer that, but i thought oh, theres a hand, somebody knows who Gifford Pinchots teacher was, somebody with earphones. Maybe hes getting it fed to him in the earphones. I should not call attention to the meta structure that we have here. Sorry. I think were going to wait a little bit before we tell you who Gifford Pinchots mentor is. I think well keep that hanging for a little bit. So that is the experiment when the progressive era hits. It takes that experiment and gives those public lands the incredibly Important Role of the laboratory where this experiment proceeds where you get to see if you can get democracy in to compatibility. A Republican Democratic government when you sometimes need centralized authority as you had it with the colonial governors and with the arre aristocrats and kings. The important thing we learn before we leave the aristocats. I will never be able to say either. But it draws attention to the importance of game keepers who regulate the poachers and so on. And that, youll notice, everyones getting it right now. That encourages you to read lady chatterlys lover. Because the main character there is a game keeper. So you may read quite a stimulating book, but youre reading it because it gives you such insights into the history of conservation. So ill work on that for some of those other books that we passed around as children to enjoy. Heres a cartoon, of which there were many that make this point. This is, gifford pen pinchot made a lot of people mad. He has that cultural baggage to carry, and you dont even know yet who his mentor was, but youll hear about that soon. Theres this guy who really tries to make the bureaucrat an interesting feature. This is mel brooks, the territorial governor, not so easy to make interesting, but i guess he tried. But i dont know if Popular Culture heched culture helped or hurt us with that. Second one, the complicate the heritage, number two, steering by science. So progressives are all about science. They really feel strong, warm emotion for science. And i will use the word faith. That science is the bedrock of a positive belief that is hard just to call a thought or an understanding, but something that really does come into faith, that well send scientists out on field explorations and they will graph and chart and note. Were about to really Thomas Jeffersons instructions to Merry Weather lewis. Theres a hope, a belief that theyll be very smart and theyll be the ones who provide centralized tho centralized authority with guidance. And then nature in a way that is maddening, turns out to be extremely complicated. So all of the faith. Gifford pinchot thought that fire could simply be eliminated interest the forest. Study the forest, hearne thelea ways, never have to have fire again. This was out of my conceptional range. Ive always given it a good shot to understand forestry. I have lot the s friends, the sy of american foresters, and i hang out with these people and try to follow that. And when i read Nancy Langstons wonderful book about the management of the forests in eastern oregon, the Blue Mountains there, thats where i rated li read like three paragraphs of how significant organisms are about the forest. If you clear cut a forest and replant the forest, theres a good chance it wont work because the sunlight will have scorched the soil organisms, and these little tiny things are working away. And when the Forest Service cut in the area Nancy Langston was writing about they left the soil exposed. And when they replanted, it didnt work. They put the same kind of trees in, and theyre, what happened here . And it was these ittybitty rather unattractive creatures. Theyre not mosquitos, but theyre not anything that were on high mind. They just were not there. And then when i read that paragraph in Nancy Langstons book i thought this is getting out of my cognitive zone here. So everything is so complicated. And naturalists in the 19 century. The entomologists may not be speaking to the hydrologists. They may not have ever met each other. So the dilemmas of taking on outdoor complications is hard. This is our saving america west publication where we try to deal with the dueling experts problem. The experts werent supposed to fight each other. They were supposed to think, confer, give you very solid, trustworthy findings. In our world today, its pretty different from that. Scientists can determine quite a few things, but what to do with those findings, thats where Public Officials have to decide, as our friend who sometimes joins us at the Rocky Mountain national thing but has gone on vacation, jeff mitten always says we can say, scientists can find out how many elk there are, they can find out what theyre eating. They can do a lot to learn about the elk, but they cannot say how many elk should there be. That is a values choice, and thats where the scientists have to han od off the baton. Its important to say, because people again to panic at these moments. There are five heritages. Were halfway. Were not halfway through the lecture. Were halfway through the last part of the lecture. Okay. Good. So this is a tough one, because i dont really know how we could, this has vast ramifications. And theyre hard to trace, hard to trap, because the progressive e era coincides with the nadir Race Relations. Jim crow, installed after reconstruction ended. Mexicanamericans, many nomexican signs around the southwest. The lowest population of indian people. Complete federal authority over indian tribes. Its, chinese exclusion. Alien land laws that keep japaneseamerican, japanese people, japanese immigrants, not japanese americans born in the unit, but japanese immigrant citizens not of the u. S. From owning land. Anyway, you can go through quite a list of things that are not progressive. As we would use the word, but would be hard to count as progress. So thats the era of Theodore Roosevelt is not an impressive person, really. He did have booker t. Washington