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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



or exchanged, or be taken by an^- cor- 

 poration, public or private, nor shall the 

 timber be sold, removed or destroyed." 



The people cannot lease camp sites in 

 the forests or fish from the streams, 

 whereas these state forests should con- 

 stitute playgrounds for th< people as do 

 the national forests, under special per- 

 mits. All cutting of timbei is forbidden. 

 Such prohibition was no doubt wise in 

 1894 when past wastefulness and misuse 

 needed a sharp lesson, in order to save 

 the remaining forests for important 

 watersheds, and when forestry was a 

 rather vague thing and understood itself 

 less well than in 1914. 



Now our national forests have pur- 

 sued for a period of seven years the 

 policy of utilization, of course under the 

 control of trained foresters, and the 

 policy has been proved wise, as it had 

 been proved previously in Europe. 

 Over-mature timber should be cut, for 

 the sake of the younger timber and for 

 the prevention of fire, to say nothing of 

 the matter of revenue, and this cutting 

 does not detract from the permanent 

 value of the forest but enhances it 

 instead. 



Besides in the twenty years between 

 1894 and 1914 New York State has 

 undergone important economic changes. 

 -There are three million people added to 

 the six millions then in the state, crowded 

 into the same cities, demanding food as 

 well as wood and other materials for in- 

 dustries from the same area as then. 

 While there has been this increase in the 

 ratio of population, there has been a de- 

 crease in the ratio of wood-producing 

 lands, by the very creation of a larger 

 forest reserve, because of forest fires and 

 particularly because of the continued 

 marketing of crops from private and cor- 

 poration-owned forests without provision 

 -for new growth of timber to take the 

 place of these crops. 



To-day if it were not for the constitu- 

 tional prohibition, utilization from state 

 lands of just overgrown and dead timber 

 (for trees are like all other living things in 

 that they reach maturity and die), with- 

 out injuring the forests either in their 

 present protection of river sources or in 

 their future timber supply, could give 

 to the state a revenue of at least one 

 million dollars annually. This would 

 help to counterbalance the twenty to 

 thirty million dollars sent out of the state 

 e\-ery year for wood to use in industries. 



There has been in recent years notwith- 

 standing, considerable legislation in New 

 York regarding forestry matters. Each 

 year the state has made various appropri- 

 ations for fire prevention and reforesting, 

 sums that seem large until viewed in re- 

 lation to the magnitude of the work to be 

 done. There are laws enjoining stringent 

 penalties for the negligent starting of fires. 

 Since 1909 as a matter of fire preven- 

 tion, lumbermen have been obliged to 

 lop the branches from discarded tops of 

 trees so that they will all lie close to the 

 ground and decay quickly. 



There has been legislation (1912) 

 especially intended for private owners 

 who wish to grow trees. New York and 

 Michigan are progressive beyond all 

 other states in regard to taxation in such 

 cases, the land being exempt or taxed at 

 a low rate, the crop taxed only when cut. 



In 1913 an amendment to the consti- 

 tution authorized the state to use its 

 forest preserves (in amount not to exceed 

 three per cent) for the development of 

 water power and the establishment of a 

 storage reservoir in the Adirondacks. 



Finally there seems now to be in sight 

 for 1915, legislation touching the crucial 

 points of the prohibition. In January, 

 1914, a resolution was passed amending 

 Section 7 of Article 7 of the constitution 

 to allow the removal of mature and dead 

 timber from the reserves, as well as to 



