WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 311 



nessed the sneers at the outlandish notions of this "foreigner" in the 

 Interior department ; notions that, as was said, might do for a picayun- 

 ish German principality, but were altogether contemptible when applied 

 to this great and free country of ours." 



From this pen picture of the forestry system administered by the 

 general government in the past, let us glance for a moment over the 

 system pursued by many lumber syndicates, cutting down the pineries 

 of the North, and grasping with a greedy hand those of the Southern 

 States. " A don't care for the future, go through it all " policy has 

 ruled this industry in the past, and is still holding sway, and will con- 

 tinue as long as new timber lands can be bought up, comparatively 

 speaking, for a song. A cyclone of devastation has passed over a 

 large portion of the most valuable pine districts of the Northern 

 States, as timber becomes scarcer; the last vestage of the stumpage 

 left behind in tlusher days, is cut off to feed the mills for a substitute 

 of the heavy saw logs of the past. 



The denuded and ruined lands are then turned over to the animal 

 industry for range and pasture- 



The advocates of a rational system of American industry, in har- 

 mony with the enlightened and civilized ideas of our day, claim protec- 

 tion for the public forests against the reckless modes of devastation, 

 at least as far as wise legislation and faithful enforcement of the law 

 can allay these evils. They claim the reservation of forest ranges in 

 which the headwaters of our leading rivers and their principal tribu- 

 taries are located. They do not pretend to say, as often accused, that 

 these reservations should be kept unused, or be miserly guarded, but 

 that they should be made useful in a way preventing their ultimate 

 destruction, perpetuating in this wise for posterity the national bless- 

 ings flowing throughout our water courses, and from our wealth of 

 forest resources unequalled by any other land. The day is past to re- 

 turn no more when a rational consideration of this important subject 

 can be stifled or ridiculed by an outcry against foreign notions im- 

 ported from abroad. 



The day, on the other hand, is not distant when the intelligence of 

 the people will force the legislatures of the States to institute commis- 

 sions to guard and protect their respective forest interests. New 

 York has already taken the lead in this direction to atone to some 

 extent for the devastation of the Adriondack mountains, the conse- 

 quence of which is a diminution of thirty or fifty per cent of the volume 

 of the waters of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. Pennsylvania is 

 clamoring loudly for some redress from the spoliation of her mountain 



