MsMm 



Vol. XIV 



MARCH, 1908 



No. 3 



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EDITORIAL 



The As might have been ex- 



Constitutional pected to occur in due 

 Question ' ^1 v 1 1 • 



course, the Appalachian- 

 White Mountain Bill is, at this writ- 

 ing, facing the legal sphinx. The 

 question is, Is such legislation consti- 

 tutional ? 



At the Annual Meeting ' this ques- 

 tion was argued by Mr. Harvey N. 

 Shepard and also by Congressman 

 Lever. On the following day, at the 

 hearing before the Committee on 

 Agriculture of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives, Mr. Shepard again and, 

 also, Hon. Hoke Smith. Governor of 

 Georgia, spoke to the same question. 

 Since then, the House has referred 

 the bill to its Committee on Judiciarv, 

 before which a hearing has been an- 

 nounced for Thursday, February 

 27th. 



Dr. Samuel Johnson once declared 

 that " 'Patriotism' is the last refuge of 

 a scoundrel." Likewise, since the be- 

 ginning of our constitutional era, con- 

 stitutionalism, though sometimes in 

 order, has usually proved the last re- 

 fuge of the obstructionist. In his 

 Constitutional History of the United 

 States Dr. A^on Hoist has commented 

 l)ointedly on this fact. When all o^her 



LIBRAE 

 NEW YO 

 BOTANIC 



QAROE, 



arguments against a genuinely good 

 thing have failed, its opponents seek 

 to prove it "unconstitutional." 



Consider the situation. As is well 

 known to the readers of this publica- 

 tion, it includes such facts as the fol- 



lowing 



Our forests are going at a 



rate which will consume them in about 

 a third of a century ; the beginnings 

 of a timber famine are already with 

 us. The reclamation of our Western 

 deserts depends upon the existence of 

 forests in the mountains adjacent to 

 the deserts. Largely through defores- 

 tation, one billion dollars worth or 

 more of fertile soil is annually being- 

 swept into our rivers and harbors ; 

 thus, at one and the same time, impov- 

 erishing our fields, impairing our 

 commerce, and occasioning disas- 

 trous floods, costing the Nation an- 

 nually some hundred million dollars. 

 Our inland waters, our greatest nat- 

 ural resource, are largely running to 

 waste, an amount representing an in- 

 vestment of more than one billion dol- 

 lars running idly over Government 

 dams. To the conservation of these 

 waters, forests are essential. The 

 question, again, of draining our 

 swamps is closely connected with that 



