Gifford Pinchot

Infobox Governor
name= Gifford Pinchot


caption= Gifford Pinchot, 1909, by Pirie MacDonald. At the time of this photo he was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service.
order = 29th
order2 = 31st
office= Governor of Pennsylvania
office2 = Governor of Pennsylvania
term_start = January 20, 1923
term_start2 = January 20, 1931
term_end = January 15, 1927
term_end2 = January 15, 1935
lieutenant=
predecessor = William C. Sproul
predecessor2 = John Stuchell Fisher
successor = John Stuchell Fisher
successor2 =George Howard Earle III
birth_date= birth date|1865|8|11
birth_place= Simsbury, Connecticut
death_date= death date and age|1946|10|4|1865|8|11
death_place=
party= Republican
profession=
spouse=
religion =
footnotes=

Gifford Pinchot (August 11 1865ndash October 4 1946) was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service (1905–1910) and the Governor of Pennsylvania (1923–1927, 1931–1935). He was a Republican and Progressive.

Pinchot is known for reforming the management and development of forests in the United States and for advocating the conservation of the nation's reserves by planned use and renewal. He called it "the art of producing from the forest whatever it can yield for the service of man." Pinchot coined the term conservation ethic as applied to natural resources.

Asked how to say his name, he told "The Literary Digest" "as though it were spelled "pin'cho", with slight emphasis on the first syllable." [(Charles Earle Funk, "What's the Name, Please?", Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)]

Education and early life

He was born in Simsbury, Connecticut in 1865; Pinchot graduated from Yale College in 1889, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He studied as a postgraduate at the French National Forestry School for a year. He returned home and plunged into the nascent forestry movement, intent on shaping a national forest policy.

Gifford Pinchot's father, James, had made a great fortune from lumbering and land speculation but regretted the damage his work had done to the land. He made conservation a family affair and decided that Gifford would become a forester. He endowed the Yale School of Forestry in 1900, and he turned Grey Towers, the family estate at Milford, Pennsylvania, into a "nursery" for the American forestry movement. Family affairs were managed by Gifford's brother Amos Pinchot, thus freeing Pinchot to do the more important work of developing forest management concepts. Unlike some others in the forestry movement, Pinchot's wealth allowed him to singly pursue this goal without worry of income.

Pinchot's approach set him apart from the other leading forestry experts, especially Bernhard E. Fernow and Carl A. Schenck. Fernow had been Pinchot's predecessor in the U.S. Division of Forestry before leaving in 1898 to become the first dean of the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell. Schenck was Pinchot's successor at the Biltmore Estate (widely recognized as the "cradle of American forestry") and founder of the Biltmore Forest School on the Biltmore Estate. Their schools largely reflected their approaches to introducing forestry in the United States: Fernow advocated a regional approach and Schenck a private enterprise effort in contrast to Pinchot's national vision. [ [Lewis 1999] ]

Forestry policy and institutions

In 1896, the National Academy of Sciences formed the National Forest Commission and they appointed him to the Commission, the only nonmember appointed. Grover Cleveland later charged him with developing a plan for managing the nation’s Western forest reserves. In 1898 he became head of the Division of Forestry, later renamed the United States Forest Service.

With fellow Yale alumnus Henry S. Graves, Pinchot founded the Yale University School of Forestry (now the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) in 1900 and was a professor there from 1903 until 1936.

Pinchot sought to turn public land policy from one that dispersed resources to private holdings to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land. He was a progressive who strongly believed in the efficiency movement. The most economically efficient use of natural resources was his goal; waste was his great enemy. His successes, in part, were grounded in the personal networks that he started developing as a student at Yale and continued developing throughout his career. His personal involvement in the recruitment process led to high esprit de corps in the Forest Service and allowed him to avoid partisan political patronage. Pinchot capitalized on his professional expertise to gain adherents in an age when professionalism and science were greatly valued. He made it a high priority to professionalize the Forest Service; to that end he helped found the Yale School of Forestry as a source of highly trained men.

Methods

Pinchot used the rhetoric of the market economy to disarm critics of efforts to expand the role of government: scientific management of forests was profitable. While most of his battles were with timber companies that he thought had too narrow a time horizon, he also battled the timber preservationists like John Muir, who were deeply opposed to commercializing nature. [ [Balogh 2002] ]

Pinchot was generally opposed to preservation for the sake of wilderness or scenery, a fact perhaps best illustrated by the important support he offered to the damming of Hetch-Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

Pinchot rose to national prominence under the patronage of President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905, his department also gained control of the national forest reserves, thereby dramatically increasing the authority of the Forest Service. Pinchot developed a plan by which the forests could be developed by private interests, under set terms, in exchange for a fee. Pinchot embarked on many publicity campaigns to direct national discussions of natural resource management issues.

Central to his publicity work was his creation of news for magazines and newspapers, as well as debates with opponents such as John Muir. His effectiveness in manipulating information hostile to his boss President Taft led to his firing in January 1910. But his successes became a model for other bureaucrats on how to influence public opinion. [ [Ponder, 1987] ]

Pinchot’s policies encountered some opposition. Preservationists opposed to massive timber cutting while Congress was increasingly hostile to conservation of the forests, owing to local commercial pressures for quicker exploitation. In 1907, Congress forbade the creation of more forest reserves in the Western states. Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km²) of new National Forests just minutes before his power to do so was stripped by a congressionally mandated amendment to the Agriculture Bill. These were called the Midnight Forests.