come to the white house. He did make some efforts, but he clearly was a person who thought white women should be having more babies, because they would otherwise be outproduce the by the darker people. So its a tough aspect of this era. And theres some Border Crossing in these issues of be lipublic. I dont know if its heartening or striking, but there are places to put our attention that the africanamerican soldiers in the army were sometimes sent, yellow to yellowstone was operated by the army. Black soldiers were there. Nearly everyone who goes to yellowstone in early years, privileged white, they often have black servants there. Thats interesting. They often referred to the cook. Thats an interesting place to be. So there is diversity in the story but certainly not in the decisionmaking directionsetting way. The park service of progressive era classic organization has tried, i think i may have mentioned this already, this is their project to make sure that the history of slavery gets properly attended to, not just in civil war focus parks but much more broadly. We imagine doing the same project with tribes. But that legacy is there. And the society of american foresters has the tiniest percentage of ethnic minorities. I dont know, as of a few years ago, it was somewhere in the 4 or 5 . They have a very Effective Program of going, when they have a convention, the foresters work with the be lipublic schools. But the legacy of the row gressi progressi progressive eras Race Relations is difficult to pin down. Comply ka ical complicated heritage number four. The susceptibility for nostalgia. Weve so covered this. This will take two seconds, really. Such an era awash in nostalgia. Roosevelt and frederick Jackson Turner and the russells and remingtons and so on, very visible public culture manifestations of it, but its also there as david rabell tells us, its there in a lot of legislators and decision makers. So we look for that. Because it is, it is a judgment d distorter. I dont want to say we really want to have the slash across it. But it does confuse judgment. It does set goals of a lost past that you dream of recreating, which well, good luck with that, but it may not have been that great a past anyway. So if you recreated it you might be very sad. Be careful what you wish for. And these guys are sufferers from a really severe form of nostalgia and are probably beyond treatment. This is the final point. Its not called the heritage, but it is sort of heritage number five. A point of reckoning with the word of paradox coming into its own. And this is a salute to Michael Kammen and a spectacular person and a wonderful thinker about popular memory and also a person who served for year the years on the National Park service board. He wrote a book called people of paradox. I miss him. I sometimes would find myself picking up his book. Just to be in the company of his book. And it finally came in to me. I was reading the preface again, and i thought what a spectacular quotation Michael Kammen has given us here. I mean, really. I think they were reef beiferria quotation, my lord, what i wouldnt give. And i put it up there to be reminded if you need to know what scum is. Paradox. Two things that seem impossible, actually true and possible. That, for the paradox of progressivism. Here on these paradoxical progressives who certainly had an unusual level of confidence in themselves. But confidence, i think i got this in my years in the ivy league in harvard. Confidence can be the thinnest veneer over something that really looks more like doubt, puzzlement, so not that Theodore Roosevelt did doubt or puzzlement. So i will back off from that. But what were they . Gifford pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. Were they utilitarians . Nature lovers . Hybrids beyond characterization . And you can see how complicated pinchot was. He was not just a how many board feet do we have here. He loved being in natural environments, whose children grew up with that. His grandchildren have that quality. Had the great privilege of speaking at the Pinchot Institute in washington. A bit scary, a big, solemn group. I come in, there are two people in the front row wearing nametags, nothing scary about that, but it said pinchot. But they are mixed. And to cast, there was some value, i guess in the clarity you thought you would get if you put john muir over here and Gifford Pinchot over there and you had mr. Utilitarian and mr. Preservationist and you had them separate. I guess people dream of that kind of clarity. But you have to work really hard to maintain it. Because theyll fight you on it. Those two guys will fight you about what are they doing . Loving nature, as they do. If theyre supposed to be purely utilitarians utilitarians. On the other side, john muirs occupational paradox. He has to be in this lecture. Theres two keywords, progressive and paradox. And hes so doing his part for me with the paradox part. What a great thing to contemplate. John muirs occupational paradox. And what a way to escape from the preoccupation with purity that can often immobilize us. What did john muir do for a living . He did eventually end up writing and getting some income from that. But before that and during that, what did he do for a living . He did do some manual labor kinds of things when he first got to california. Weve had a theme where we talk about how smart military officers are to marry wives who write well . Well, marrying spouses can be a very interesting and valuable thing to do if youre going to make your living in ways that may or may not be steady and productive. So hes a stayathome dad . No. What an interesting experience for the children that would have been. He married into a family in california that had orchards. So he was, in fact, quite an admired horticulturalist. So that is a paradox, because these are the trees, if you say john muir tree, thats the trees you think of. And these are the