THE MINNESOTA 



HORTICULTURIST. 



VOL. 35. SEPTEMBER, 1906. No. 9 



THE MAKING OF NORTHERN MINNESOTA A GREAT 

 AND POPULOUS COUNTRY. 



GEO. H. MAXWELL, CHICAGO. 

 National Irrigation Association. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



I am afraid from the introduction I have had by one of the 

 ladies who has spoken before me that you may have formed 

 the opinion that I am a very dangerous individual. I must 

 confess that when I spoke at the forestry congress at Washing- 

 ton last January I was filled with a good deal of indignation 

 that may have made my address there appear more lurid than 

 it otherwise might have seemed. 



I have not come here in any spirit of antagonism or ag- 

 gressiveness at all. I have come more in the spirit to which 

 the Good Book refers when it says : "Come, let us reason to- 

 gether." It seems to me if the people of Minnesota can be 

 made to see this question of forestry in the light of the broad 

 relation it holds to the welfare of the people of the whole state, 

 that instead of any movement existing in Minnesota to reduce 

 the area devoted to permanent forest culture — because that is 

 after all what the reserve is and nothing else — they would im- 

 mediately begin a movement to increase the area. 



I have heard the statement made — and I have never seen 

 it contradicted — it was made by Mr. Deflfelbaugh, the secretary 

 of the x^merican Lumbermen's Association, at the Trans- 

 Mississippi Commercial Congress, at Seattle, that as we are go- 

 ing on at present in this country, sweeping away our forests in 

 order to supply the commercial demand for wood and timber, 

 unless a system of replanting is adopted throughout the nation 

 forty years from to-day w^e will have exhausted our supply of 

 wood and timber. 



