SEGREGATION OF FARM FROM FOREST LAND G2!J 



No one, seemingly, could reasonably take exception to such ideas. 

 Present opposition to such proposals is of a different character to that 

 of the westerners in Congress who so persistently and inaccurately 

 alleged that great areas of agricultural land had been included in the 

 National Forests. When Senator Heyburn ® lamented, that "I can 

 look out of my office window and see thousands and thousands of acres 

 of . . . land, now within the Forest Reserve, upon which the 

 white clover grows knee-deep, and timothy is a native grass," . 

 his solicitation was not for the hardy homesteader deprived of his 

 heritage. The Senator desired to discredit the National Forest policy 

 and took a sure means to attract sympathetic attention and to sow 

 suspicion and discontent. It would be obvious to his colleagues and the 

 public that clover lands should be used for clover and not for forests, 

 and on such a subject there could be no possible argument. It would 

 follow that foresters had trespassed their forests upon the domain of 

 the farmer. 



From this point it is but a step to the sentiment piously expressed by 

 an eminent statesman : "Thank God, we have no forests in Illinois !" 



These are but extreme instances of the typical opposition met by 

 advocates of forestry when they propose to dedicate definite areas to 

 forests, and wholly irrespective of whether such dedication is planned 

 to be temporary or permanent. The politician does not create the senti- 

 ment — he only capitalizes it. 



The sentiment, assumption, or conviction that "our lands are too 

 valuable to waste on forests" is still almost universal. Failure to make 

 provision against this sentiment has, time after time, well-nigh wrecked 

 local forest development. 



Field men of the Forest Service will testify almost unanimously to 

 the nightmare of their "June nth" work, and that, where it has been 

 completed by the formal classification of the forest lands, a change in 

 local feeling has been almost immediate.' 



Today the National Forests suffer most from incendiary fires where 

 grazing interests conflict with forest preservation. This conflict is also 

 severe throughout the South * and almost equally through the Lake 

 States. Within five years the State Forest Fire Warden of IMichigan 

 rather took credit to his office for the acreage burned over during the 

 season, on the ground that millions of dollars would be saved in the 

 cost of clearing the land for agricultural purposes. 



"Congressional Record, 1907, volume 41, p. 3717. 



' Buck, Journal of Forestry, Xovember, 1918. 



*Hardtner, Lumber Trade Journal, Xovember 15, 1918, p. 35. 



