OUR FOREST WEALTH 



181 



Three foes menace the forests. First is the exploiter of forest 

 lands. Chief among these is the small mountain farmer. In a region 

 never designed for agriculture he endeavors, with primitive appliances 

 and obsolete methods, to grub out for himself a scant subsistence. To 

 do this, he must sacrifice the trees. 



Making a mountain farm, however, is quite a different thing from 

 maintaining it as a farm. Under the crude culture practised, a period 

 of from five to twenty years suffices to exhaust the land and send the 

 farmer farther up the slope. Here he repeats the process; and thus, 

 as he ascends, he leaves in his wake a tract of desolation, for the swift- 

 descending rains soon convert these cleared areas into irreclaimable 

 gullies. 



Second come the exploiters of the woods themselves. Among 

 these may be mentioned the turpentine man, who, by a crude method 

 of extracting the resin, though a far less hurtful might be employed 

 with greater profit to him, is rapidly despoiling large areas of forest. 

 The tan-bark man, next, strips from the trees their bark, and leaves 

 their unused hulks to cumber the ground. The pulp man clears the 

 ground of all trees — old, young, large and small — and so prevents the 

 forest from renewing itself. Finally, as the bonanza farmer attacks 

 the Dakota wheat-field, the lumberman, with methods long tested and 

 equipment perfected, invades the forests, and the monarchs fall before 

 him like grain before the sickle of the harvester. 



Next and most terrible, sometimes from accident, sometimes from 

 design, comes the fire. In the slash and wreckage left by wood-cutters 



Still Hand-dipping Rosin from Vat into Barrels. Ocilla, Ga. 



