62 NRBRA>>KA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



IS nothing to detain them and the people of Texas must suffer from the 

 vandalism of Arizona, just as the people of our southern states must 

 lose millions from the rapaciousness of Northern lumbermen who for 

 the dollar for today would mortgage the whole future of those who 

 must suffer from their greed. 



Go into Colorado and vandalism is there. The mountains are robbed 

 of their beauty. The upland pastrues are overfed and you have desola- 

 tion instead of beauty. A pioneer in the Rockies said: "I think we early 

 settlers should have great credit in coming in here and starting things.'" 

 I replied: "If you never had seen this country and had left it today as 

 God made it, it would be worth five times as much as it is now." 



Our railroads are great civilizers, but the fires set by the engines 

 leave a track of b3,rbarism behind them. See how it is in Washington 

 and Oregon. The lumber barons who have wrought such ruin at the 

 North are now at work among the grandest forests ever grown. They 

 seem to concentrate all their energies there to complete the work of ruin. 

 Every device is resorted to to get possession of lands which belong to 

 the people. Take the Appalachian mountains. The forests are being 

 cut down, the beautiful rivers are filled with rubbish, sand and stones 

 are carried onto fertile valley farms. In a short time eighteen millions 

 of damage was inflicted and congress looks on in indifference and the 

 horror grows. 



When you come to the farm you see also a terrific waste. In the 

 East the earth is washed away and the rocks and stones are left, no 

 thought or care taken to save the soil. Many beautiful regions where 

 heavy crops were grown are now deserted and you can buy farms for 

 balf what the buildings cost. 



There are no richer lands on earth than the great prairies of the 

 West, and here in God's richest garden there have been two sources 

 of disaster. The first is cropping lanQs without remuneration, raising 

 wheat year after year with no manure, till some of the richest farms 

 of Minnesota are now so reduced they will hardly raise chicken feed. 

 This system of waste applies to rich level lands. There is a double 

 system applied to hillside lands — robbing the soil and allowing it to 

 wash. I have known the richest soil to be swept away by a single 

 heavy rain, so the whole furrow would be gone and you could see the 

 plow marks. Stand by any of our streams after a heavy rain and you 

 will see the very cream of our field going to the Gulf of IMexico. 



It is waste, waste everywhere. Most feeders will have their feed 

 lots perched on some steep hillside if they can find such a place, so 

 that the richest fertilizer the world produces can be utterly swept away 

 without any trouble on their part, and they keep on growing twenty- 

 five bushels of corn to the acre, when by saving the manure and plowing 

 their land deep they might have 100 bushels. 



Our coal lands with their marvelous deposits have been well-nigh 

 given away. I have seen veins of coal eleven feet deep which the wise 

 United States government sold for $10 per acre. Streams with water- 

 falls that were gold mines havp been parted with for a song. 



