The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978 Page: 351

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Book Reviews

Historian McCarthy, of Denver Community College, narrates clearly
and interestingly Colorado's environmental conflict between 1891 and
1907. Conservationists stressed the economic necessity of resource man-
agement and, although loosely organized, won strong support from
front-range urbanites and west-slope agrarians who understood the re-
lationship between forests and water supply; from large cattlemen who
stood to gain from grazing leases; from corporations that equated con-
servation with efficiency; and, of course, from Theodore Roosevelt, al-
ways popular in Colorado, and from Gifford Pinchot who argued tact-
fully for conservation on several visits to the state.
The anticonservationists (insurgents) included Colorado's congress-
men, led by Senator Henry Moore Teller, numerous state officials, most
miners and timbermen, small cattlemen, and many newspaper editors.
They called conservation an eastern plot, but never commanded a ma-
jority of the state's electorate and failed to stop Roosevelt's conserva-
tion program in Congress.
Hour of Trial is an objective, sound case study of conservation at the
state level, although it is not without fault. For example, McCarthy
ignores wildlife conservation at a time when it was a major component
of the environmental struggle! He generalizes frequently about the
western viewpoint on aspects of conservation-but, do we have enough
scholarly monographs and articles on western conservation to adequate-
ly support facile generalizations? And why does he not cite in his
bibliography the classic, standard volumes on the environment by
George P. Marsh, C. R. Van Hise, Hans Huth, Frank Graham, and
James B. Trefethen?
The last chapter in the book is a compact, cogent summary of current
environmental problems in Colorado and should stand alone as an
article unappended to a monograph. McCarthy seems hopeful about
the future of the natural environment. Some recent environmental
victories in Colorado may warrant optimism; events worldwide do not.
University of Texas at Austin JOHN E. SUNDER
Bill Pickett, Bulldogger. By Bailey C. Hanes. (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1977. Pp. vii+207. Foreword, preface, illustra-
tions, bibliography, index. $7.95.)
Since the 1965 appearance of Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones's
The Negro Cowboys, much attention has been focused on the roles
played by black Americans in the settlement of the Trans-Mississippi

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 81, July 1977 - April, 1978, periodical, 1977/1978; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101205/m1/391/ocr/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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