THE NATIONAL AND MINNESOTA 8 FOREST RESERVE. 335 



Act, which means the protection of the Indians and the perpetua- 

 tion of the pine tree, and urge all to join us. 



Mr. Roosevelt declared in his address before that remarkable 

 congress — "You are mighty poor Americans if your care for the 

 well being of this country is limited to hoping that that well being 

 will last out your own generation. No man, here or elsewhere, is 

 entitled to call himself a decent citizen if he does not try to do his 

 part toward seeing that our national policies are shaped for the 

 advantage of our children and our children's children." 



CONDITIONS ON CASS LAKE RESERVE AS I 

 FOUND THEM. 



MRS. J. B. HUDSON, LAKE CITY. 



I am not going to waste any time telling you. about the 

 boundaries of this reserve or its early history, as I take it for 

 granted that most of you are familiar with the location and pur- 

 pose of the Morris Act. I am going to tell you of a few of the 

 things I saw and heard while on the ground this summer. As 

 a member of the forestry committee of the State Federation of 

 Women's Clubs I went up there with my eyes and ears open — 

 and I had to put on "seven league boots" — to disprove the ar- 

 guments made by some of those opposed to the reserve. The 

 citizens of Cass Lake will tell you the forest reserve will practi- 

 cally put a wire fence around the town. They will tell you it 

 is unjust to tie up so much good agricultural land in a forest re- 

 serve, and to prove that it is good agricultural land I was taken 

 to a garden in Cass Lake in which were growing lettuce, radish- 

 es, tomatoes and other vegetables, and in one corner was a 

 flower bed, and they expected that garden to prove their claim, 

 but they did not tell me that a great deal of fertilizer had been 

 used on that ground to get it in the proper condition to raise 

 those vegetables and flowers. They did not call my attention 

 to the network of water pipes running through the garden nor 

 introduce me to the German gardener, who had recently come 

 from Germany and spent considerable of his time working in 

 that garden. A farmer who would go up there and who could 

 afford to buy fertilizer in quantity could produce the same re- 

 sults. If a farmer could hire a professional gardener for every 

 acre of his farm, and if he could afford to run a network of wat- 

 er pipes through his farm, he might succeed in a measure. I 



