Ballinger‐Pinchot Controversy. The main actors in this bitter
Progressive Era dispute over the future of conservation policy during the presidency of William Howard
Taft (1909–1913) were Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger and Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot. At issue was the federal government's role in overseeing natural resources. From his post in the Department of Agriculture, Pinchot wanted to continue the forest‐management and coal‐land policies of Theodore
Roosevelt that involved a large role for the federal government. Under Roosevelt, Pinchot had enjoyed wide discretion in setting priorities about western land, water, and
mining issues. Ballinger, a westerner from Seattle, Washington, sought to shift power back to the states and to allow localities to develop their own resources. He also believed that Pinchot had often failed to follow the letter of government policy or to observe appropriate legal procedures.
The resulting controversy spilled into the press in the fall of 1909. Taft's critics argued that he and Ballinger had repudiated the conservation goals of Roosevelt. Spurred by overblown charges against Ballinger provided by Louis Glavis, a Department of the Interior official, Pinchot pressed his case in the newspapers with sensational, exaggerated allegations that Ballinger had approved the sale of valuable coal lands in
Alaska to a consortium of Seattle businessmen, who had in turn sold the land to
J.P. Morgan and other New York bankers. When Pinchot in January 1910 wrote a public letter criticizing Ballinger to a U.S. senator, Taft fired him. In the congressional inquiry that followed, the Republican majority exonerated Ballinger, and the Democrats sided with Pinchot.
A discredited Ballinger left office in the spring of 1911. The controversy became a decisive element in the split between Roosevelt and Taft that led Roosevelt to challenge Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, and then to launch his independent candidacy on the
Progressive party ticket.
See also
Conservation Movement;
Federal Government, Executive Branch: Department of Agriculture;
Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of the Interior);
Forests and Forestry;
Land Policy, Federal;
States' Rights.
Bibliography
Samuel P. Hays , Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920, 1958.
James L. Penick Jr. , Progressive Politics and Conservation: The Ballinger‐Pinchot Affair, 1969.
Lewis L. Gould
