FORESTRY. 159 



in forestry reform, and I propose to-night to open up the tub and look 

 into it, and see what the condition of the cream may be, if there is any 

 cream. Perhaps there is only milk in it, and all our churning will come 

 to nothing, but we want at least to see what hopes there are of getting 

 butter. One objection I have to turning the crank any longer is that we 

 do not seem to get at those men who ought to be made to turn the crank, 

 namely, the lumbermen. At all the meetings at which I am usually 

 called upon to talk upon this subject they are absent, these very men 

 who ought to be most interested in this subject, and who ought to be put 

 into the tub and churned or placed at the crank to do the churning. 

 (Laughter and applause.) 



Perhaps, it would be more appropriate in speaking before a horticul- 

 tural society to choose as a subject some phase of forestry that has more 

 connection with horticultural pursuits, but I choose in preference another 

 phase of the forestry movement which I believe at the present time to be 

 of very much more importance than the one in which your society has 

 been so successfully engaged, since Mr. Leonard B. Hodges gave life to 

 the question of timber-planting in Minnesota and pushed it with so much 

 zeal. This other question concerns the existing forest resources and a 

 proper policy regarding them, which can be instituted only through asso- 

 ciated effort. 



I address you, therefore, not as horticulturists, but rather as associated 

 citizens, as a society which has an interest not only in horticultural pur- 

 suits and the raising of fruit trees and fruits, but also in the advance- 

 ment and development of all cultural conditions— and one of those cul- 

 tural conditions is a properly managed forest area— a society which may 

 be active in bringing about reform in the care and utilization of forest 

 resources and forest conditions. 



I wish to call your attention to my use of the words, forest conditions 

 and forest resources. They are not used for oratorical effect, but for a 

 distinct and very significant purpose. As far as the forest produces ma- 

 terial it is a forest resource, but the forest is also a condition of the soil 

 which exerts peculiar influences upon our climatic and other cultural con- 

 ditions. Both forest resource and forest conditions are most important 

 and essential features of our civilization; both are endangered on account 

 of the carelessness, ignorance and greed of men, and to change the attitude 

 of our people towards these two factors of our prosperity is the object of 

 the so-called forestry movement. So far the forestry reformers have not 

 been very successful. 



The policy that existed ten years ago, when the American 

 Forestry Congress was first called to order in 1882, was to slash 

 the virgin timber, to allow fires to destroy what was left, to let the 

 denuded areas grow up to useless brush, and to turn them into waste 

 barrens without any regard as to what the future would make of the land, 

 or what would be the future of our lumber industry. The lumbermen of 

 to-day are doing the sime thing that they did ten years ago; there is no 

 change noticeable in their methods. Now and then at the mill there is 

 some regard paid to getting more lumber out of the logs, but taking it all 

 over the country the methods of lumbering and the methods of treating 

 the forest areas after they are logged remain the same as they were ten 

 years ago, with but very little, if any, change. 



