THE ADIKONDACK PROBLEM 55 



State has a real interest, continue to be destroyed without let or hindrance. 

 It is time to stop. 



I would not be understood as charging that the Adirondack lumbermen 

 as a body are bad citizens, or that they are purposely injuring the State which 

 protects them. On the contrary, many of them are anxious to improve the 

 present unfortunate conditions. For example, the Emporium Lumber Com- 

 pany, which owns about 82,000 acres of Adirondack forests, has agreed to 

 carry out a plan for cutting, to be prepared by the writer, on an area of 

 one square mile, as a first step toward what I hope will be the conservative 

 logging of the whole tract. As Mr. W. L. Sykes, President of the Company, 

 well says, the difference between conservative logging and forest destruction 

 is that in the one case the timber land is an increasing asset, in the other a) 

 diminishing one. 



PRACTICAL LEGISLATION REQUIRED 



One of the most important recommendations I have to make is that The 

 Camp-Fire Club shall invite a Committee of the Empire State Forest Products 

 Association to join with a committee of its own in working out the details 

 of practical legislation, which shall protect the interests of the lumbermen 

 at the same time that it prevents the destruction of the forests. Mr. F. L. 

 Moore, President of the Association, has already expressed his entire approval 

 of this plan. The Conservation Commission should be represented at any 

 such conference by the Superintendent of State Forests. In my judgment, a 

 perfectly practicable scheme can be worked out under which the added cost to 

 the lumbermen of practicing forestry as against destroying the forests should 

 seldom if ever exceed a cost of 25 cents per thousand feet of logs cut. 



But not all of the Adirondack lumbering concerns are controlled by men 

 of good will. A peculiarly aggravated case of needless and conscienceless 

 vandalism is supplied by the Brooklyn Cooperage Company, a subsidiary 

 organization of the Sugar Trust. The logging done by this company is more 

 destructive than any other with which I am acquainted in the Eastern 

 States, and the damage by fires for which its carelessness is said to be 

 responsible, will cost the people of New York large sums of money and long 

 years of time to repair. When requested by the Conservation Commission to 

 take simple and necessary precautions against fire, it peremptorily refused 

 to do so. 



The Brooklyn Cooperage Company controls by ownership and lease 123,000 

 acres in the Adirondacks. Unless this organization is restrained by the 

 strong hand of the State, every acre of that land will be despoiled of its 

 forest growth and swept clean by fire. 



In my judgment, to destroy in this fashion forests whose destruction 

 hurts the State is as much a mark of bad citizenship as for a man in 

 town to set fire to his own house. There is no more moral right in the one 

 case than in the other; and the time is rapidly approaching when there will 

 be no more legal right either. 



I recommend the passage of a law which will require the lumbermen 



