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.