(The catching of fish, said the Sage of Chokoloskee, is bu...)
The catching of fish, said the Sage of Chokoloskee, is but an incident in fishing. He told the frozen truth. To be out in the open where fish are; to watch them at their great business of living; to see them in the water or out of the water; to fish for them, and even to hook them and have them get away-all this is wonderfully worth while-wonderfully better worthwhile than merely to catch and keep the stiffening fading body of one of the most beautiful forms of life.
(Vigorous, colorful, bold, and highly personal, Breaking N...)
Vigorous, colorful, bold, and highly personal, Breaking New Ground is the autobiography of Gifford Pinchot, founder and first chief of the Forest Service. He tells a fascinating tale of his efforts, under President Theodore Roosevelt, to wrest the forests from economic special interests and to bring them under management for multiple- and long-range use.
Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician. Pinchot was chiefly responsible for introducing scientific forestry to the United States. Pinchot tripled the nation’s forest reserves, protecting their long term health for both conservation and recreational use.
Background
Gifford Pinchot was born on August 11, 1865, in Simsbury, Connecticut, the United States, into a wealthy class of merchants, James and Mary Pinchot. Their principal residence was in New York, where James had made a fortune in interior design. Mary’s wealth derived from her father Amos’s substantial commercial success in the dry goods business.
James was a wealthy manufacturer and partner in the firm, Pinchot, Warren, and Company in New York City. The eldest of four children, Pinchot was named after Sanford Gifford, a noted American landscape painter. He was raised in Milford, Pennsylvania, his father's birthplace.
Education
Pinchot, as a young boy, took advantage of several opportunities to visit foreign countries, as well as gain a good education at some of the best eastern schools. Gifford Pinchot was educated at home until 1881 when he enrolled in Phillips Exeter Academy.
In 1885, the year after his graduation from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he entered Yale, where he studied botany, geology, and meteorology; he was graduated in 1889. Neither Yale nor any other university offered a degree or even a course in forestry, so Pinchot after graduation decided to study the subject in Nancy, France. After a year of school, he returned to the United States to prepare for his lifelong work and interest.
Upon his return home in 1892, Pinchot began the first systematic forestry work in the United States at Biltmore, the estate of George W. Vanderbilt, in North Carolina. He worked as a resident forester for Vanderbilt's Biltmore Forest Estate for three years. Several years later he became involved with the National Forest Commission created by the National Academy of Sciences, which worked out the plan of the United States forest reserves, and in 1897 he became a confidential forest agent to the Secretary of the Interior.
The management of the forest reserves was transferred from the Department of the Interior to Agriculture and the new Forest Service in 1905. The chief, or forester, of the new Forest Service, was Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot, with Roosevelt's willing approval, restructured and professionalized the management of the national forests, as well as greatly increased their area and number. He had a strong hand in guiding the fledgling organization toward the utilitarian philosophy of the "greatest good for the greatest number."
During his administration, the entire forest-service system and administrative machinery were built up, and Pinchot’s enthusiasm and promotional work did much for the conservation movement in general. He also served as a member of the Public Lands Commission, which he initiated in 1903, and the Inland Waterways Commission (1908). In 1908 he became chairman of the National Conservation Commission. He founded the Yale School of Forestry at New Haven, Connecticut, as well as the Yale Summer School of Forestry at Milford, Pennsylvania, and in 1903 became a professor of forestry at Yale.
He served as chief with great distinction, motivating and providing leadership in the management of natural resources and protection of the national forests. He continued as forester until 1910 when he was fired by President Taft in a controversy over coal claims in Alaska.
Pinchot became extremely interested in politics. In 1914 he ran for the United States Senate as a Progressive but was defeated by Boies Penrose. Pinchot left the Progressives to become a Republican. In March 1918 he became Pennsylvania state forestry commissioner under Governor William Sproul. In 1922 Pinchot was elected governor of Pennsylvania and served from 1923 to 1927. In the fall of 1923, he was a candidate for one of the statewide delegates to the 1924 presidential nominating convention. As governor, he felt confident and did not campaign. But due to his criticism of the national administration, Pinchot lost support in the urban areas and was defeated by Ralph B. Strassburger.
Pinchot ran unsuccessfully in the 1926 Republican primary for the United States Senate. Again, he showed strength in the rural areas but was soundly defeated in urban centers, such as Philadelphia. In 1930 Pinchot was elected governor of Pennsylvania for a second time and served in the period 1931-1935. He did not align himself with the regular party organization when he ran for the United States Senate for the third time in 1934. The Republican party saw Pinchot as an enemy of industry and not a Republican at heart. He was defeated in the primary by incumbent David Reed. Pinchot was virtually a man without a party; however, he continued to voice his choice of candidates.
