The repudiation of any debt can always find supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support not only of certain men among the settlers who hope to be relieved of paying what they owe, but also of a variety of unscrupulous politicians, some highly placed.

It is unlikely that their efforts to deprive the West of the revolving Irrigation fund will succeed in doing anything but discrediting these politicians in the sight of all honest men.
When in the spring of 1911 I visited the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, and opened the reservoir, I made a short speech to the assembled people.
Among other things, I said to the engineers present that in the name of all good citizens I thanked them for their admirable work, as efficient as it was honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of public service.

As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces of those of the force who were present, and thought of the similar men in the service, in the higher positions, who were absent, and who were no less responsible for the work done, I felt a foreboding that they would never receive any real recognition for their achievement; and, only half humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satisfaction, except their own knowledge that they had done well a first-class job, for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would be to investigate them.

Well, a year later a Congressional Committee actually did investigate them.

The investigation was instigated by some unscrupulous local politicians and by some settlers who wished to be relieved from paying their just obligations; and the members of the Committee joined in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public servants as the Government has ever had; an attack made on them solely because they were honorable and efficient and loyal to the interests both of the Government and the settlers.
When I became President, the Bureau of Forestry (since 1905 the United States Forest Service) was a small but growing organization, under Gifford Pinchot, occupied mainly with laying the foundation of American forestry by scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of forestry on private lands.