EDITORIAL 



633 



4. We offer you a means of 

 wresting from the desert, land long 

 regarded as worthless. 



5. We offer you a means of 

 cheapening the products of the 

 farm, of lightening the labors of 

 the farmer and the farmer's wife. 



6. We offer you a means of con- 

 serving and distributing power and 

 light, driving machinery and fac- 

 tories, drawing passengers and 

 freight and cheapening the prod- 

 ucts of the land. 



7. We oft"er you roads and high- 

 ways, and easy means of reaching 

 the great forest reserves where we 

 will operate our plants. 



8. We offer you these things 

 without consuming one drop of 

 water, without lessening the re- 

 sources of the country, but promise 

 you that our work will assist, help 

 and contribute toward the very 

 purpose to which we all stand 

 pledged ; namely, the conserving 

 of the natural resources of the 

 Nation. 



The matter of adjusting what- 

 ever differences that here arise be- 

 tween the Government and the 

 hydro-electric companies are not 

 questions of law ; they are business 

 questions, questions of policy, ques- 

 tions that require good, wholesome 

 common sense. 



If any one representing the 

 hydro-electric interests, have at any 

 time joined the despoiling lumber- 

 man's selfish crusade against forest 

 reservation as a Government policy, 

 they have made a woeful blunder. 

 The hydro-electric enterprises in 

 effect and in spirit are in complete 

 harmony with the movement. They 

 ask nothing that diminishes in the 

 slightest a single natural resource ; 

 they offer a means of conserving 

 the very valuable and rapidly dis- 

 appearing resources of the country 

 to which the policy of the Govern- 

 ment stands pledged. 



At no point do their interests 

 chafe against the working plan of 

 conservation. There is no friction, 

 and there should be none, any- 



where between the Government 

 and the electric people. There will 

 be differences of opinion ; a dozen 

 questions may arise that need ad- 

 justment ; but the individual who, 

 in the cause of the hydro-electric 

 interests, goes into this matter 

 with a club in one hand and a com- 

 plaint at law in the other is going 

 to lead the hydro-electric interests 

 into a controversy where they do 

 not belong — not for the present, at 

 any rate. 



A'ictories won in the teeth of 

 public opinion arc costly affairs at 

 best. The victor reaps a harvest 

 of trouble in the years to come. 

 We have justice and right on our 

 side, and in the end it must prevail. 

 First let us try common sense. 

 »w »« ^j 



Interest of Public School Pupils in Forest 

 Conservation 



TN ANOTHER part of this issue we 

 A print two articles which are rather 

 unusual. The articles appear under 

 the head of "Communications," and 

 were sent to us by members of The 

 American Forestry Association for pub- 

 lication in CoxsERVATiON. We refer 

 to the two esays, one by Aliss Ellen M. 

 Hastings, of the Elk River (Minnesota) 

 High School, and the other by Henry 

 Gregory Allyn, a pupil of the eighth 

 form of one of the Philadelphia schools. 



These articles, or essays, rather, in- 

 dicate in an unmistakable manner the 

 interest that is growing up among 

 American school children in the subject 

 of forestry and its relation to the 

 broader general subject of conservation 

 of the nation's natural resources. The 

 value of the contributions lies not in 

 any new statements, or the expression 

 of any novel opinions, but rather in the 

 fact that both of these papers show that 

 the writers have certainly assimilated 

 the basic facts of the great problem of 

 taking care of the resources we have 

 and of replacing those resources that we 

 have wasted. 



The fact has long been recognized 

 that a fertile field of effort lies ready 

 to our hands in the public schools of the 



