EDITORIAL 



The Business Side of Conservation 



IT IS a fact not readily understand- 

 able that the preservation and con- 

 servation of our natural resources has 

 not, heretofsre, seemed to have any 

 particular appeal to the mass of busi- 

 ness men of the United States. In 

 fact, it is true, and has been true for a 

 great many years — ever since the in- 

 ception of the conservation plan as ap- 

 plied to our forests, in particular — that 

 college-bred men, scientists and the like, 

 have waged the battles, while hard- 

 headed, practical "men of affairs" 

 have jeered and obstructed. Of 

 course, this is not universally true ; but 

 as a general proposition- it cannot be 

 gainsaid. College professors, men of 

 science — the class of men for whom 

 your average "business man" has a 

 hearty and ill-concealed contempt — 

 have been the ones to tell the world 

 what will be the inevitable result if a 

 continuance in the course of reckless 

 waste and extravagance as regards 

 timber, etc., unless their warnings 

 were heeded ; the men who "dream," 

 as the hard-headed ones declare, have 

 for years and years been telling these 

 "practical men of aflfairs" to what they 

 were coming, and to what they were 

 bringing the land, by their "practical" 

 exploitation of all of nature's resources. 

 It is a healthy symptom to see that these 

 same practical men are beginning to 

 realize that the dreamers dreamed true ; 

 and it augurs well for the cause of con- 

 servation in general to know that at 

 last the business sense of the country 

 has been Awakened. 



)g )^ «« 



As a Money-'saving Proposition 



LOOKING at the matter solely from 

 the practical side, the grossly ma- 

 terial view-point, it seems strange that 

 this awakening has been so long defer- 

 548 



red. For instance, Pittsburg has for 

 years been subjected to disastrous an- 

 nual floods, during which the business 

 section of the city, and Allegheny, have 

 been laid waste and prostrated under 

 sweeping torrents of water from the 

 Ohio and the Monongahela and Alle- 

 gheny rivers. At any time it would 

 have been entirely practicable to do 

 away with the flood visitations ; at any 

 time in the past quarter century it 

 would have been an easy matter for 

 the business element of Pittsburg- to 

 secure legislation looking toward the 

 reforestation of the watersheds of these 

 rivers ; at any time in that period it 

 would have been easy for this business 

 element to pave the way for the inaug- 

 uration of a policy of reservoir build- 

 ing, the damming of valleys and the 

 storage of flood waters that have been 

 wasted — worse than wasted, indeed, 

 because of the millions of dollars of 

 damage these waters have done. But 

 no ; the business element taking the 

 fatalistic view-point, or the criminally 

 careless one, did nothing ; the denuded 

 hillsides and mountainsides have re- 

 mained largely as the ravaging lumber- 

 man left them ; the waters have been 

 permitted to pour unobstructed • into 

 the valleys and lay waste the towns, 

 the villages, and the cities, and the dam- 

 age done has been charged, probably, 

 to profit and loss, or to "visitatissns of 

 Providence." Scripture says, "The 

 wages of sin is death." Carelessness, 

 heedlessness, ignorance, is sin ; and the 

 wages of either of these is likewise 

 death — death to the individual, or to 

 the community, or to material well- 

 being and prosperity. 



«i >g »^ 

 Reforestation Good Business 



FROM even the solely utilitarian, 

 present-day view-point, a general 

 policy of reforestation — together with a 



