Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/172

136 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS soil. Among other speakers were William J. Bryan, John Mitchell, Governor Glenn of North Carolina, Gifford Pinchot, and James R. Garfield, then Secretary of the Interior. A committee was appointed to compile statistics, and another con ference was planned for 1909. In the following month (June 8) Mr. Roosevelt appointed a National Conservation Commission of forty-eight members representing the various States and Terri tories, which met in Washington the following De cember under the presidency of Gifford Pinchot, national forester, to prepare a report to the Presi dent for transmission to Congress on the resources of the country. Mr. Pinchot, as the personal rep resentative of President Roosevelt, had visited Canada to carry an invitation to the Governor General and the Premier to be present at the con ference called for February, 1909. A few months earlier (October 7) the Lake-to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Association met in Chicago to further the development of the Great Lakes with the Mis sissippi and its branches. On March 3, 1909, the River and Harbor Appropriation Act was ap proved. It created the National Waterways Com mission, composed of Members of Congress, to in vestigate questions of water transportation and the improvement of waterways and to recommend to Congress action upon these subjects. It will be noticed that this was almost exactly two years after