PINCHOT, GIFFORD 1865-1946

Head of the forestry division, us. department of agriculture, 1898-1901

Head of the bureau of forestry, 1901-1905

Head of the u.s. forest service, 1905-1910

A Valued Adviser

The most influential of the small group of close friends who advised President Theodore Roosevelt on conservation issues, Gifford Pinchot made conservation one of the leading causes of the Progressive Era. In the course of his career he slowly expanded the nation's concept of conservation from protection of forest resources to the conservation of human society itself.

Background

Born on 11 August 1865 at his maternal grandfather's summer home in Simsbury, Connecticut, Gifford Pinchot, the son of a wealthy New York merchant and land speculator, spent much of his childhood abroad with his parents and three siblings. After graduation from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in 1884, he enrolled at Yale University. His maternal grandfather, who had achieved even greater wealth in Manhattan real estate and construction than Pinchot's father, promised to leave his entire fortune to young Gifford if he would enter the business after he graduated from Yale in 1889. Instead, he followed his father's advice and decided to become a forester. His father had seen the great working forests of Europe and anticipated the need for such scientific management of American woodlands in the near future. There were no schools of forestry in the United States, and Pinchot naively shared the American conception of a forester that came from the tales of Robin Hood, a man prancing about in the forest looking after the king's animals while wearing green stockings and leather cap. (In fact, students at the first forestry schools in the United States often formed Robin Hood Societies, with members appearing in pictures dressed like that legendary outlaw.) Pinchot learned differently in Europe, where he went after graduation in 1889. There he studied at the French Forest School in Nancy and went to Germany to meet Sir Dietrich Brandis, former head of forestry in British India and one of the leading foresters of the age. Pinchot returned to the United States in late 1890, and in February 1892 he took a job supervising forestry work at George W. Vanderbilt's sprawling Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Vanderbilt wanted to try scientific management in his private forest, the first attempt of its kind in the United States.

Forester-Politician

Achieving modest success in North.Carolina, Pinchot opened a consulting office in New York City, hoping to attract the attention of the wealthy landowners of the Adirondacks. He became deeply involved in the forest conservation movement emerging in the early 1890s, serving on several government-appointed investigative committees. In 1898 President William McKinley invited him to take the position of chief of forestry in the Division of Forestry, then part of the Department of Agriculture. He replaced Bernhard Fernow, a German-born forester whose work in the division had done much to promote conservation. Two years later Pinchot's father and mother joined him in establishing and endowing the Yale University School of Forestry, where Pinchot began delivering a series of annual lectures in 1903. Pinchot's close friendship with President Roosevelt, who took office in September 1901, proved crucial to the survival of the conservation movement. In the Forest Service he built a strong bureaucracy that became a model of efficiency and professionalism. He urged Roosevelt to appoint many conservation commissions and then, to insure they carried out his vision, had himself appointed to them as secretary, the most powerful position on such commissions. Pinchot zealously carried out conservation policies, exerting strict control over all mining, grazing, and lumbering in the two hundred million acres of National Forests and withdrawing from the public domain large tracts of western land to manage resources that had previously been exploited for free.

Making Enemies

Bernhard Fernow and Pinchot had quickly taken a disliking to one another while working together on various forestry committees, and Fernow was only the first of many enemies Pinchot made because of differences of opinion over the goals of conservation. Pinchot's friendship with the naturalist John Muir ended in 1905, when Muir, who believed in preservation of America's scenic resources in their pristine natural states, opposed the construction of a dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, while Pinchot favored the dam because it would provide water for the city of San Francisco. He made many other enemies who believed he erred too much on the side of conservation. The uncompromising power with which he controlled grazing, lumbering, and mining activities on government land led to cries of "Pinchotism" from western newspapers and citizens. Western congressmen resented the power held by this mere bureau chief and tried cutting off funding for some of his commissions and to the Forest Service itself, but Pinchot and Roosevelt's efforts to publicize their efforts had helped create a conservation-minded public, ensuring that the federal government would always have a hand in regulating the development of natural resources. In 1907 Congress finally succeeded in reining in Pinchot by attaching to an Agriculture Department appropriations bill a rider forbidding the Forest Service to withdraw land in six western states without the approval of Congress. Pinchot's downfall came in January 1910, when he was dismissed from the Forest service after publicly accusing Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger of illegal actions in permitting the development of Alaskan coal lands under federal protection. The "BallingerPinchot Affair" hurt President Taft politically and widened the split within the Republican Party between conservatives and Roosevelt Republicans, or the "insurgents," who supported Pinchot.

