Conservation Through Engineering (Perfect Library)
("Conservation Through Engineering" from Franklin Knight L...)
"Conservation Through Engineering" from Franklin Knight Lane. American Democratic politician from California who served as United States Secretary of the Interior from 1913 to 1920 (1864-1921).
Testimony Taken By Interstate Commerce Commission In The Matter Of Car Shortage And Other Insufficient Transportation Facilities And Reports Thereon By Commissioners Lane And Harlan (1907)
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Franklin Knight Lane was an American politician, correspondent and editor. He served as a commissioner of the Interstate Commerce Commission from 1905 to 1912. He also served as United States Secretary of the Interior from 1913 to 1920.
Background
Franklin Knight Lane, the eldest of the four children of Christopher S. and Caroline (Burns) Lane, was born near Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. His father at this time was a Presbyterian minister, but later, when recurrent attacks of bronchitis affected his voice, became a dentist. From his mother, a woman of direct Scotch descent, Lane derived many of his physical and mental traits. To escape the rigor of the Canadian climate, his father moved with the family to California in 1871, settling in Napa. From boyhood Lane was thoroughly American in his democratic outlook, in his emphasis upon equality of economic opportunity, and in his restless, ambitious spirit.
Education
He attended a grammar school at Napa, and later a private school called "Oak Mound. " In 1876, the family moved to Oakland, where the boy entered high school. He attended the University of California, 1884-1886, as a special student, putting himself through college by working during vacation and after hours. Philosophy and economics were the subjects which appealed to him most strongly, and he became one of the leading spirits in a political science club. The readable, effective style that characterizes Lane's public papers he himself attributed to his early newspaper training. He did newspaper work to help pay his way through college. After he studied law in San Francisco at the Hastings College of the Law (part of the University of California).
Career
Lane was admitted to the bar in 1888. He then became a special correspondent in New York for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1891, he bought an interest in the Tacoma Daily News, and became editor of that journal. Though the editorship of a newspaper gave him an opportunity to exert an influence on local affairs and to express his views on public questions, the venture was not financially successful. The paper became bankrupt and Lane sold it at auction in 1894, turning with undampened ardor to new fields of activity.
In the fall of that year, he entered into an association for a few months with Arthur McEwen, publisher of Arthur McEwen's Letter, a weekly political journal in San Francisco which attacked civic corruption, and more especially the Southern Pacific Railroad, then the colossus that dominated the affairs of the state. About the same time, he and his brother, George W. Lane, established a law partnership.
In 1898, Lane made his formal entry into politics, accepting membership on a committee to draft a charter for San Francisco and stumping the city in behalf of the charter. Accepting the Democratic nomination for city and county attorney, he was elected in 1898 and reëlected the next year and in 1901. None of his opinions as city attorney were reversed by the supreme court.
In 1902, he was nominated as the Democratic and Non-Partisan candidate for governor of California, but was defeated. Reluctantly yielding to his friends, he accepted the Democratic nomination for mayor of San Francisco in 1903, only to suffer defeat again. The vigor of his democracy, however, and his fighting spirit, had already made Lane a national figure.
In December 1905, President Roosevelt nominated him to the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Senate was slow to act, for the conservatives in that body regarded Lane as a radical, and the nomination was not confirmed until June 29, 1906. A champion of the "plain people, " he held that if men had made great fortunes out of privileges granted by the common people it was possible to correct the evil by a change in law. His "radicalism" went no further than this. Intellectual independence, breadth of vision, and a fine mastery of details characterized his seven years' service.
Lane was somewhat reluctant to leave the Commission, of which he had recently been made chairman, to accept Woodrow Wilson's offer (February 1913) of the secretaryship of the interior. Dependent almost entirely on his salary, he dreaded the added social and financial demands of a place in the cabinet. Nevertheless, he obeyed the summons of the draft. Though the post of secretary of the interior is one of the most exacting in the cabinet, Lane could hardly have asked for one better adapted to his talents, or enabling him to draw more effectively upon the stores of his experience in the West.
To the employees who worked under him in Washington, as to the men and women in the field, he was the inspirational leader. He aimed to kindle in them the glow of his own enthusiasm for public service. To promote fellowship, and to foster the spirit of teamwork in the Department, he organized the "Home Club. " His address to his staff on Flag Day, 1914, later published as a small pamphlet, Makers of the Flag (1916), has been described as a classic in its field, while his annual reports disclose his philosophic grasp of the problems of his Department and his high conception of his duties as a cabinet officer. He found time to continue his correspondence with an extraordinarily wide circle of friends. In The Letters of Franklin K. Lane (1922), a selection published after his death, the human qualities of the man are abundantly revealed.
In 1916, he served as chairman of the American-Mexican joint commission; in 1918, he was made chairman of the railroad wage commission; and the following year he was chairman of the industrial conference. When the United States declared war against Germany in 1917, Lane threw himself, with his characteristic enthusiasm, into the work of rallying public support behind the war effort of the administration. To this end, he made numerous public speeches, many of which were published in 1918 in a book entitled The American Spirit. As the war drew to a close, he proposed that part of the public domain be set aside for returning soldiers who wished to go back to the land, but Congress did not accept the suggestion. Lane resigned from the cabinet on Mar. 1, 1920, to become vice-president of the Pan-American Petroleum Company, at a salary said to have been $50, 000 a year.
His health was declining, and his private means were so small that he felt it incumbent upon him to accept private employment, and to build up an estate to safeguard the financial future of his wife and two children. He told close friends that on leaving Washington he would not have money enough to buy railroad tickets for himself and his family back to California, and to move there the little furniture he owned (Sullivan, post, p. 610). His hopes, however, were not to be realized, for he died on May 18, 1921, at Rochester, Minn. , following an operation.
Achievements
Lane was recognized as one of the ablest members of the Commission. The decisions written by Lane as interstate commerce commissioner "were among the most important, and probably the most important, that determined the constitutional powers of the Government in the regulation of common carriers" (Hemphill, in North American Review, August 1917, p. 252). Some of his decisions involved nice questions of constitutional law, but they were all sustained by the Supreme Court. He undertook several pieces of constructive work while a member of the Commission. Notable among these was the installation of a uniform system of demurrage laws.
During his tenure as secretary of the interior, he consistently maintained that the resources of the West should be used to develop the W. He advocated the development of the Alaska Territory and nominated an Alaskan as its governor. He recommended the construction of a railway line from Seward to Fairbanks. The objective of his Indian policy was the release of every Indian from the guardianship of the government as soon as he gave evidence of his ability to care for his own affairs. He was an indefatigable firsthand investigator, and his inspection trips covered reclamation projects, national parks, and Indian reservations.
