EDITORIAL 



247 



forestry, and particularly of the Ap- 

 palachian forests, have reason to be 

 grateful that the place from which we 

 miss the Hon. Kittredge Haskins has 

 been filled by so able and so friendly 

 a successor. 



«r' 



Not a One-man Cause 



WE FIND in a somewhat lurid edi- 

 torial comment on the Pinchot- 

 Ballinger investigation this statement : 

 ''So far as this generation is concerned 

 it now appears that that principle (con- 

 servation) will stand or fall with Gifford 

 Pinchot." 



To this we wish to take decided ex- 

 ception. It is worth noticing if only 

 because it represents quite a wide- 

 spread sentiment among admirers of 

 Mr. Pinchot and one which we think 

 does injustice to him as well as to the 

 cause of which he has been one of 

 the apostles and leaders. American 

 Forestry can not have left any doubt 

 as to the extent and quality of its re- 

 spect and regard for Gifford Pinchot, 

 but the principle of which he has been 

 one of the chief evangelists and organ- 

 izers is greater than any man, nor is it 

 praise for him to say that the govern- 

 ment service which he built up from 

 almost nothing is so weak that it will 

 fall without his guidance, or that the 

 cause that he is advocating so unself- 

 ishly and so brilliantly has no hold out- 

 side of his personality. The idea of 

 forestry and conservation has become 

 impressed upon the thought and convic- 

 tions of the American people so thor- 

 oughly that it will be permanent. The 

 truth is greater than any one man. 



Nor does he stand alone. There 

 were other wise men and prophets be- 

 fore him — men upon whose achieve- 

 ments his great work was builded, 

 and most of them are still with us. 

 They and he have given powerful 

 inspiration to a generation of young 

 men of faith and energy, and to a great 

 body of people who have come to know 

 the truth and have organized to main- 



tain that truth. Nature is teaching the 

 lesson from day to day so that he who 

 runs may read. The minor incidents of 

 legislative politics should not blind us to 

 the real bigness of the issue and the 

 tremendous power of facts. The re- 

 moval of Mr. Pinchot from the Forest 

 Service did not eliminate him. His 

 technical defeat, if that should happen, 

 in the congressional investigation in 

 which he has played so prominent a 

 part, will not change the popular con- 

 viction that he and the men who have 

 fought for the salvation of the people's 

 heritage from conversion to the per- 

 sonal profit of a few are right in 

 principle — and that principle will hold 

 its own. 



If the law and the constitution do 

 not protect the interests of those for 

 whom they were created we shall still 

 uphold the law and the constitution, but 

 they will have to be made to serve the 

 purpose for which they were created, 

 and that was not to serve private inter- 

 ests or secure exclusive privileges to a 

 few. but to promote the general welfare 

 of the whole. We shall soon learn, if 

 we do not already know it, that those 

 words "the general welfare," at which the 

 constitutional lawyers sometimes shy, 

 are really the key note of the Constitu- 

 tion of the United States. We should re- 

 peat that pregnant phrase "government 

 of the people, by the people, and for the 

 people," until its meaning and spirit are 

 indelibly printed on heart and brain. 

 That is what we are slowly coming to — 

 the comprehension of a great truth. Per- 

 sonalities are only incidental, great and 

 valuable though they may be. 



^ i^ ^ 



Pulp Wood Economies 



THE article by Mr. Griffin on econo- 

 mic selection and processing of raw 

 materials in the paper industry, pub- 

 lished last month in American For- 

 estry, is suggestive of a great opportu- 

 nity for economy in production that will 

 sensibly promote the conservation of 

 our forest resources. Mr. Griffin shows 

 that the wide variation in the character 



