l68 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



interests were too strong, the lumbermen had always had their own 

 way, and there were so many difficulties both legal and technical in 

 the way that the attempt could only result in failure and had better 

 be abandoned. 



How did it happen then that, in spite of these opinions, the de- 

 sired result was finally attained? By the force of a wisely guided 

 public opinion and no other. A later and more striking example 

 of the power of the public, wisely led, to accomplish the impossible, 

 is the settlement of the coal strike. It is this force which defeats 

 the petty schemes of selfish interests and which is a continual surprise 

 to the shrewdest calculator. The forest reserve stands today as the 

 people's protest against the rascality in lumbering which up to this 

 time has been so common in state and Indian timber. 



But the leaders, who were they ? For without them public opinion 

 is as powerless as the waves which beat against the clififs to sink 

 back, spent and baffled. We have seen how the opponents of the 

 movement sought to weaken its support by impugning personal and 

 mercenary motives to any who openly stood for it. With men this 

 might be done, but with women, and such women as came to the 

 support of the cause, it became such a palpable absurdity as to fall 

 to the ground of its own weight. It remained only to fall back on 

 the argument that women were sentimental creatures, whose hearts 

 were in the right place but whose emotions so far overruled their 

 judgment that the only treatment they were entitled to was to be 

 respectfully and tolerantly ignored. To this can be said that the 

 history of the movement and of women's connection with it show an 

 amount of thought, discretion and tolerance which must have tre- 

 mendously disappointed those worthy critics — and which in the end 

 were directly responsible for the triumph of the measure. 



The women had a free hand and were equal to the emergency, 

 and it is to them, the women of Minnesota, more than to all others, 

 that we owe the establishment of our forest reserve. 



Two main causes aroused general interest in the movement : 

 First, the rapid disappearance of the pine all over the state, with the 

 ruin left in its wake, and in particular the inroads made on the reser- 

 vations themselves by what was known as "dead and down" logging. 

 Secondly, the construction of the Great Northern Railroad and of 

 the branch from Park Rapids to Cass Lake, penetrating in two direc- 

 tions the heart of the reservations and bringing at once to public 

 notice a region before very difficult of access. The law allowing 

 the cutting of "dead and down" timber on the reservation was passed 

 in June, 1897, and much of the best green pine had been cut the 

 following winter. For this the government was to blame as well 

 as the lumbermen, for their agents were easily corrupted, and there 

 seemed to be no adequate inspection of the work. But the indigna- 

 tion aroused when the public became aware of these depredations 

 found immediate expression in the demand that the reservation be 

 set aside as a national park. 



The matter was taken up by the state medical societies, who were 

 interested in the region as a possible health resort and sanitarium ; 

 and by the Women's Federation of Clubs ; and, in addition to this, 