kinds of trees he spent his work life with. Had which is great. I mean, thats not, ooh thats kind of disillusioning. Hed climb onto these trees and hang on in windstorms. He wouldnt climb onto these trees in windstorms. But those are the most tamed, bullied, domesticated of trees, and he worked well with them. So that seems to me a very helpful thing that john muir did for us to remind ourselves of that. That should be in our picture as well. And then the founder of the National Park service, Steven Mather, who was the first director of the National Park service, a wellconnected person, a very effective advocate for the parks. Somebody to really conjure with, well, i guess to say to yourself, what would have happened with the National Park service if Steven Mather werent in the picture. He was really effective. Its hard, im not going to say oh, it would never have happened, but he certainly was a very forceful presence in the creation of the park service. How did he get to be such a wellconnected, wellsetup person . Borax miner. He was a miner of the material called borax, used in cleaning. That is not him, you understand. Thats a so, he made his fortune in borax mining, and that positioned him to go into a very effective form of advocacy for the park. This is not a very consequential paradox, but i love it, because it does irritate foresters very much that pinchot was an opponent of alcohol. Foresters. People who work for the Forest Service, and people who work in private land ts forestry, they e not opponents of alcohol. So to remind them that their admired founder, and many think about p about pinchot. You go to a Forest Service meeting you might find a pinchot impersonator. Theyre very common. And theres geoifford pinchot. Hes brought a stump. Hes sitting on a stump. And im sitting at the table next to the current chief forester, dale bosworth, and im thinking this is seek dell eic is the only word you can think of. So if you tell the audience of Forest Service people that give or the pinchot opposed, was an advocate for abstinence in alcohol, its hard on them. Its heritage. And also the Forest Service is understandably often characterized as an extremely masculineshaped institution. He, he had wellconnected parents. They played a big part in founding the Yale Forestry School. He recruited the young man from the Yale Forestry School and other sources. But its quite a male scene. And then he left the Forest Service in 1910, and he got married. After that he, cornelia, his wife, his first marriage, was a very active force for womens rights. So chief forester pinchot is and the pinchot who becomes the governor and under the influence of cornelia is very forceful, he frightens conventional holders of male power, because he is so, so he is just, he wont stay in a stereotype either. He keeps moving through life, which is a great blessing to us. So that is the great part of the paradox here is that, Pay Attention to the progressives, and you are invited to surrender simple oppositions and give up imagined forms of purity. Ive been talking so much about land and the progressives. The riddle of reclamation. The bureau of reclamation, a very significant power in reshaping the west. Probably a good percentage of you have read mark risners cadillac desert. Was originally created in 1902, part of the u. S. Geological survey, part of the reclamation service. Any way, reclamation is the building of dams and die version of water from streams in order to reclaim water that would not be useful, to reclaim it for agriculture with that. Its perfectly legitimate to be scratching ones head, thinking, why is dam billiuilding to considered to be in the package with conservation . Isnt conservation about not disrupting rivers with big pieces of concrete . Why is, whats reclamation doing that are . Does anyone the gentleman in the back, would i care . No. Oh, yeah. Im thinking about the general sustainability in general. If theyre thinking we need to provide for the people who are here, and we dont want them wreaking havoc and doing whatever they want, similar to maybe well, were not going to clear cut a forest. We want to still use some of that. It certainly has that component of utility that progressive era conservation has and it has a very literal meaning that youre conserving the water. If you dont build the dam, the water goes down the river and into the sea. Thats waste. That is waste. Conservation is the opposite of waste. So build that dam. Obstruct the river. Hold the water. Dont let the water just waste itself. Water is very irresponsible, if you dont keep control of it. It will just go wastingity resource there. At that point, did the science exist where they understand the disruptions to fish and theres very little evidence that was on anybodys mind. And it wasnt even John Wesley Powells mind either. Its not far away. As a recognition, if you, if you know whats coming. You think, oh, wait just a few years. But no, they didnt get that. In your, yeah. Going after what patty said, how could they not have that recognition when the person downstream, suddenly, i dont have any water. Ooh, this is unfortunate, given our timing here, because there are forms of claiming water in the west that if you are downstream you might well have a junior right or you might really have no right at all. And upstream dam would be based on claims to water that may overrule your claim, so you could be quite dewatered and the existing legal structure would make that seem right, whether you would figure it was right or not. Thats a really, but whether you would care about the, the aquatic life, you might be prepared. Theres a very stupid quotation that mark twain never said but hes always quoted, so when you hear it you must say he never said it. Whiskey is for dreinking and water is for fighting over. So you might be in a very tense relationship with your downstream neighbor. They with not areas where settlement was very