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Vol. XV 



MAY, 1909 



No. 5 



THE FIGHT FOR THE APPALACHIAN 



FORESTS 



By EDWIN A. START 



THE Sixtieth Congress having 

 passed into history without enact- 

 ing- into law any legislation for 

 the maintenance of the great Appalach- 

 ian forests, north and south, the pres- 

 ent seems to be a good time for a re- 

 trospect and outlook in connection with 

 this vital and pressing conservation 

 question. It is now ten years since the 

 project took concrete legislative form. 

 Since January. 1900. when groups of 

 foreseeing men, north and south, first 

 brought before the Fifty-sixth Con- 

 gress the plan of establishing a Na- 

 tional Forest reserve in the southern 

 Appalachian Mountains, every Con- 

 gress, ami nearly every session, has 

 had this subject before it ; and in 

 these years the whole country has l:)een 

 aroused to the need of action. Year 

 by year, cumulative evidence has been 

 ])iled up of the terrible waste of the 

 Nation's resources that has been going 

 on with progressive destructiveness in 

 the forested mountain countries of the 

 East. There has been progress in each 



Congress, but still a laggard legislature 

 has biennially fallen by the wayside 

 without the attainment of the object. 



The first bill was introduced on the 

 loth of January, 1901, by Senator 

 Pritchard. of North Carolina. It 

 ]^rovided for an appropriation of 

 $5,000,000 to establish a National 

 Forest reserve in the southern Appa- 

 lachians. Its principal backers were 

 the Appalachian National Park As- 

 sociation, organized in Asheville. N. C, 

 in 1899, and the Appalachian Moun- 

 tain Club, a well-known semi- 

 scientific society in New England ; and 

 it had the approval of the Forestry Bu- 

 reau of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture and of President Mc- 

 Kinlex'. The bill was favorably re- 

 ])orted in the Senate but went no far- 

 ther. Four bills, two in each house, 

 were introduced in the first session of 

 the Fifty-seventh Congress, in 1901 and 

 1902, together with a report from the 

 Secretary of Agriculture and a strong 

 message by President Roosevelt con- 



251 



