EDITORIAL COMMENT 



A few years ago Gifford I'inchot, in addressing the Camp-Fire Club 

 of America, said: "Forestry in the State of New York is flourishing 

 everywhere except in the woods." It looks as if the old order were 

 about to change. Prof. A. B. Recknagel, of the Department of For- 

 estry, at Cornell University, has been granted a year's leave of absence 

 from his university duties in order to accept the position of Forester to 

 the Empire State Forest Products Association ; he took up his new 

 duties on July i and has established headquarters for the association at 

 Albany. The work which Professor Recknagel will undertake marks 

 a new departure in the practice of forestry by private owners in the 

 United States. The Empire State Forest Products Association is made 

 up of prominent lumbermen and paper manufacturers in New York; 

 the members of the association own upward of one million two hun- 

 dred thousand acres of timber land in this State. The association, at 

 its last annual meeting, decided to establish a rational and constructive 

 system of forestry for the handling of these lands. 



As President Schurman, of Cornell University, said in an address at 

 Syracuse on April 6. 1917 : "It is our national — yes, our international — 

 duty in the present crisis to i)roduce all we can and to learn to apply 

 the principles of conservation to our distribution and use of the necessi- 

 ties of life." Forest i)roducts are now generally recognized as being 

 emphatically among the necessities of life and are of increasing impor- 

 tance as the population develops. New York State is the largest con- 

 sumer of forest products of any State in the Union, a recent report 

 showing that over five billion board feet are consumed per year, with 

 an estimated value of $107,189,225. The value of farm crops in New 

 York in 1916 was placed at $293,329,000. The products from the New 

 York State forests have steadily diminished in volume, until now they 

 constitute less than one billion feet board measure per year. More than 

 $65,000,000 are being sent yearly outside the State for lumber and a 

 great variety of other ])roducts which could be produced within its 

 borders. 



These figures show the urgent need of managing the timber lands of 

 the State with a view to contiiuious i)roduction — a need which is em- 

 ])hasized by tlir adxent of war. The Emjiire State Forest iVoducts 

 Association, in takiui,' up this work, feels that it is placing itself in line 



