Pinchot–Ballinger controversy

Pinchot-Ballinger controversy

Richard A. Ballinger

Gifford Pinchot

The dispute between Ballinger and Pinchot (arranged here alphabetically) contributed to national debates over conservationism and the growing conservative-progressive split during the presidency of William Howard Taft.

The Pinchot–Ballinger controversy, also known as the Ballinger affair, was a political dispute between United States interior secretary Richard A. Ballinger and United States Forest Service chief Gifford Pinchot regarding departmental authority, conservation, and the private licensing of resource rights in the United States, in which Pinchot and his political allies accused Ballinger of improperly granting private access to public resources. Between 1909 and 1910, the dispute between the two men and their supporters escalated to a battle within the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft (who defended Ballinger and dismissed Pinchot) and his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt (who supported Pinchot, his close personal friend). While Ballinger was eventually cleared of the charges at the core of the dispute, the affair contributed to renewed attention for the conservation movement, a growing progressive-conservative split within the Republican Party, that party's defeat in the 1910 United States elections, and Roosevelt's decision to challenge Taft for the presidency in 1912.

Background

Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by President William McKinley to head the USDA Division of Forestry in 1898. In 1905, under Theodore Roosevelt, the Division was reorganized within the Department of Agriculture as the United States Forest Service (USFS), which took over management of the United States forest reserves from the General Land Office (GLO) within the Department of the Interior. Pinchot remained head of the USFS after its reorganization. In 1907, Roosevelt appointed Seattle mayor Richard A. Ballinger to lead the GLO under interior secretary James Rudolph Garfield.

In keeping with an earlier promise made upon his re-election in 1904, Roosevelt opted not to seek another term in the 1908 presidential election. Instead, he publicly endorsed Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor and, following the election, left the country on an expedition to Africa and Europe in early 1909. In March 1909, Taft began his presidency by replacing Garfield in the cabinet with Ballinger. Ballinger's appointment as interior secretary was a disappointment to conservationists, who interpreted the change as a break with the Roosevelt administration's policies on conservation. Within weeks of taking office, Ballinger reversed some of Garfield's policies, restoring 3 million acres (12,000 km²) of preserved land to private use. Many of the policies which Ballinger reversed had been last-minute declarations by Roosevelt and Garfield during the lame duck period of his presidency.

Allegations by Pinchot and Louis Glavis

Louis Glavis (pictured in 1934) was also a central figure in the controversy.

In reaction to Ballinger's initial policy decisions, Pinchot became convinced that Ballinger was seeking to assist big business in gaining control of any major water sources, and he claimed that Ballinger intended to "stop the conservation movement" entirely. In August 1909, 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.

Parallel to Pinchot's accusations of partiality, Louis Glavis, chief of the GLO in Portland, Oregon, was under the impression that Ballinger was obstructing an investigation of his handling of coal field claims in Alaska which had been purchased by a syndicate, led by Clarence Cunningham and backed by J. P. Morgan and Simon Guggenheim, out of a personal financial interest. Glavis had launched an antitrust investigation into the Alaska Syndicate purchases in 1907, but Ballinger, as head of the GLO, rejected Glavis's findings and removed him from the investigation. In 1909, Glavis sought support from Pinchot, whose jurisdiction over the Chugach National Forest included several of the claims. Glavis received a sympathetic response from Pinchot, Alexander Shaw, and Overton Price, who helped him to prepare a presentation for Taft.

Pinchot arranged a meeting between Taft and Glavis, at which Pinchot and Glavis presented a 50-page report accusing Ballinger of improper conflicts of interest in his handling of the Cunningham purchases and his firing of Glavis.

Dismissals, investigations, and escalating controversy

After consulting with attorney general George W. Wickersham, Taft issued a public letter in September 1909 exonerating Ballinger and authorizing the dismissal of Glavis on grounds of insubordination. At the same time, Taft tried to conciliate Pinchot and affirm his administration's pro-conservation stance.

In reaction to the open letter, Glavis took his case to the press. In November, Collier's published an article elaborating on his allegations, The Whitewashing of Ballinger: Are the Guggenheims in Charge of the Department of the Interior?

