98 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF SHELTER BELTS. 



S. M. OWEN, MINNEAPOLIS. 



The economic value of shelter belts, who can comprehend it and 

 in what terms shall it be expressed? In dollars it cannot be and, 

 fortunately, does not need to be, to be consistent with the subject 

 given me for brief discussion. "Economy" or "economical" does 

 not always imply a consideration of money. To be well and wisely 

 ordered, to get the best and the most out of a given condition or 

 situation is economy in its truest and highest sense. The things 

 most precious to us, that contribute most liberally to all that makes 

 life most worth the living, have a value too high and holy to be ex- 

 pressed in those base and sordid things that we call dollars. We 

 lay down life for those we love, offer ourselves as bloody sacrifices 

 upon our country's altar, wear the martyr's crown as the price of 

 our devotion to principles; but who will attempt to state the money 

 value of the love, the life, the devotion, the blood or the crown? 



One builds a house with a view to excluding cold, which is de- 

 signed to save fuel, but the saving of the cost of fuel is an infinitesi- 

 mal part of the real economic value of the warmly built house. 

 There is the comfort, the exemption from colds, from disease, from 

 the possible death of sonie precious little member of the family 

 circle. From this standpoint where will be found the hardihood to 

 declare that the advantages from constructing that dwelling so 

 carefully and wisely can be computed in dollars and cents? 

 There will be found none to deny that the greatest economic value 

 of the construction is in the things that cannot be expressed in 

 money. 



An ample, properly located windbreak is grown around the house, 

 its protecting arms embracing the dwelling, the barns, the stables 

 and the sheds. There will, perchance, come to view the scene some 

 pedantic scientist, with mind and inclination attuned for statistics 

 and mathematical calculations, and he will proceed to estimate the 

 money value of the w^indbreak by demonstrating the saving of food 

 to animals and of fuel to the dwelling, consequent upon the lessened 

 degree of temperature in and around the buildings because of the 

 neighboring trees. The scientist will be right; the saving he com- 

 putes and asserts is realized, but what an immeasurable distance 

 he is from expressing the real economic value of that windbreak! 



When the polar legions of Boreas come charging across the 

 prairies, up the valleys or over the hills; when he comes with his 

 cavalry of the winds and infantry of snow, each soldier armored in 

 ice, and exhaling breath that makes the mercury hide its diminished 

 head, he finds the home intrenched within ramparts against which 

 his apparently invincible hosts hurl themselves only to be broken 

 into impotent fragments, robbed of their power and disarmed of 

 their terror, by the swaying, elastic but resolute and valiant 

 "home guard" of trees. In the light of such an attack and such a 

 victory, who will attempt to put a money value upon the services of 

 those splendid defenders of our homes? But if we cannot compute 

 by any measure of value known of finance the worth of the service 

 of the windbreak in the winter, how shall we compute by the same 



