J*4 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



necessary, that the forests should be cut down. To conquer the wilderness 

 and turn the forest into arable land which would support life was their first 

 duty, and the toil which it entailed has remained to the present day in the 

 memory of men to render them not only indifferent but hostile thereto. I 

 think it is not too much to say that this is the state of mind of a large por- 

 tion of our population, nor is it too much to say that the government could not 

 proceed with its educational work in any direction with better results than 

 by teaching the people of this country the principles of forestry. 



I fell in, not long ago, with a young man, a neighbor of mine and a man 

 of industry, a sensible man and a thrifty man, who had taken a piece of wild 

 woodland and had cleaned it up with his own hand. He had married and 

 built a snug little house on a hill commanding a fair prospect and then he had 

 laboriously cut down every one of the fine trees which surrounded his house. 

 Finding him one day in his new ground preparing for his tobacco crop I ex- 

 pressed my wonder that he should have destroyed the fine oaks whose stumps 

 about his house showed their former grandeur. "No," he said, "I do not like 

 trees, I want nothing about my house bigger than a bush except fruit trees." 

 I believe that he expressed the view of a considerable part of our population, 

 and this view is not confined by any means to the laboring class. If you will 

 take a ride around Washington tomorrow you will see such a cutting down of 

 trees and destruction of the natural beauty about this capital of our country 

 as possibly is not to be witnessed today within the same distance of any other 

 capital in the world. I am happy to say that following the design of those 

 broad-minded men who laid out this capital city on broad lines, its streets and 

 avenues are beautified with trees in a way to do honor not only to their wis- 

 dom but to the wisdom of those who have the capital still in charge. But, 

 though much is done, much remains to do, and there is even now within the 

 heart of Washington a region where beautiful trees still remain, which unless 

 it receive the vast care and i)rotection of the government which the govern- 

 ment may well give here in its own capital, must soon pass away. 



I rejoice at this new movement in the direction of preserving our forests. 

 No thoughtful man who recalls the destructions in half a generation of the 

 buffalo and elk and canvas back duck and other forms of game, and who has 

 seen the disastrous destruction of forests, especially no man who has traveled 

 in other countries, can fail to be apprehensive of 'the effect of the universal 

 indifference to the preservation of forests which essentially obtains in this 

 country. My opinion is that the abiding work of the forestry department will 

 be the awakening in tlie public mind of the necessity of preserving forests, and 

 the convincing of the public mind, for we are a thrifty race, at least, if not an 

 avaricious race, that it is to the individual's interest to harvest his timber in 

 a scientific rather than in an ignorant way. Show the American people that it 

 is to their interest to do anything and eventually they will do it. Partly 

 stupid and partly over confiding, they are often misled as to their own inter- 

 ests, but prove to them that it is to their interest and a thing will inevitably 

 be accomplished in the end, and, above that, prove to them that a thing is 

 right and it will be even more inevitably accomplished. 



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