EDITORIAL 



533 



that damage by floods and erosion will 

 likely cost the State hundreds of thou- 

 sands of dollars a year. 



With these facts before them and 

 with the knowledge that the protection 

 of its vast extent of timber is undoubt- 

 edly one of the foremost concerns of the 

 State, the Commissioners are cheered 

 by the knowledge that the appropriation 

 available for the general purposes of 

 the Commission is much greater for 

 the present fiscal year than it has been 

 before. This being the case, it appears 

 that one of the first duties of the Com- 



mission should be to establish a State 

 department of forestry so that special 

 attention may be given to the State's 

 limbered land. Fortunately, the mem- 

 bers of the commission — M. L. Alexan- 

 der, J. A. Dayries and E. T. Leche — are 

 broad-minded, wide-awake men who 

 see the necessity for forest conservation 

 and who will doubtless do all that they 

 can to protect the forests of the State. 

 It is to be hoped that soon will come the 

 announcement that the forests have 

 been placed under the management of a 

 special forestry department. 



IT IS gratifying to every supporter 

 of forest conservation to know of 

 such a broad-minded expression of 

 opinion by W. B. Townsend, of 

 Townsend, Tenn., a lumberman, who in 

 a paper written for the meeting of the 

 North Carolina Forestry Association at 

 Asheville, N. C, on June 10, said: 



'T am mightily interested in what I 

 call an 'Imperial Domain' — the Great 

 Appalachians and their timber, compris- 

 ing, I am told, more than 235 million 

 acres, extending from Maryland to 

 Texas, including Arkansas, Oklahoma 

 and Missouri. This domain is consid- 

 erably larger than all of the New Eng- 

 land States, combined with New York, 

 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana 

 and Wisconsin, comprising not only 

 nearly half of the remaining timber sup- 

 ply of the United States, but by far the 

 most valuable kind. This means that 

 through a spirit of conservation this 

 immense supply of timber and the 

 proper marketing of it is brought more 

 and more to the attention of those 

 directly and financially interested, and 

 that by pro])er management and wise 

 use this source of wealth to the South 

 can be made to yield perpetually an 

 income, which, in importance and size, 

 is second only to the South's cotton 

 crop. This feature is especially perti- 



nent for the reason that practically half 

 of all the timber cut in the United 

 States in 1913 was cut in these southern 

 States. 



"A very necessary item that should 

 not be overlooked is that of eliminating 

 politics from the true conservation of 

 this timber crop. With an appropria- 

 tion of sufficient funds for fire protec- 

 tion and these funds properly adminis- 

 tered the perpetuity of this great indus- 

 try will be insured. 



"I am, as stated, mightily interested 

 and it seems to me that all of us should 

 be interested in seeing this timber con- 

 served, manufactured and marketed in 

 an intelligent manner; not in a manner 

 attempted by one of our northern 

 States, where not even the mature and 

 ripe timber is permitted to be cut, but 

 allowed to go to waste. What we man- 

 ufacture should be manufactured and 

 marketed in a manner whereby it will 

 be profitable to the community and of 

 advantage to the consumer and with a 

 reasonable and proper compensation for 

 the poor fellow who has the hard 

 knocks to contend with. Let us not lose 

 sight of the fact that the logger and the 

 lumberman are, as a rule, in the strictest 

 sense of the term, the real pioneers of 

 the community in which they operate." 



Peeling Pulp Wood. 



James W. Sewall. of Old Town, Maine, has a crew of men employed in peeling pulp 

 wood at Lowell, Maine. 



