THE HARDWOOD RECORD. 



II 



but should be proud to be identified witli 

 it. 



And !io backwnrd stop will be taken. 

 The National association is moving for- 

 ward to the fulfillment of its mission with 

 a steadiness and power which is irresist- 

 ilile. 



At a meeting of the board of governors 

 of the House of Hoo-Hoo, held in St. 

 Louis June 17, it was reported that about 

 3,000 additional mombere are needed to 

 complete the membership list, and tlie sec- 

 rotary was instructed to use all possible 

 haste to secure these at once in order not 

 to delay any longer the construction of 

 the building as originally designed. Great 

 progress has been made in the matter of 

 membership during the past thirty days, 

 and those contemplating joining this club 

 sliould not postpone action any further, 

 but join at once. Application for mem- 

 bersliip should be addressed to George E. 

 Watson, .1200 Fullerton building, St. Louis, 

 Mo. 



In tlais connection it is hardly necessary 

 to remind the readers of the Record that 

 the privileges of the club are available for 

 all lumliermen and i-epresentatives of 

 allied industries, whether they be members 

 of the Hoo-Hoo order or not, and the build- 

 ing projected promises every comfort and 

 convenience to its members. 



It was further reported at this meeting 

 that applications from many associations 

 of manufacturers had been received and 

 accepted for rooms to be finished with 

 their product, and nearly all of the rooms 

 in the building are now taken. In fact, 

 such success has crowned the efforts in 

 this direction that the building promises 

 to be a more complete exposition of the 

 commercial woods of the United States 

 than was first anticipated. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAWLESSNESS. 



Law is the foundation of society. It is 

 what has lifted man above the other ani- 

 mals. Law is what holds a nation or a 

 community together, and whenever a na- 

 tion or a community loses its regard for 

 law it enters upon a career the end of 

 which is destruction. 



This nation is the most lawless, to-day. 

 of any in the civilized world. There is 

 less respect for, and more violations of, 

 the law in this than in any other country 

 w'ith pretensions to culture. 



And the lawlessness is by no means con- 

 fined to what in other countries would be 

 called the "criminal classes." In most of 

 the European countries the recognizee', 

 criminal classes are practically the only 

 violators of the law. It is different in 

 America. We are a nation of lawbreakers. 



Many of our most dangerous and persist 

 ent violators of our laws are among our 

 most eminent business men and financiers. 

 Our labor unions are not by any means 

 composed of our criminal classes. They 

 represent a valuable element of our citi- 

 zenship, fully up to the average, and yet 

 the members of those unions think nothing 

 of violating laws to carry their point. 



A large part of the lack of reverence 

 for our laws undoubtedly comes from the 

 fact that many of them are dishonestly 

 made or dishonestly enforced, and the peo- 

 ple at large very well know it. 



It is difficult to have a man respect 

 a law which he not only deems an unjust 

 law, but which he knows was bought and 

 paid for. And it is becoming more and 

 more a question with our people, not how 

 the laws may be upheld, but how they 

 may be violated without bringing punish- 

 ment. 



A law is passed in a city, for instance, 

 providing that no frame structures shall 

 be erected within certain limits. Now, in 

 France or Germany or England that law 

 Avould be obeyed, but in this country it is 

 not. The business man who wishes to 

 erect a frame building within the pro- 

 scribed limits hunts up the building in- 

 spector for his district and blindfolds him 

 with a greenback so effectively that he 

 cannot, or at least does not, see the viola- 

 tion of the law he is hired to enforce. So 

 that the law's agent for securing enforce- 

 ment of its decrees becomes the chief in- 

 strument in their violation. And does the 

 neighbor who knows of the transaction 

 expose it? No; he condoiies it and laughs 

 at it, for lie is in the conspiracy to promote 

 lawlessness. The whole country Is in it. 



The people have no faith in those who 

 make or enforce the laws, and are too 

 busy raking in the dollars to turn out at 

 the elections and straighten things out; 

 so they go hustling good-humoredly along 

 dei>ending on evading sucdi laws as are in- 

 convenient, and when they come against a 

 dead wall climb over by means of a pile 

 of greenbacks. When very large interests 

 are at stake and evasion of a troublesome 

 law is too expensive or dangerous, the 

 business men make up a "slush fund" and 

 hire the legislative body to make them a 

 law to their taste. 



And when, after a long carnival of par- 

 ticipation in such lawlessness, or being wit- 

 ness thereto, it should not so shock the 

 good people that an excited crowd occa- 

 sionally thrusts the law aside and strings 

 up a negro. There are violations of law 

 in Chicago, and in every large city, every 

 day, as dangerous to the public welfare 

 as is the hanging of a guilty negro without 

 warrant of law; and these violations are 

 well known and those engaged in them 

 not only go free but occupy a position high 

 in the esteem of their fellow citizens. 



It would be amusing if it were not so 

 shameful to see a man who has been for 

 years violating the laws in a cold-blooded 



and corrupt manner, hold up his hands in 

 horror because some excited people, under 

 severe provocation and with his own ex- 

 ample of successful lawlessness before 

 them, hang a man for violating the law 

 and hang him without the trouble of go- 

 ing through a trial. The respectable citi- 

 zen who has been for years violating the 

 law, not under the spur of excitement, but* 

 cold-bloodedly and viciously, and for his 

 ow]i profit, is the greater criminal. 



The disea.<ie which produces lynchings 

 is not local. It is constitutional. It pe°r- 

 meates the entire body politic. 



We are a lawless people. We have for 

 years been planting the seed of which 

 these horrible lynchings are the ripened 

 fruit. 



And we must consider, not what con- 

 dign punishment we may visit upon the 

 lynchers, so much as what we may do to 

 bring up the rising generation with a 

 wholesome veneration for the law. It is 

 useless to keep cutting out tliese ugly sores 

 when they break out. We must purify 

 the blood so that the sores will be impos- 

 sible. 



COLLEGE OF FORESTRY TO BE DIS- 

 CONTINUED. 



On June 17, at its annual spring meeting, 

 the board of trustees of Cornell University 

 decided to suspend instruction in the New 

 York State College of Forestry. This ac- 

 tion w^as brought about by Governor 

 Odell's veto of the annual state appropria- 

 tion of $10,000 for the maintenance of the 

 College of Forestry; as noted in the June 

 number of Forestry and Irrigation. This 

 suspension, the trustees add, will hold until 

 the state sees fit to provide means for 

 again taking up the work. Meanwhile all 

 appointments to the instruction force, in- 

 cluding that of the director, are vacated. 



The act of the governor in vetoing the 

 appropriation came as a direct result of the 

 report of the legislative committee ap- 

 pointed to investigate forest conditions in 

 the Adirondacks, and while some of the 

 points of criticism of operations on the col- 

 lege tract embodied in that report were 

 well taken, it is regrettable that their con- 

 sideration should have had the drastic ef- 

 fect of closing the forest school, which was 

 annually preparing a number of trained 

 foresters at a time when the need for 

 them is daily growing more apparent. It 

 is also to be regi-etted that the trustees 

 could not see their way to continue the 

 work of the school on their own responsi- 

 bility until they could put it on such a 

 basis as would again commend It to the 

 state authorities and to again receive state 

 aid. 



Edward Hoover of Hooverhurst, Pa., 

 and John DuBois of DuBois, Pa., have pur- 

 chased a tract of 2,000 acres of white oak 

 and hemlock at McGinnIs Run, near 

 Greensburg, Pa., from Michael Burns of 

 Bristol, Pa. 



