There is a self-conscious choreography to environmental politics. Contending organizations, and just as often contentious individuals, play to and off one another to gain advantage and to secure a hearing. This reciprocal sparring, a subtle interplay between allies and opponents, first emerged in the late nineteenth century, part of the birthright of the then nascent conservation movement. Its originators, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, recognized that politics was a form of dramatic art. Not only did their tangled relationship—they were alternately good friends and engaged rivals—reinforce that understanding, but out of their fraught interactions, and what was made of them, emerged a dramatic narrative that set the movementÕs interpretive agenda for years to come.

As I elaborate in my new biography, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (Island Press, 2001), Pinchot and Muir, though separated in age by twenty-some years, shared a deep love for the natural world, and freely revealed their adoration of it through their correspondence throughout the 1890s. The reciprocal cordiality of these letters is impressive. But it is all the more remarkable when one realizes that by the late 1890s, these two men had reached a point in their thinking and careers in which such reciprocity was increasingly difficult to manage. At that time a new stage in their private correspondence and public relationship emerged in which the previous roles of student and mentor were no longer applicable or acceptable. In their place, a more discordant tone set in that would characterize their interactions until Muir died in 1914.

FAMILY SQUABBLES

The break between them did not come with a rush, and its evolutionary character is perhaps best analyzed on two levels—one political and the other personal—each of which infused the other, intensifying the conflict.

The potential for political disagreement was first manifest during the final discussions of the National Forest Commission. Established in 1896 at the request of Interior Secretary Hoke Smith, the commission toured western forested landscapes that summer, and wrote a report delineating a “rational forest policy” for public lands. But the groupÕs official deliberations and private conversations were anything but temperate. Arborist Charles S. Sargent, Muir (who was an unofficial member), zoologist Alexander Agassiz of Harvard University and Henry Abbott of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers believed that the only way to preserve the reserves was to close them to development, and that the best way to keep them inviolate was to deploy the U.S. Army to defend their boundaries. Pinchot and geologist Arnold Hague argued that the forests should be used and that the most effective force to ensure their regulated use and protection was the development of a professional forest service. This dispute posed a significant threat to the writing of the commissionÕs final report. As Pinchot acknowledged to Muir just prior to the final series of meetings, “I am somewhat anxious to know just how the cat will jump. It is a rather critical time.” The cat did not jump exactly as Pinchot hoped. The commission in the end urged President Cleveland to reconfirm the current reserves and add to their number; these new and extensive tracts of public lands would be closed to all development save mining and lumbering, and the army would be charged with their patrol. The preservationists seemed to have won the first round.

The victory was hardly bloodless. Pinchot threatened to write a critical, minority report; because the commission did not adopt a management plan for the reserves, nor issue what Pinchot believed essential—“a strong public statement, at the time when the new Reserves were created, that they were not to be taken out of circulation and locked up”—he worried (correctly) that political disaster loomed. Sargent felt no such foreboding, and instead was infuriated with what he perceived as PinchotÕs threat even to the appearance of unanimity. In a letter to Muir, Sargent unloaded on Pinchot and Hague, criticizing their “strenuous demands” and adamant opposition to his position. “I was obliged to talk rather disagreeably with them,” he wrote, and was only too “delighted that my official connection with them has come to an end. They have … done much harm in letting out the impression that the Commission was divided in its opinions.” But it was divided, a division that did more than just forever set Sargent and Pinchot apart; it foreshadowed the impending split between Pinchot and Muir.

That the break between them was not already overt was probably due to the simple fact that they liked one another, and this took precedence over their philosophical and political differences. Besides, it was not clear how deep those differences ran. Muir had not yet fully resolved the question of whether preservation and conservation were incompatible. His essays in the Century Magazine during the period surrounding the forest commissionÕs work made it clear that he, like Pinchot, supported the idea that national forests should be preserved and used. “It is impossible in the nature of things to stop at preservation,” Muir declared in 1895. Forests, “like perennial fountains, may be made to yield a sure harvest of timber, while at the same time all their far-reaching uses may be maintained unimpaired.” That balancing act was still evident in his 1897 essay, “The American Forests,” in which he directly praised PinchotÕs work. The young forester was not wrong in seeing Muir as an ally.

