144 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



March 



grow tobacco and could not make 

 sugar in the United States, because 

 labor was so cheap in the Orient. I 

 said : "That is worth inquiring into ; I 

 must see into that. Maybe I am go- 

 ing too fast in asking Congress to give 

 money to do things that can be better 

 done by other people." And so I said 

 to my people: "Ascertain how much 

 an American citizen with his improved 

 machinery can grow in a year, and 

 how much rice an Oriental with his 



or forty years ago and settled in the 

 woods resented the idea that it did not 

 belong to him. When the forestry peo- 

 ple, working for the Government, be- 

 gan to show him better ways of stop- 

 ping fires and reforesting and all that, 

 for a long time he could not get rid of 

 the idea that those forests belonged to 

 him and nobody else. 



I recollect asking a man I met up in 

 Montana (I had known him way back 

 in Iowa, in the early days), "How do 



Burnt hillside new in Bitter Root National Forest, Montana, burned off 25 years ago — 

 Lacks protection for snow and rainfall — Here is where tree planting on a large 

 scale is needed 



old-fashioned machinery and old-fash- 

 ioned ways can grow in a year." And 

 I discovered, when I got all the re- 

 ports, that the one American could do 

 as nuich as four hundred Orientals. 

 We do not need such a crowd of Ori- 

 entals to come here to do cheap work. 

 We want to educate the American — 

 and let the world look out for the edu- 

 cated American. 



In all directions we are making 

 progress in these lines. In the first 

 place, the man who went West thirty 



you like the forest policy of the United 

 States?" He said, "I don't like to 

 have to go to a forest office and tell 

 them I want so many loads of wood."* 

 "Don't you always get it?" "Oh, yes. 

 Rut, hang it ! I used to go and take it." 

 "Yes, but we want you now to take 

 what will do no harm. We want to 

 save the young growth, the trees that 

 will make good wood hereafter." 

 They are gradually getting out of that 

 old idea. They are gradually learning 

 that the Federal Government is not 