Outside Looking In

After his dismissal Pinchot continued to exert influence over forestry and conservation. Over the next decade he served another term as president of the Society of American Foresters (1910-1911), which he had founded in 1900 and headed until 1908. From 1910 until the mid 1920s he was president of the National Conservation Association, which he had formed in 1909 to further his conservation goals. He also wrote books on forestry and conservation, including The Fight for Conservation (1910) and three editions of The Training of a Forester, the first appearing in 1914. From 1920 to 1922 he was the commissioner of the Pennsylvania Department of Forestry, and later he served as secretary of the Department of Forests and Water in that state. As governor of Pennsylvania in 1923-1927 and 1931-1935, he carried out a progressive agenda in a time of political conservatism and became known as the "governor who got the farmers out of the mud" because of his extensive rural road-building program. Toward the end of his life Pinchot espoused the belief that conservation of global resources was the foundation for world peace. He served as an informal conservation adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt and worked on the president's behalf to put together a World Conservation Conference. Roosevelt's death put a temporary halt to the plan, but a few days before Pinchot's death, President Harry's Truman submitted the plan to the United Nations. Pinchot's plan for a meeting on global conservation became a reality after his death on 4 October 1946.

Sources:

M. Nelson McGeary, Gifford Pinchot: Forester-Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960);

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947);

Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Private and Public Forester (Urbana, Chicago & London: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

Gifford Pinchot

Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), American conservationist and public official, was chiefly responsible for introducing scientific forestry to the United States.

Gfford Pinchot was born in Simsbury, Conn., on Aug. 11, 1865, the scion of an old Huguenot family of moderate wealth and high public spirit. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University and studied forestry in Europe on his own. After successfully instituting the first systematic forest program in the United States on the Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina, he served in 1896 on the National Forest Commission. Two years later he became head of the Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture.

Pinchot's influence increased enormously during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. He was influential in Roosevelt's decision to transfer millions of acres of forest lands to the reserves. He devised a system for controlled use of waterpower sites, and, above all others, he shared responsibility with Roosevelt for the notable advances in forestry and conservation between 1901 and 1909.

Unlike some ultraconservationists, Pinchot distinguished between the utilization and the exploitation of natural resources. Controlled use was the key to his philosophy. To this end he opened forests to selective cutting and leased the grasslands within them for grazing. He also converted some of the country's greatest lumber interests to the selective-cutting principle of "perpetuation of forests through use."

A driving, zealous man, Pinchot made many enemies and was attacked fiercely by western interests and anti-intellectuals in Congress. Yet he won the steadfast devotion of his subordinates. After Roosevelt left office, Pinchot fumed over the apparent slowdown in conservation under President William Howard Taft. Finally he charged Taft's secretary of the interior, Richard A. Ballinger, with a "giveaway" of valuable lands in Alaska. The charge was an exaggeration, and Taft subsequently dismissed Pinchot from the government. The publicity given the incident, however, made Taft more sensitive to conservation during the remainder of his administration.

Pinchot ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate on the Pennsylvania Progressive party ticket in 1914. He later returned to the Republican party and served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania (1923-1927 and 1931-1935). Both terms were marked by controversy and highlighted by enactment of considerable Progressive legislation. In 1914 he had married Cornelia Bryce, by whom he had one son. Pinchot died on Oct. 4, 1946.

Further Reading

Pinchot's autobiography, Breaking New Ground (1947), is partisan but of surpassing importance. Martin Nelson McGeary, Gifford Pinchot, Forester-Politician (1960), is a full, scholarly, and appreciative biography. Its account of the Ballinger affair was updated by James L. Penick, Jr., Progressive Politics and Conservation: The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair (1968). Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency (1959), the most exhaustive study of the early conservation movement, is harsher in some of its judgments on Pinchot than the evidence warrants.

Additional Sources

Anderson, Peter, Gifford Pinchot: American forester, New York: Watts, 1995.

Pinchot, Gifford, Breaking new ground, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1987, 1974. □

Gifford Pinchot , 1865–1946, American forester and public official, b. Simsbury, Conn. He studied forestry in Europe and then undertook (1892) systematic work in forestry at the Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina. He became (1896) a member of the National Forest Commission and served (1898–1910) in the division of forestry, which in the period of his service became a bureau and then the Forest Service. He was dismissed (1910) by President Taft because he publicly criticized Secretary of Interior Richard A. Ballinger 's administration of coal lands in Alaska. Pinchot's dismissal helped widen the rift in the Republican party and the estrangement between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1912, Pinchot joined Roosevelt in forming the Progressive party . After he helped found the Yale school of forestry, Pinchot was (1903–36) professor there while serving on numerous conservation commissions. He was twice (1923–27, 1931–35) governor of Pennsylvania. In his first term Pinchot directed the reorganization of the state government. He wrote many books on forestry and timber; his autobiography, Breaking New Ground (1947), sums up many years of his study of conservation.

Bibliography: See biographies by M. N. McGeary (1960) and M. L. Fausold (1961, repr. 1973); studies by J. L. Penick (1968) and H. T. Pinkett (1970).