Their alliance was strategic. For Muir, the principles of the scientific management of the land were a considerable advance over the slash-and-burn tactics that generations of Americans had employed in their conquest of the continent. Forestry seemed to promise the survival of trees, and thus of forests, and Muir was only too happy to join with those such as Pinchot who were its chief advocates. MuirÕs support of forestry was equally crucial for Pinchot. Without the formerÕs eloquent voice and sharp pen raised on behalf of forests and forestry, the publicÕs interest in them would not have been as great or as focused.

This web of mutuality would unravel under the pressure of new circumstances that called into question the two menÕs original alliance. In 1898, for example, Pinchot was appointed head of the Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. He built it and its successor, the U.S. Forest Service, into one of the most potent bureaucracies in American political culture. Thereafter, he would have little use for the voluntarism that had characterized the forest commissionÕs activities, or for the preservationist visions that dominated its proceedings. Pinchot was now a professional insider, a power broker whose source of strength lay in the political networks he constructed in Washington and nationwide, and in the managerial solutions he brought to bear on environmental matters.

MuirÕs speech had changed as well. Beginning in 1898, he began to believe that the practice of forestry and the preservation of wilderness were incompatible, a tentative conclusion that would harden into conviction in the first years of the new century. This shift had a direct impact on his relationship with Pinchot. They were now firmly on opposite sides of the fence, with the head of the forestry bureau now more easily lumped in with those plundering lumber barons, long the recipients of MuirÕs disdain.

The ties between the two men withered further in the heat generated by the battle over the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. This spectacular valley, carved out of the Sierra Nevada by glaciers and the Tuolumne River, had become part of Yosemite National Park in 1890 and been designated a wilderness preserve, a status for which Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, Muir and others had fought hard. But as early as the 1880s, San FranciscoÕs water board and politicians had discussed the possibility of constructing a dam at the narrow end of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, creating a much needed reservoir. Those plans were revived in 1903, and in 1905, the city applied to Interior Secretary Ethan A. Hitchcock, under whose jurisdiction the valley lay, for permission to build the dam. Hitchcock denied these early requests, indicating that they violated the spirit of the national park, but not before requesting that Pinchot, as head of the Forest Service, examine the question. Pinchot assured the secretary that the dam would not “injure the National Park or detract from its beauties or natural grandeur,” an assurance that amazed Muir. “I cannot believe Pinchot, if he really knows the valley, has made any such statements,” he wrote Johnson, “for it would be just the same thing as saying that flooding Yosemite would do it no harm.”

He had made the statement, as Muir learned after writing directly to Pinchot, seeking confirmation of his views. The forester noted that for him “the extreme desirability of preserving the Hetch Hetchy in its original beauty” must be weighed against the water needs of “a great group of communities” in the Bay Area. Material benefits and public health in this case took precedence over the cause of wilderness preservation. Muir challenged PinchotÕs vision: ignore the “benevolent out cry for pure water for the dear people,” he urged, for the “scheme for securing these water rights is as full of graft as any of the lumber companies to obtain big blocks of the best timber lands.” Besides, if the object was simply water, it could “be obtained below Hetch Hetchy, thoÕ at a greater cost. The idea that San Francisco must go dry unless Hetch Hetchy Yosemite is drowned is ridiculous …” Written in May 1905, this was probably the last letter Muir sent Pinchot.

Their clashes accelerated in force when in April 1906 an earthquake jolted San Francisco, bursting water and gas pipes and setting off a fire that incinerated much of the cityÕs housing stock and industrial base. In the wake of this catastrophe, and hoping to capitalize on the wave of national sympathy for its plight, the city promptly reapplied for permission to dam Hetch Hetchy. Chief forester Pinchot was at the ready. “I was very glad to learn from your letter . . . that the earthquake had damaged neither your activity nor your courage,” he wrote Marsden Manson, the city engineer. “I hope sincerely that in the regeneration of San Francisco its people may be able to make provision for a water supply from the Yosemite National Park. I will stand by to render any assistance which lies in my power.” His assistance, especially when combined with the support of a new secretary of the interior, James Garfield, a close friend of PinchotÕs, produced the desired result. San Francisco received administrative approval to proceed with its plans for the valley.

