418 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



friends of forestry who were anxious 

 that the fight should be continued. 

 Fully 200 trained men were engaged in 

 the battle at one time, and every county 

 and nook of the State had been thor- 

 oughly scouted when the final orders 

 to discontinue all further outdoor work 

 were issued. His Excellency, Governor 



Tener, who is a staunch friend of for- 

 estry, has at all times been in hearty 

 accord to save the chestnut of Penn- 

 sylvania, while the National State for- 

 estr)' officials also were always strongly 

 cooperating with the Chestnut Tree 

 Blight Commission. 



CONSERVATION FOR LUMBERMEN 



A 



T THE recent meeting of the 

 National Lumber Manufacturers 

 Association in Chicago, Capt. 

 J. B. White, of Kansas City, 

 Mo., reporting as chairman of the con- 

 servation committee, outlined in vigor- 

 ous language just what conservation of 

 the forests does mean now and may 

 mean in the future for the lumbermen. 

 He said in part on this subject: 



"I believe that conservation is good 

 for about all the ills that lumbermen 

 are heirs to. I believe it will cure all 

 the ills that afflict the lumber body. I 

 believe that if we would conserve, if 

 we could legally conserve our timber 

 resources, that we would be doing some- 

 thing of benefit to ourselves in this gen- 

 eration, and to all succeeding genera- 

 tions, and everyone says, 'That is our 

 duty.' They say it is the duty of us 

 individually to practice conservation, 

 but it is a crime if we get together and 

 agree upon a method of conservation ; 

 and that is the position we are in. We 

 are told that we should conserve ; we 

 are told that we should make no more 

 lumber than the market requires ; we 

 are told that we should market and sell 

 everything in that tree when we cut 

 that tree down, and yet we are not 

 permitted to get together and agree on 

 how this can be done economically. 

 And so I have said that I wish some 

 one would do it for us 



'T wish it were ])ossi])le for the Na- 

 tion to pass a law, uniform in all the 

 States, that would make it a crime to 

 leave any part of the tree in the woods 

 that would make lumber good enough 

 for a hog pen, a sidewalk, or for sheath- 

 ing on a house, for boxes or for any- 



thing else, and if it were made a crmi- 

 inal offense, and if the very fact of 

 your finding the tops of trees in the 

 woods, scattered throughout the forests, 

 were regarded as prima facie evidence 

 that you had violated the law by com- 

 mitting waste, there should be some 

 way of going to the penitentiary, or else 

 making the price high enough so that 

 you could afford to bring that log in. 

 "Now, if we can not get together 

 c'jnd agree upon a method that is prac- 

 tical and economical and possible, some 

 of our legislators and politicians ought 

 to pass laws that would be so drastic 

 that we could not escape saving our 

 forests without going to the peniten- 

 tiary. Now, that is not an o\erdrawn 

 picture ; it is an absolute fact. I think 

 that we are committing a crime if we 

 waste our trees and leave nothing for 

 future generations. 



TREE-PLANTING LOGIC. 



"We have been told that we should 

 plant trees. We have found by ob- 

 servation, by examining the forests of 

 foreign countries, that trees are planted 

 and can be planted here at a profit, but 

 not when we can buy trees already 

 grown for half the amount that it will 

 cost to grow them. Unless we can get 

 for our stumpage something near what 

 it will cost to grow a poor substitute in 

 a second-growth tree, we are not going 

 to practice conservation ; and as a wise 

 old solon — he is not old — he may not 

 be here ; I do not see him ; he was here 

 this morning — I call him a wise old 

 solon, but we used to call him the silver- 

 tongued orator when he attended our 

 conventions some years ago — he said 