significant, because it was hard to do that. So i think that was probably one of the blessings for getting that going. In your reading packet is an amazing document from Frederick Newell. Thats not hem. What a him. He was a crusader for irrigation and federal sponsorship of that and explicitly a guy saying the frontier is closed and we have to do something. We have to give a new sense of opportunity. Hes in here because his book is really good, if you want to see what that anxiety about the end of the frontier means to a person who is recommending a get r a federal program, hes your guy. There are some of the early dams. Elephant butte and the Theodore Roosevelt dam in 1911. The salt river in arizona. One of the major ones. I think this is one that sam said he cant help but find that beautiful, which means he will have to not live in boulder. Even though we benefit from dams in boulder, but were not considered beautiful. So well speak sternly to you about that. Heres Frederick Newell. And this is where we will be actually coming to a conclusion here. In your packet is a very cool thing. From the 11th annual report of the office of, the reclamation service, and it is Frederick Newell doing something that i never knew that a federal bureaucrat had done in this era or any others. Its called fallacies entertained. And it as list of things they believed when they started the reclamation service, which turned out to be oops moments. And to hear a bureaucrat say here is what we did not expect. We did not expect water to erode concrete, sediments, evaporation, not all those things are in his mind, but they really forecast theyre very explicit. That, to me, is within of the mo one of the omost amazing documents. Which is to say they thought they would be benefitting settlers, giving them a new opportunity, the settlers were supposed to pay for the water and also pay an added sum to pay for the structure that brought them the water. The repayment plan never really came together, settler the were crabby. They had difficult land. On top of that, theyre suppose the to pay some, if they heifev made a profit, theyre supposed to give a so Frederick Newell saying, ah, the human beings. They didnt train us for that. And its not a sermon, really, but my own personal, this is just me as maybe not even a fully responsible applied historian here, but with all of the complexity, with the dilemmas of Race Relations and so on, this is still where i land that progressive leaders and citizens responded to their troubled times with innovation and spirit. Many of our leaders and citizens today are responding to our troubled times with agitation, shouting, reciprocal Delivery Systems for blame and accusation. There is a lot we could learn from the progressives by simultaneously citing their history to us and reckoning thoughtfully. And in your packet is this tacoma man. They went to tacoma where in fact a lot of local people were very enthusiastic about mt. Rainier park getting create the. Theres a little thing in your packet. A man says to them, do you want to, the fell low saow says to t dont you think you might want to Pay Attention, this is like the e they c the ecosystem. And he says why these borders . Why would you put these borders on the straight line, those borders do not reflect what ate the whats there on the land. Could you think about making those borders in some relationship to whats on the land. So horace albright, they say this is interesting. They wanted to think more about it. They didnt get his name, and they never heard from him. So always in our company is tacoma man. And we may or may not know enough to think, dont let him get out of here. Tacoma man was around in 1915. And it took a while. Right now, everyone struggles, wheres the borders of the Yellowstone National forest and National Park and all that. There was tacoma man, whoever he was. Turning the lights on. Which i can asort of celebrate, im tired of looking at these lights. Is there something were not thinking about . So id like to salute tacoma man as a progressive who we cant name but we know hes part of our legacy from the progress ever era. Thank you. [ applau [ applause ] American History tv is in prime time this week, with lex tours in history. On thursday well take a look at the 1950s, including a cold war educational film. American history tv in primetime begins at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Also coming up thursday, book tv in prime time looks at authors who are on the summer rating li reading list. American lion. Blanch weisencook. And do i make myself clear. All week in prime time on cspan 2. Cspan cities tour is in spokane, washington. Saturday at 7 30 p. M. Eastern, book tv features the history and Economic Development of spokane with tony belmonte. Spokane was built from the money from the cord lane mine. They had the gold strike in 1883. And that led to a silver strike. And it was one of the largest producing silver areas in the United States. And a lot of the mansions and big buildings are all built from the cure delaines. And the life of one of the nations most significant leaders and father of the National Park system as james hunt talks about restless fires. John muir was probably one of the most significant environmental leaders, thinkers. Hes basically the protagonist for the National Park service. On sunday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern. One of the first environmentallythemed world fairs. It was the first environmental world fair to use the environment as a theme. It followed close on i believe 1972 was earth day, the very first earth day and a great consciousness around the world about environmentalism and it became the theme and arguably the obsession of expo 74. Well also visited spokane home of bing crosby. 7 30 p. M. And sunday at 2 00 p. M. On cspan 3. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. And is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider