The Pinchot-Ballinger Controversy was a dispute
between U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Achilles Ballinger
that contributed to the split of the Republican Party before the 1912
Presidential Election
and helped to define the U.S. conservation movement in the early 20th
Century.
Ballinger's
appointment
In March 1909, President William Howard
Taft began his administration by replacing Roosevelt's appointed Secretary of the Interior James Rudolph Garfield (son
of the assassinated Republican president, James Garfield) with Richard Ballinger, a former Mayor of Seattle who
had served as Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) under Secretary Garfield. Ballinger's appointment was a
disappointment to conservationists, who interpreted the replacement of Garfield
as a break with Roosevelt administration
policies on conservationism. Within weeks of taking office, Ballinger reversed
some of Garfield's
policies, restoring 3 million acres (12,000 km²) to private use.[1]
Allegations by
Pinchot and Glavis
By July 1909, Gifford Pinchot, who had
been appointed by President William McKinley to head the USDA Division of Forestry in 1898, and who had run the U.S.
Forest Service since it had taken over management of forest reserves from the General Land Office in 1905, became
convinced that Ballinger intended to "stop the conservation
movement". In August, speaking
at the annual meeting of the National Irrigation Congress in Spokane,
Washington, he accused Ballinger of siding
with private trusts in his handling of water power issues. At the same time, he
helped to arrange a meeting between President
Taft and Louis Glavis, chief of the Portland, Oregon Field Division of the GLO.
Glavis met with the president at Taft's
summer retreat in Beverly, Massachusetts and presented him with a 50-page
report accusing Ballinger of an improper
interest in his handling of coal field claims in Alaska.
Glavis claimed that Ballinger, first as
Commissioner of the General Land Office, and then as Secretary of the Interior,
had interfered with investigations of coal
claim purchases made by Clarence Cunningham of Idaho. In 1907, Cunningham had partnered with the Morgan-Guggenheim
"Alaska Syndicate" to develop coal interests in Alaska. The GLO had
launched an anti-trust
investigation, headed by Glavis. Ballinger, then head of the GLO, rejected
Glavis' findings and removed him from the
investigation. In 1908, Ballinger stepped down from the GLO, and took up a
private law practice in Seattle. Cunningham
became a client.
Convinced that Ballinger, now head of the
Department of Interior, had a personal interest in obstructing an investigation
of the Cunningham case, Glavis had sought
support from the U.S. Forest Service, whose jurisdiction over the Chugach National Forest included several of the
Cunningham claims. He received a sympathetic response from Alexander Shaw, Overton Price and Pinchot, who helped him
to prepare the presentation for Taft.