Transcription:
HETCH-HETCHY DAMMING SCHEME (Memorandum from John Muir, President the Sierra Club, received May 14, 1908, by J. Horace
McFarland, President American Civic Association) The better part of the world is beginning to know that beauty plays an
important part in human progress, and that regarded even from the lowest financial standpoint it is one of the most precious
and productive assets any country can possess. Most of our forests have already vanished in lumber and smoke,mostly smoke.
Fortunately the Federal Government is now faithfully protecting and developing nearly all that is left of our forest and stream
resources; nor even in these money-mad commercial days have our beauty resources been altogether forgotten. Witness the magnificent
wild parks of the west, set apart and guarded for the highest good of all, and the thousands of city parks made to satisfy
the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty that God in some measure has put into every human being. Timber and water
are universal wants, and of course the government is aware that no scheme of management of the public domain failing to provide
for them can possibly be maintained. But however abundantly supplied from legitimate sources, every national park is besieged
by thieves and robbers and beggars with all sorts of plans and pleas for possession of some coveted treasure of water, timber,
pasture, rights of way, etc. Nothing dollarable is safe, however guarded. Thus the Yosemite Park, the beauty glory of California
and the Nation, Nature's own mountain wonderland, has been attacked by spoilers ever since it was established,