EDITORIAL 



36i 



cheapest ; hence we conckide that they 

 are still cheapest ; we, therefore, still 

 build them and permit them to ascend 

 in smoke. 



Says Mr. Baker: "I do not overstate 

 the case when I say that our American 

 cities and villages are made up almost 

 wholly of fire-trap buildings. We have 

 lagged far behind in our adoption of 

 better and safer methods of building 

 construction. We must, for at least a 

 generation to come, pay the penalty of 

 heavy charges for fire protection, heavy 

 insurance rates, heavy fire losses. And 

 we must continue to bear this heavy tax 

 until we rebuild our cities with fire- 

 resisting structures." 



Mr. Baker points to new building 

 materials, and says: "It was the cir- 

 cular saw and the railway that created 

 cheap timber throughout the nineteenth 

 centurv, and housed the people of the 

 United States in cheaply built and easily 

 burned wooden buildings. It is the 

 rotary kiln for burning Portland ce- 

 ment, the rock drill, the brick press and 

 a thousand other modern inventions 

 that are to create the incombustible 

 buildings which the twentieth century 

 is to construct." 



Mr. Baker points out that not only 

 the buildings, but their contents, must 

 be protected, and commends the work 

 accomplished by the factory mutual in- 

 surance companies of New England. 

 These companies, insuring chiefly mills 

 which handle cotton, have reduced the 

 rate of loss to about 5 cents per annum 

 for a hundred dollars insured, "a rate 

 of loss little more than a tenth, proba- 

 bly, of the average fire loss on all 

 classes of buildings in the United 

 States." 



Mr. Baker next indicates the losses 

 due to forest fires, especially those of 

 September, and October last, and aptly 

 says : "What I most want to make clear 

 to you is that unless and until you 

 create in every forest state of the 

 Union effective laws and effective or- 

 ganizations to prevent forest fires — un- 

 less and until you do that thing — all 

 our talk of conserving the forests is 

 vain. We cannot get away from eco- 



nomic laws. We cannot expect a man 

 to preserve valuable woodlands uncut 

 when a forest fire may at any time wipe 

 out the property entirely. And the 

 higher the price of lumber goes, the 

 greater the inducement to cut off the 

 trees." 



In closing, Mr. Baker points out the 

 connection between the losses due to 

 the burning of buildings and their con- 

 tents and the general question of con- 

 servation. He says: 'Tt is just as 

 much of a drain on the forests to burn 

 up the boards and the timber in a house 

 which must be rebuilt as to burn up the 

 trees before they are cut down and 

 sawed. And not only timber but iron, 

 tin, lead, zinc — all the materials used in 

 building construction and a vast 

 amount of merchandise contained in 

 buildings is devoured annually by the 

 flames." Clearly, the prevention of this 

 waste is an end which may properly 

 enlist the interest and effort of every 

 friend of the conservation of natural 



resources. 



^ )^ ^ 



What Shall We Do about It ? 



REFERRING to the editorial in 

 Conservation for May entitled : 

 "How It Is Done," a friend of conser- 

 vation, himself a lumberman, writes : 



An article of this character, in my opin- 

 ion, is calculated to do great damage to for- 

 est conservation. First, it antagonizes and in 

 a measure destroys the better judgment and 

 sympathy that lumber operators have relat- 

 ing to forest conservation. Second, it creates 

 in the minds of people who have not studied 

 the question the opinion that the lumber- 

 men of the country differ only in acts from 

 pirates in that the work that they do is not 

 at present punishable under the law. Of the 

 two results of articles of this kind, if per- 

 sistently published, I think the last result 

 cited, inflaming the public mind against the 

 lumbermen, will be the more harmful for 

 the reason that the public mind will become 

 crystallized to a line of action or laws that 

 will be aimed to punish the lumbermen rather 

 than to conserve the forests. I might inci- 

 dentally remark that the lumbermen now are 

 getting about all of the punishment they can 

 bear. 



A little farther over in the magazine, 

 on page 295, editorially, is an article entitled 

 "The Community INIust Care for Itself."' 

 This article seems to me to be nearer the 