Although Congress turned back this particular effort, due to a storm of protest that Johnson, Muir and numerous others unleashed, the issue would not go away. In 1907, Muir and Pinchot met for a day in California to discuss Hetch Hetchy. Pinchot admitted he had never seen the valley and, according to Muir, therefore “seemed surprised to learn how important a part of the Yosemite Park the Hetch Hetchy really is.” Pinchot suggested that Muir write Secretary Garfield and request that he “keep the matter open until [the Sierra Club] could be heard.” In September, Muir fired off an extended description of the valley to Garfield. Less than a month later, Pinchot wrote to President Theodore Roosevelt that although he fully sympathized with Muir and JohnsonÕs position, “I believe that the highest possible use which could be made of [Hetch Hetchy] would be to supply pure water to a great center of population.”

The Hetch Hetchy debate would not be resolved until 1913, after Pinchot and Roosevelt were both out of office. It would be under the administration of Woodrow Wilson, and through the efforts of his secretary of the interior, Franklin Lane, former city attorney of San Francisco, that Hetch Hetchy would become a reservoir. Once again, Pinchot came to the forefront as an important witness in the congressional hearings that summer. Once again, he argued that the public welfare was of preeminent importance. “Injury to Hetch Hetchy by substituting a lake for the present swampy shore of the valley … is altogether unimportant when compared with the benefits to be derived from its use as a reservoir.” To make this claim, those benefits needed to be democratically distributed, and he believed that with the dam they would be. It was on this point that he sought to turn the political tables on those such as Muir who set preservation of beautiful wilderness before essential human use. Something was wrong with keeping the valley “untouched for the benefit of the very small number of comparatively well to do to whom it will be accessible,” he declared. “The intermittent aesthetic enjoyment of less than one per cent is being balanced against the daily comfort and welfare of 99 per cent”—and the scales necessarily tilted in favor of the masses.

Muir and his supporters, on the other hand, were certain that the San Francisco project was not a democratic initiative. It would, in truth, benefit only powerful special-interest groups. Capturing the damÕs waterpower would drive the “political ambition” of former San Francisco mayor James D. Phelan, Muir complained to Johnson, while for sugar magnate Claus Spreckles that same power would run the city streetcars he longed to possess. That Pinchot could cozy up to these San Francisco capitalists was perverse, a far cry from the man Muir had once known. When Pinchot was dismissed from the Forest Service in 1910, Muir could only shake his head at what might have been. “IÕm sorry to see poor Pinchot running amuck after doing so much good hopeful work—from sound conservation going pell-mell to destruction on the wings of crazy inordinate ambition.”

Political disagreements and sharply contrasting visions of how natural resources should be used help explain the collapse of the friendship of Muir and Pinchot. But there was another, more psychological dimension to that collapse. Its timing is important. The separation came only after PinchotÕs professional career was assured, after he had been named head of the Division of Forestry in 1898. It also came in conjunction with the ruptures in his relations with other mentors, including Bernhard Fernow, chief of the Division of Forestry, and Sargent.

Fernow, whose support of PinchotÕs early forestry work struck Gifford PinchotÕs father as “posing and insincere,” could be an irritable man to be around. That is what Pinchot had decided in the late winter of 1891, when the two men traveled together through the piney woods of Arkansas, and that was why Pinchot ultimately declined to work under him. A domineering personality, Fernow proved harshly critical of others in the profession, and sought sole credit for advances in forestry. No shrinking violet himself, Pinchot grew “pretty weary” of FernowÕs “running everybody down with tiresome uniformity,” and realized that they could not work effectively together. When in late 1891 George Vanderbilt offered Pinchot the opportunity to demonstrate practical forestry on his Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, he jumped at the chance. A miffed Fernow slapped out at his protŽgŽ when he suggested that in taking on VanderbiltÕs job, the young forester had jeopardized his fledgling career.

The two continued to bedevil one another for years to come. When Pinchot published a small tract on the white pine in 1896, Fernow wrote a devastating review of it in Garden and Forest; Muir counseled Pinchot not to write a rebuttal. “Never mind Fernow. Go ahead with your own work and very soon he will become polite and good,” counsel that in this instance Pinchot heeded. But he in turn could be just as impolite. Granting that Fernow had a “remarkable native ability,” Pinchot believed in his heart that the German-born forester was too cautious, his perception of the possibilities of forestry too limited and his expertise exaggerated—this from a man who had but a year of formal training in forestry! PinchotÕs critical evaluation of Fernow allowed him to circumvent his job offer in 1891, and then to happily succeed his former advisor as head of the division seven years later.

