‘Salvaging the Man Power of America’: Conservation, Manhood, and Disabled Veterans during World War I

Abstract

Progressive-era conservationists envisioned the physical energy exerted by male bodies as a natural resource. As a result, foresters and rehabilitationists attempted to simultaneously conserve trees and manpower by using wooden prosthetics and vocational training in forestry to reconstruct the bodies of disabled World War I veterans and place them in forest work. Though they mostly failed, their efforts suggest the need for reconsidering the make-up of the conservation movement, the objects of its labors, and potential intersections for environmental and gender history.