250 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. ©oc. 



Forestiy is here to stay. It is a profession. Only the wide- 

 awake agriculturist can hope to succeed in his calling. To this end 

 the State provides a college for instruction in agriculture. This 

 is all right. The only fault I have to find is that the State does 

 not provide for it as liberally as other states do for theirs. So 

 it is with instruction in forestry. The State College is anxious to 

 gi\e thorough instruction in this. There is no class of citizens 

 whoso interests are more wrapped up in the water supply for the 

 soil than you are, and there is no other known agency under our 

 control than forests bv which it can be influenced. 



We desire to take lads on the Mont Alto forest reservation and 

 give them a chance to do a good work for the State and earn for 

 themselves a living and an education at the same time. There, in the 

 woods, is the place to learn practical forestry. From among those 

 lads the best will aspire to a higher education in the science of 

 forestrv at the State College. 



I am not a political economist. The complications of financial 

 relations puzzle and confuse me; but there is one fact which is 

 so plain that even I can recognize it — to wit: The farmer produdes 

 the food of the nation. The keen business man handles it on the 

 markets of the world and sells wheat which he never saw, bv the 

 thousands of bushels. The farmer's profit, if there is any, is a 

 mere margin. The financiers' profit mounts up into a fortune. The 

 farmer ends his days usually on a mere living, the latter ends his, 

 as a rule, in affluence. It appears hardly fair that the one who 

 produces that upon which we live, and out of which fortunes grow 

 should receive less substantial benefits than the one who merely 

 sells it. There are but two things which can change this and 

 equalize the returns, namely, education and organization. Yon will 

 understand, then, why I am so earnest and persistent in my appeal 

 1o you to demand for vour sons an education which will fit them to 

 compete successfully in the world's work. I can recognize no 

 eternal fitness, or reason, which relegates the farmer or the for- 

 ester to a position inferior to that of his commercial brother. 

 There is another point to which allusion should be made here in 

 connection with the State Forestry Reservation. It is this. The 

 tendency of the age appears to be irresistibly toward those com- 

 binations of capital, called trusts. • I am not of the mmiber who 

 consider these wholly undesirable. They undoubtedly do possess 

 great power for good and for bad. In my judgment. President 

 Roosevelt has taken, as he usually does, the sensible position that 

 we should allow them to render all the public service they can, 

 but curb them when by any abuse of power their tendency comes 

 to be evil. 



The large bodies of unutilized land in this and in other states 



