146 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



March 



rivers and down them. You do not 

 see Pittsburg when you ride through 

 it. It is a great city. You know the 

 United States in the last century did 

 four things. It built the Capitol, the 

 Library, the Washington Monument, 

 and Pittsburg. Some people sneer 

 because a few Pittsburgers have not 

 behaved very well ; but they are a 

 great people. They showed me that 

 those rivers rose up to the second stor- 

 ies of the buildings, and Pittsburg 



mation regarding what they should 

 do ; and they are taking steps, because 

 there are no brighter people on the 

 continent. I give you this as an illus- 

 tration of what must happen if we go 

 on destroying our woods. 



Now, take the headwaters of the 

 New England rivers, take the head- 

 waters of the great rivers of the South ; 

 I have been seeing those places and 

 looking them over. The people are 

 cutting woods away up to the top 



Packing white pine seedlings in boxes for shipment 



runs up the river as far as they took 

 me — for ten or fifteen miles it is still 

 Pittsburg. I said : "Gentlemen, if 

 you don't stop destroying the forests 

 on the headwaters of those two great 

 rivers of yours, the time will come — 

 it may not be next year, it may not be 

 for ten years — but the time will come 

 — when those rivers will rise over the 

 tops of your buildings and sweep them 

 all away." I think I alarmed them. 

 They wrote and asked me to send a 

 forester there to give them some infor- 



there. There are only four or five 

 inches of soil up there, and just as 

 soon as the people get the wood cut. 

 the soil begins to wash away, and this 

 destroys the limited belt upon the 

 mountains ; and that goes on and on 

 and on, and the water that melts from 

 the snows of winter, and the rains that 

 fall in the spring, will not find their 

 first natural receptacle, which is the 

 mountain soil, but they will run at 

 once into the valley; and then in sum- 

 mer time there will be no rivers. 



