IQOS 



EDITORIAL 



249 



tion of a revolutionary course of con- 

 duct are always the most difficult ; once 

 well started on its way, the course of 

 an educational propaganda, that roots 

 in human necessity, is comparatively 

 €asy. The preliminary steps — the 

 primary grades, as it were — are the 

 ones in which endless tact, exhaust- 

 less patience, and a deep and broad 

 understanding are prime requisites. 

 The propaganda of conservation has 

 been carried on for years, with more 

 or less success, in this country ; every 

 succeeding year a larger number of 

 thinking men and. women have been 

 brought to see the absolute necessity 

 for a program of retrenchment as re- 

 gards natural resources. And now 

 the time has come for a conference 

 such as the one to be held in Washing- 

 ton during the early part of May. 



The whole reading population of 

 the country is more or less familiar 

 with recent events that have led up 

 to the calling of this convention of 

 the Governors, their advisors, and the 

 country's leading men — this national, 

 unofficial conference of public officials, 

 sitting in the capital of the Nation, 

 with the Nation's Chief Executiv, as 

 chairman. Truly unique, this gather- 

 ing; and truly great must have been 

 the crisis that has brought it about. 



The Woods 

 We Have. 



Americans have long 

 been known as a prac- 

 tical people — a nation 

 •of men of business sagacity, with 

 an eye out for the main chance. This 

 "being true, is it not amazing when 

 one considers the indifference of 

 Americans, business men, professional 

 men. farmers and men in every walk 

 of life, in regard to the absolutely vital 

 questions now confronting the coun- 

 try? How slight is the realization — 

 that is, the really popular realization — 

 of the extent to which deforestation, 

 with. all its evil consequences, has been 

 pushed in this country ! It is common 

 to hear one of these uninformed men 

 sav, when forest conservation or re- 

 forestation is under discussion : 



"Bah! All talk! Why, we have 

 plenty of trees ; look at them !" 



And the hand is waved in a horizon- 

 embracing sweep. 



There are trees, to be sure — lots of 

 them. But of what sorts? Go into 

 the woods and count the hickories, 

 the white oaks, the black walnuts, the 

 white walnuts, the elms, and other 

 hardwood trees. It will not require 

 much counting. Even of the ash 

 there are few specimens left ; and rock 

 maple is practically gone. There 

 are woods, to be sure, but what are 

 they? Soft maple, dogwood, sassafras 

 and bushes of various kinds — not even 

 a poplar in a five mile walk through 

 the "plenty-of-wood" the uninformed 

 take in in their sweeping gestures. 



North, and east, and south, and 

 west, the condition is the same. The 

 pines are almost gone ; red cedar is 

 as scarce and as valuable as mahogany, 

 almost ; and about all that is left is 

 beech and soft maple — equally worth- 

 less for lumber — and the undergrowth 

 that gives the appearance of dense for- 

 estation to the hillsides. And there — 

 right there — is the explanation of 

 high lumber prices that confront those 

 who would build their homes. With 

 little or no pine or poplar, little or no 

 elm or ash, little or no oak, rock- 

 maple or walnut, how can one expect 

 to avoid high prices? This much for 

 the purely materialistic, selfish side of 

 the forest question. 



Soil erosion, another phase of this 

 all-embracing problem, comes from 

 deforestation, as surely as rain comes 

 from the clouds. Deforested slopes, 

 mistakenly put under cultivation, 

 plowed, harrowed and left free to 

 throw their soil into the nearest water- 

 courses — how much, in the aggregate, 

 do these take from the nation's wealth 

 in a year's time? Ask the men who 

 work the dredges that are constantly 

 in operation in the harbors of the 

 Atlantic seaboard : ask the men whose 

 task it is to clear the channels by which 

 the Mississippi flows into the Gulf. 

 A billion tons a year, of the most fer- 

 tile soil from the farms of the IMiddle 

 West, wastes itself in the waters of 

 the Gulf of Mexico — enough to make 

 a blanket a foot deep over the entire 



