66 



CONSERVATION 



Following Secretary Wilson's ad- 

 dress, and the appointment of com- 

 mittees on by-laws, resolutions and 

 nominations, the Rev. Edward Everett 

 Hale addressed the meeting. Doctor 



Hale, in his address, emphasized the 

 fact of the fundamental necessity for 

 reforestation, both as a National and 

 State proposition and a private enter- 

 prise also. His address follows. 



ADDRESS OF THE REV, DR, EDWARD EVERETT HALE 



1HAD the honor of speaking in this place 

 one year ago; I believe I said but two 

 things at that time, and I am going to 

 say only those two things now. 



I Hke to say what I began saying twenty- 

 eight years ago, when, at the junction be- 

 tween here and Baltimore, I met Doctor 

 Loring, who was then Secretary of Agricul- 

 ture. He was coming to Washington from 

 Cincinnati, and said he had been at the most 

 important meeting which would be held in 

 the nineteenth century, which was the 

 meeting at which this society was formed. 

 He understood it then as we understand it 

 now, and as it is our business to make 

 90,000,000 people of this country under- 

 stand it. 



When I was a boy in college, we had, 

 among other studies, St. Baptiste's book on 

 political economy, which was a science com- 

 paratively new then. It was called the dis- 

 mal science, and with very good reason, 

 for the political economy of those days was 

 founded on the Devil's philosophy, which 

 is "the Devil take the hindmost and every- 

 body cut throats for himself." We have 

 now gotten well beyond that. 



In St. Baptiste's book, he says that in 

 America they have introduced the valuable 

 custom that on the marriage of every young 

 man a forest is planted. I do not know 

 how many young men were married in that 

 year, but I venture to say there was not a 

 forest planted by any one of them when 

 St. Baptiste wrote this down. 



If you or I could get any power to com- 

 pel every young man married in this 

 country, in the United States, in the next 

 year, to plant a forest, that is what we 

 should do. It is not, as Secretary Wilson 

 has so well said, for Congress to do. It 

 is for the American people to do. 



I was to a certain extent in at the birth 

 of the State of Kansas. I belonged to the 

 New England Emigrant Aid Society, and 

 we used to send peach stones in barrels 

 out to Kansas for the purpose of planting 

 Kansas with peach trees, because peach 

 trees grow faster than anything — faster 

 even than cottonwood. 



I have only two things to say this morn- 

 ing. I can say them quite within the time 

 which ihe Association may give me. 



The first is about this business to which 

 Secretary Wilson has alluded — the denuda- 

 tion of our forest lands. I have myself, as 

 I said last year, slept under trees which 



were ten or twelve feet in diameter, when 

 as a boy I was on the Geological Survey 

 of New Hampshire. Two years ago my 

 friend Mr. Carter took me over the same 

 ground, and there is not a tree there now 

 as big as my cane. That is because the 

 present system of paper making has to pro- 

 vide for the volumes of paper which arc 

 printed every year, and it is cheaper for 

 a pulp maker to give orders to his men to 

 cut down everything than it is to pick out 

 the large trees and leave the small ones. 

 What happens when you cut down every- 

 thing? The rain descends and the floods 

 come, and they take away the whole soil, 

 and you cannot get your seed to grow on 

 the rocks after the soil has all been taken 

 away. Then follows' the water, rushing 

 down in freshets, and the sweeping away 

 of everything in those freshets, which fact 

 my friends in the Carolinas are finding out, 

 as we have found out in New England 

 long ago, and which must necessarily fol- 

 low forest denudation. 



The President of the United States, in 

 his careful review of the resources of this 

 country, sent an annual message this year, 

 as every President has done since George 

 Washington. In that annual message the 

 President gave a pathetic account of the 

 denudation of China by the rains which 

 have fallen there and the ruin which has 

 been affecting the provinces of China, larger 

 than the largest American State. The 

 President accompanied that message with 

 printed drawings, which I have here, giving 

 every one of Mr. Wilson's agents' pictures 

 of the denudation of that region. The 

 President was wise in putting this before 

 the country. I do not dare to ask the ladies 

 and gentlemen in this room how many of them 

 have read that portion of the President's 

 message. I do not dare to ask how many 

 of them have seen the pictures with which 

 he accompanied it. The press of the country 

 dislikes Presidents' messages always. They 

 take up a great deal of room which might 

 be occupied with forgeries or crimes or other 

 things which are supposed to be more in- 

 teresting to the public. It happens that 1 

 have not seen any reference in any journal 

 to the fact that the President of the United 

 States considered this business of denuda- 

 tion of such importance. But it is the busi- 

 ness of the people of the United States to 

 understand the significance of this. It is 

 their business, as St. Baptiste said, when- 



