EDITORIAL 



753 



seem to realize that the average individual is apt to put 

 his private gain ahead of public good, and that there are 

 common interests which must inevitably suffer unless pro- 

 tected by efficient and capable public oiificials. 



If we had no state or national officials to direct and 

 organize the work, what private agencies would undertake 

 to fight the blister canker and to overcome the hostility of 

 interested nurserymen who refuse to sacrifice their busi- 

 ness profits or the selfish obstinacy of land owners who 

 will not permit diseased pines to be removed because they 

 are still picturesque. 



Previous to 1912 there was no means of preventing 

 private importations of white pine from Europe. Yet, 

 in 1909 the disease had been extensively advertised 

 when trees shipped to New York from a German nursery 

 were discovered to be so badly infested that on opening 

 the packages the spores rose in clouds of yellow dust. 

 Plantations of white pine made on state lands in New 

 York from imported stock were promptly eradicated, root 

 and branch, by the state foresters, in spite of healthy 

 appearance and rapid growth. But importations contin- 

 ued during this three-year period, and some who should 

 have known better shut their eyes to the risk and im- 

 perilled the safety of our most valuable timber trees be- 

 cause unwilling to face the possibility of a slight monetary 

 loss at the start. We now know the result. In 1912 the 

 Federal Horticultural Board, a new body designed to 

 cope with problems of this character, prohibited further 

 importations of white pine, thus placing a secure and 

 thief-proof padlock on the barn door. Nearly four years 

 afterwards, the nation has awakened to find that the horse 

 is gone, and that the animal has travelled so far that his 

 recovery is almost despaired of. 



The disease works slowly and insidiously on pines, but 

 once broken out into eruptions of reddish spores, which 

 process may take two to six years, it jumps to the currant 

 and gooseberry leaves and spreads rapidly before the wind. 



We know now that nothing but the extermination of 

 all imported white pines promptly upon the discovery of 

 the disease would have effectually stopped this spread. 

 But this summ.ary action, taken by New York, was not 

 duplicated by other states, by nurserymen, or individuals, 

 nor was there any organized effort on the whole to fol- 

 low up the private nurserymen, shippers of ornamental 



stock, whose infected trees, in small lots, had been widely 

 sold before the disease had become known. The National 

 Government is without the power to destroy private prop- 

 erty. The states were apathetic. The Federal Horti- 

 cultural Board, appealed to in order to secure an inter- 

 state embargo on the shipments of pines and currants, did 

 not feel justified in imposing this burden on private 

 enterprise, but requested nurserymen to refrain from 

 shipping currants or gooseberry bushes to the Rocky 

 Mountain states. 



This suggestion was indignantly scorned by the Middle 

 West, which thought itself free from the disease and had 

 been refused protection against the East. But in May 

 of this year the blister canker was discovered in Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota along the southern border of the great 

 white pine areas of those states. Its source was traced 

 directly to foreign stock sold by an Illinois nursery in 

 1908 to a firm at St. Croix Falls in Wisconsin, and from 

 there purchased and introduced into two commercial nur- 

 series in Minnesota on ornamental white pines. Eight 

 years have already elapsed since the first diseased trees 

 were set out in Wisconsin — it may now prove too late to 

 stop the spread of the disease in these states. 



The test of a civilization is its ability to meet new 

 dangers, and to quickly adapt itself to unexpected situa- 

 tions. Confusion, hesitancy, differences of opinion, lack of 

 initiative, opposition to energetic measures, and confes- 

 sion of failure before the fight is begun, are qualities that 

 would endear us to possible enemies, for they show a 

 total lack of ability to resist invasion. 



What is the lesson? We must have men in public ser- 

 vice who are trained to their duties, and then keep them 

 there. We must be guided by expert opinion, and not too 

 blatant in demanding our individual right to do as we 

 please. Wherever effective public action is taken to com- 

 bat this disease, the officials in charge of the work must 

 be trained men, foresters or plant pathologists, with a 

 practical as well as a scientific viewpoint. 



Whatever is the outcome, — whether the white pine is 

 to go the way of the chestnut or continue as our most 

 valuable of all forest trees, — we must now adopt meas- 

 ures to prevent the importation of other tree enemies. We 

 do not intend, if we can avoid it, to let our remaining- 

 forests burn up as of old, nor fall a prey to any other 

 new and devastating imported bug or fungus enemy. 



GREAT FRIEND OF FORESTRY DEAD 



JOSHUA L. BAILY, an ardent and enthusiastic sup- 

 porter of forest conservation, died in Philadelphia a 

 few days ago, and the cause of forestry has lost a 

 friend who did much to encourage it. Mr. Baily was for 

 many years a vice-president of the American Forestry As- 

 sociation and seldom failed to attend a meeting, num- 

 bering as he did, his activities for the conservation of the 



forests as one of his chief duties as a wide-awake and 

 far-seeing citizen. One of Mr. Baily's recent acts for the 

 cause was typical — he made forty of Philadelphia's public 

 schools subscribing members of the Association, thereby 

 providing thousands of school children and hundreds of 

 teachers with information about the forests which will 

 make them lovers and protectors of trees and woodlands. 