During the last ten years of his life, Pinchot fought every action against forestry and conservation. He was a consultant to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. In 1935 he began an autobiography that covered the years until his dismissal from the United States Forest Service in 1910. After ten years of hard work, he finished one day before his eightieth birthday. Breaking New Ground, a defense of Pinchot's views on forestry and his side of the Ballinger controversy was published posthumously in 1947.
Gifford Pinchot is generally regarded as the "father" of American conservation because of his great and unrelenting concern for the protection of the American forests. Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington and Gifford Pinchot State Park in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania were named in his honor.
The state of Pennsylvania dedicated a two-thousand-acre state park in his name. Pinchot Sycamore, a large American sycamore in Simsbury, Connecticut, is named in his honor. Similarly, the Sierra Club dedicated a large redwood tree located in California's Muir Woods to Gifford Pinchot, a longtime advocate of conservation.
As a youth, Pinchot was immersed in the widespread evangelical Protestantism of his time. He read religious classics, attended Presbyterian services, taught Sunday School, and was a class deacon at Yale, responsible for conducting the religious activities of the class, such as weekday prayer meetings. Upon college graduation, however, Pinchot declined a religiously-oriented job with the Young Men’s Christian Association and instead cultivated his love of the outdoors, pursuing a career in the not-yet-established profession of forestry.
As an adult, Pinchot was involved with the Episcopal Church but more important than institutional affiliation was his exposure to the social reform currents of evangelical Protestantism.
Politics
Gifford Pinchot was a Republican who often espoused a progressive philosophy, sometimes even pursuing what was for the time a radical philosophy. Pinchot, notably, fought for increased regulation of timber companies and electric utilities.
Gifford Pinchot often found himself at odds with Richard Achilles Ballinger (1858-1922), who replaced James R. Garfield (1865-1950) as commissioner of the General Land Office and as secretary of the interior, 1909-1911, under President William Taft. Ballinger opposed many conservation policies and regarded some actions by Pinchot and Roosevelt as illegal. As long as Roosevelt was in office, Pinchot was able to accomplish many conservation goals.
Even though Pinchot had the support of the majority of Congress and Taft promised publicly to continue Roosevelt's conservation policies, and despite Pinchot's resistance to more extreme conservationists, Taft came down on the side of the industry and removed Pinchot from office. Reclaiming lands and forests for federal protection meant taking away profits from corporations interested in mining, logging, and water resources.
During his first term in office, the governor was known for his accessibility to the public and Pinchot concentrated on the regulation of electric power companies and reorganizing state government. During Pinchot's second term, Pennsylvanians were suffering from the Great Depression. State unemployment rose from 11.8 percent when he took office to 40.2 percent when he left office. It was within this economic backdrop that Pinchot worked to reach other goals, including a reduction in utility rates, pensions for the blind, and, following federal law, curbing abuses by corporations and financial Photo of Governor Pinchot Courtesy of the Department of Highwaysinstitutions.
He also saw improvements in 20,000 miles of rural roads; the creation of the Sanitary Water Board, the first anti-pollution agency in the country; and the purchase of the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation. Also updated were the juvenile court system and repeal of the requirement that voters present tax receipts as a quasi poll tax. Other Pinchot proposals to help citizens during the Depression were often met with resistance from a conservative "do nothing" legislature.
Views
Pinchot created forest ranger jobs for Native Americans, as well as a plan of compensation for tribes cheated by unscrupulous lumbering contracts. Pinchot supported women's issues, Prohibition, and other moral issues.
Quotations:
"Without natural resources life itself is impossible. From birth to death, natural resources, transformed for human use, feed, clothe, shelter, and transport us. Upon them, we depend for every material necessity, comfort, convenience, and protection in our lives. Without abundant resources prosperity is out of reach."
Membership
In 1900, Pinchot founded the American Society of Foresters to increase awareness of forestry and provide professional development opportunities for those interested in making a career of protecting woodlands.
American Society of Foresters
1900
Personality
Gifford loved the woods and everything about them. Camping, fishing, and hunting were his favorite pastimes.
Quotes from others about the person
"Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the preservation of the natural resources of our country." - Theodore Roosevelt
Interests
Camping, fishing, hunting
Politicians
Theodore Roosevelt
Connections
On August 15, 1914, Gifford Pinchot married Cornelia Bryce at Roslyn, Long Island. The couple had one son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, who was born in 1915.
Father:
James Pinchot
Mother:
Mary Pinchot
Spouse:
Cornelia Bryce
Cornelia was a very strong advocate for women's rights, full educational opportunities for women, seeking wage and union protections for women and children, and encouraging women to participate in the political process.
