210 JOURNAI, OF FORESTRY 



York, Pennsylvania, the New England and the wealthy Lake vStates, 

 will not higgle and haggle about a few thousands or argue whether 

 poor mountain and sand lands are not perhaps too good for forestry, 

 when an earnest effort will mean no sacrifice at all, but merely a good 

 and safe investment, and when timber is as much needed as the farm. 

 How far this may go to making all forestry national in scope, like rail- 

 ways and trunk lines of highways, is for the future. The experience 

 of the past 30 years argues strongly for centralization and for co-opera- 

 tion of State and nation. 



The great lessons of the war should help to bring forestry to the 

 vast areas of private forest. How much private owners, engaged in 

 their special lines of business, such as lumbering, can and will do is not 

 so clear. The lumberman of Europe is not a forester. 



But a great deal can and should be done and done at once. With 

 better forest protection by the State, with fair taxation, with a square 

 deal, allowing the industry a fair return and a just price for its labor, 

 the State and nation should put itself in a position where it may justly 

 and fairly demand that wherever the land calls for a forest cover, the 

 forest must stay, and devastation is "verboten." 



Here again comes the matter of men. It is useless to make a lot 

 of fine sounding technical rules and regulations and hand the walking 

 boss a bunch of "sealed orders.'' It needs men, and we have no right 

 to expect any real forestry or even decent cutting in the forest until 

 we are ready to ofifer men who have learned the business, know the 

 forest, and love the forest. Such men cannot be had today, and the 

 forester who preaches pessimism and advises against forest schools and 

 discourages young men going into forestry does more harm to forestry 

 than half a dozen good men can make good by their success. 



Coming now to the afifairs of the Society, but little need be said. 



Professor Kirkland's plan of an active committee and a live cam- 

 paign to find ways and means of furthering forestry with private own- 

 ers is good, and the time is here to make a beginning. 



Similar effort to use the strength of the Society to help in State and 

 national work is urgently needed. 



Mr. Boerker has a timely plea for assistance in furthering research 

 and of keeping forestry research not so much "off the rocks" as to keep 

 it from that far more dangerous enemy, ''incipient dry rot." We need 

 research and we need a real live brand of it. 



Then there is the matter of membership and interest in the Society. 

 We need members, good people, lots of them ; we need to stop good 

 foresters dropping out ; we need the funds to continue our good paper 