PinchotÕs conflicted relations with Sargent followed a similar path. Sargent, too, had encouraged PinchotÕs desire to become a forester, repeatedly offered advice on the direction the younger manÕs career should take and opened some doors to ease his way. Inviting Pinchot to join the National Forest Commission was the most important of these gestures; it was an extraordinary break for the thirty-one-year-old forester, who had learned how to rely on the kindness of older men.

Yet while making the most of these opportunities, Pinchot alienated his benefactor. That was not hard to do, for Sargent shared FernowÕs touchy persona. He was opinionated, a man of great self-assurance and no small ego. When crossed, as he was when Pinchot challenged the recommendations of the final report of the forest commission, he lashed out at the ingrate. Pinchot clearly did not understand, Sargent complained, that being chosen for the commission was unprecedented, “as only members of the Academy serve on such Commissions.” This honor alone should have guaranteed PinchotÕs compliance and held his mouth in check.

Relations between them deteriorated further when Pinchot accepted Interior Secretary Cornelius BlissÕs offer to act as a confidential forestry agent in 1897. Sargent accused Pinchot of dropping his friends for a political appointment, a sign to the Harvard professor that their standards of conduct were on different planes. Little wonder that he predicted the end of PinchotÕs professional career when Pinchot took over FernowÕs position in the Department of Agriculture. “This is a good place for him,” Sargent counseled Muir. “He can do no harm there and after a very short time people will cease to pay any attention to what he says.” That bit of wishful thinking would come back to haunt him in later years, so much so that Sargent took to calling Pinchot “that creature” and, later still, in the 1920s, rued the day he had helped advance PinchotÕs career.

The personality disputes between Fernow, Sargent, Muir and Pinchot were cut from the same cloth. Each of these older men had much to teach the up-and-coming forester about American forests; each had sought to direct his manifold energies and talents in ways that would benefit their various and allied causes; and each saw in him a youthful reflection of themselves—strong shoulders that could help bear his eldersÕ burdens. But these relationships contained within them, in the manner of those between parents and children, the seeds of separation; they were oedipal in complexity, if not in construct. These conflicts were later immortalized in the controversial invitation list that Pinchot drew up for the important 1908 Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources. It was an impressive gathering. According to Pinchot biographer Nelson McGeary, never “in the history of the country had so many important government officials and scientific men been brought together” as at this White House conference designed to discuss conservation and the conservation movement. What McGeary failed to note, however, was who had not been invited: Fernow, Muir and Sargent led the list of those snubbed, an act of omission that was as psychologically charged as it was politically motivated.

CREATIVE TENSIONS

However personally damaging, these menÕs internecine battles did not cripple the early conservation movement; rather, they were essential to its development and success. The political discord, ideological differences and psychological tension provided the crucial elements in a formative public dialogue between conservationists, preservationists and the broader citizenry they hoped to serve and influence. In no other way could conservation so quickly have become a household word and an idea of considerable force in the politics of the Progressive Era.

Such combative interchanges are found in virtually all efforts to reform the American polity. This was as true for the abolitionists of the antebellum era as it would be for those advocating the civil rights of minorities in the twentieth century. In each case, the wars of rhetoric and ideals, intemperate as they often were, have served a broader purpose: each group gained by the otherÕs presence. Radicals can make moderates look more conservative to those who fear reform, and as a result, the moderates can often secure greater success. Moderates, on the other hand, pushed by the logic of confrontational politics, are often compelled to adopt elements of the radical agenda to maintain their standing in a particular movement. This is not to suggest that change is inevitable, that history is inherently progressive. Life is never so neat. But we should not be blind to the dynamism of such struggles. It was out of the tradition of brawling over environmental policies and politics that the national forest and park systems were born, and out of it too came the subsequent creation of wilderness areas in the national forests. In this respect, political conflict can be a subtle composition, as opposing factions, like partners in a dance, seek to take (or grab) the lead—and occasionally step on one anotherÕs toes. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, John Muir and Gifford Pinchot initiated just such a dance.