In January 1910, Pinchot sent an open letter to progressive U.S. senator Jonathan P. Dolliver of Iowa, who read it into the Congressional Record. In the letter, Pinchot praised Glavis as a "patriot," openly rebuked Taft, and called for congressional hearings into Ballinger's conduct. Taft and Ballinger promptly dismissed Pinchot as USFS chief. From January to May 1910, the House of Representatives held hearings on Ballinger. Ballinger was cleared of any impropriety, but his policies continued to receive criticism for favoring private enterprise and the exploitation of natural resources over conservation.

Consequences

The May 1912 issue of Punch depicts no-holds-barred fight between Taft (top) and Roosevelt.

Pinchot's dismissal alienated many Republican progressives and drove a wedge between Taft and Roosevelt personally, contributing to the split of the party in the 1912 presidential election. The clash had a long-term influence on the conservation movement, positioning it as one aspect of a broader class struggle between the rich, who ostensibly exploited resources, and the poor and working class, who benefited from their preservation. According to environmental historian Samuel P. Hays, however, many industrialists supported conservation programs, and many farmers and workers opposed them.

As a leading icon of the progressive movement and conservation movement in the United States, Pinchot launched a political career in his native state of Pennsylvania. He served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania from 1923 to 1927 and 1931 to 1935. He made three unsuccessful bids for United States Senate and ran unsuccessfully for a final term as governor in 1938.

Historical legacy

In 1939, Taft biographer Henry F. Pringle considered Ballinger an innocent victim of vindictive Roosevelt loyalists and of yellow journalism that gave their accusations validity:

An examination of thousands of pages of evidence can lead the impartial reader only to the conclusion that Ballinger was the victim of an attack fostered by fanaticism and nurtured by bad journalism. But Pinchot, Glavis, Hapgood [of Collier's Weekly], Sullivan [also of Collier's], Marse Henry [Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal] and the rest handed down their verdict against Ballinger in 1909 and 1910 and a large element of the public believed that they had spoken justly.

Harold L. Ickes, interior secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt, hired Glavis as a chief investigator in 1934 on the basis of his conduct during the controversy, during which Ickes had supported Pinchot and Glavis against Ballinger. Ickes found Glavis, who conducted unauthorized surveillance on employees whom he considered disloyal, generally insubordinate and excessively paranoid. Ickes published a popular account of his findings in The Saturday Evening Post, in which he recanted his 1910 position and referred to Ballinger as "an American Dreyfus." After an official investigation, his findings were expanded to a 58-page departmental report in 1940 that asserted Ballinger's innocence and paints Pinchot as a vindictive publicity-seeker who pitilessly pursued Ballinger even after Ballinger's death.

Further reading

• Fausold, Martin L. Gifford Pinchot: Bull Moose Progressive (1961)
• Ickes, Harold LeClair. Not Guilty: An Official Inquiry Into the Charges Made by Glavis and Pinchot Against Richard A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior, 1909-1911 (US Government Printing Office, 1940) Ickes was Secretary of the Interior under Franklin Roosevelt. online
• McGeary, M. Nelson. Gifford Pinchot: Forester-Politician (1961, reprinted 2015, Princeton University Press), pp 118–189. online
• Penick, James L. Jr. "The age of the Bureaucrat: Another view of the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy," Forest History Newsletter (Jan 1963), Vol. 7 Issue 1/2, pp. 15-20.
• Penick, James Lal. "Louis Russell Glavis: A Postscript to the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy." Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55.2 (1964): 67-75.
• Penick, Jr., James, Progressive Politics and Conservation. The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair (University of Chicago Press, 1968), a standard scholarly history.
• Ponder, Stephen. " 'Nonpublicity' and the Unmaking of a President: William Howard Taft and the Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy of 1909–1910." Journalism History 19.4 (1994): 111-120.
• Simpson, Edgar. " 'Predatory Interests' and 'The Common Man' Scripps, Pinchot, and the Nascent Environmental Movement, 1908 to 1910." Journalism History 39.3 (2013): 145-155.

Primary sources

• Smith, Frank E. ed. Conservation in the United States: A documentary history: Land and Water 1900-1970 (Chelsea House, 1971) pp 241–280.