Pinchot-Ballinger controversy

Pinchot’s authority was substantially undermined by the election of President William Howard Taft in 1908. Taft later fired Pinchot for speaking out against his policies and those of Richard Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior. Pinchot launched a series of public attacks to discredit Ballinger and force him from office in what became known as the Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy. That episode hastened the split in the Republican Party that led to the formation of the Progressive Party, of which Pinchot and his brother were top leaders.

Pinchot ran for Senate in 1914 on the Progressive Party ticket and expressed interest in the presidency. After his campaign, Pinchot promoted American involvement in World War I, opposing President Woodrow Wilson's neutrality. The Progressives returned to their old parties and Pinchot rejoined the Republicans.

Pinchot founded the National Conservation Association, of which he was president from 1910 to 1925.

Governor of Pennsylvania

With Wilson's re-election in 1916, Pinchot turned to Pennsylvania state politics. Governor William Sproul appointed him state Commissioner of Forestry in 1920. Pinchot's aim, however, was to become governor. His 1922 campaign for the office concentrated on popular reforms: government economy, enforcement of Prohibition and regulation of public utilities. He won by a wide margin.

Pinchot retired at the end of his term in 1927. Following another unsuccessful attempt at the U.S. Senate, the Pinchots took a seven-month cruise to the South Seas.

In 1930, Pinchot won a second term as governor, battling for regulation of public utilities, relief for the unemployed, and construction of paved roads to "get the farmers out of the mud." This was the achievement he was most proud of. In 1934, Pinchot ran unsuccessfully for the senate a third time. Pinchot's final campaign, a bid for the GOP nomination for Governor in 1938, was also unsuccessful.

In his remaining years, the ex-governor gave advice to President Franklin Roosevelt, wrote a book about his life as a forester, and devised a fishing kit to be used in lifeboats during World War II. He even instructed the U.S. Navy on how to extract fresh water from fishFact|date=December 2007.

Death and legacy

On October 4 1946, he died aged 81, from leukemia. He was survived by his wife, Cornelia Bryce, and his son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot. He is interred at Milford Cemetery, Pike County, Pennsylvania.

Perhaps because of pride in the first Gifford Pinchot's legacy, the Pinchot family has continued to name their sons Gifford, down to Gifford Pinchot V.

Gifford Senior and his then thirteen-year-old son co-wrote a scientific travel-adventure book, entitled "Giff and Stiff in the South Seas", copyright 1933, by the John C. Winston Co. of Philadelphia. Junior Gifford is the actual voice of the adventure, documenting in a young boy's language the scientific studies, observations, and adventures as father, mother, son, and companions sail on the "Mary Pinchot" from New York to Key West and on to the Galapagos, Marquesas, and Society Islands. This Darwin-like odessy is accompanied by photos of the journey. Although the book is currently out of print, it can be found.

Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington and Gifford Pinchot State Park in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania are named in his honor, as is Pinchot Hall at Penn State University. The Pinchot Sycamore, the largest tree in his native state of Connecticut and second-largest sycamore on the Atlantic coast, still stands in Simsbury, where he was born. The house where he was born belonged to his grandfather, Elijah Phelps, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. [http://www.simsbury1820house.com/about.htm] Grey Towers, the family home outside Milford, is a National Historic Landmark open to the public for tours.

Gifford Pinchot III, grandson of the first Gifford Pinchot, is co-founder and president of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which offers a Master of Business Administration degree integrating environmental sustainability and social responsibility with innovation and profit.

Bronson Pinchot (TV star from Perfect Strangers) is not related to Gifford Pinchot. [http://www.susquehannatranscript.com/archives/12_07_04v4n24/main.htm#story2]

Notes

References

* [http://1912.history.ohio-state.edu/conservation/gifford_pinchot.htm Gifford Pinchot] ("1912: Competing Visions for America", Ohio State University)
* [http://www.nwf.org/halloffame/inductees_pinchot.html Gifford Pinchot (1865-1948)] "Conservation Hall of Fame", National Wildlife Federation
* [http://www.bookrags.com/biography-gifford-pinchot/ Gifford Pinchot Brief Bio]

Further reading

Primary sources

* Gifford Pinchot, "The Conservation Diaries of Gifford Pinchot" ed by Harold K. Steen (2001)

econdary sources

* Balogh, Brian. "Scientific Forestry and the Roots of the Modern American State: Gifford Pinchot's Path to Progressive Reform" "Environmental History" 2002 7(2): 198–225. Issn: 1084-5453
* Lewis, James G. "The Pinchot Family and the Battle to Establish American Forestry" "Pennsylvania History" 1999 66(2): 143–165. Issn: 0031-4528
* M. Nelson McGeary, "Gifford Pinchot: Forester-Politician " (1960)
* Meyer, John M. "Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, and the Boundaries of Politics in American Thought" "Polity" 1997 30(2): 267–284. Issn: 0032-3497
* Char Miller. "Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism" (2001)
* Nash, Roderick. "Wilderness and the American Mind," Univ. of Wisc. Press, (1967), and later editions
* Ponder, Stephen. "Gifford Pinchot, Press Agent for Forestry" "Journal of Forest History" 1987 31(1): 26–35. Issn: 0094-5080
* Smith, Michael B. "The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot" "Historian" 1998 60(4): 757–778. Issn: 0018-2370

External links

*
* [http://pinchot.org/ Pinchot Institute for Conservation]
* [http://www.pikehistory.org/pinchot.htm Pike County (Pennsylvania) Historical Society]
* [http://www.fs.fed.us/na/gt/ Grey Towers National Historical Site, Milford, Pennsylvania]
* [http://www.yale.edu/environment/index.html Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science]
* [http://www.garyhines.com/ Dramatic Portrayal of Gifford Pinchot]
* [http://www.bgiedu.org/ Bainbridge Graduate Institute]