63 
THE INDIANA FOREST PROBLEM. 
BENJAMIN WALLACE DOUGLASS. 
Hmerson Hough has recently pointed out that we are living in a fool’s 
paradise and that the time had arrived when we would have to take some 
measures to protect and if possible perpetuate our vanishing supplies of tim- 
ber, coal and other natural resources. 
The forest problem and the idea of making some provision for a future 
timber supply has for many years been before the public in a sort of half 
hearted way and it has been a source of inspiration for many half baked 
reformers who had turned to reform as a tired business man turns to golf. 
It has become a plaything for politicians and as a result there is no real 
progress in timber conservation to be seen. 
It has recently been advocated that the solution of the problem in Indiana 
consisted in the purchase of some vast but vague number of acres of waste 
land and then reclaiming this land by the planting of trees. Such a project 
would be most admirable from the stand point of the political “reformer” 
for it would place in his hands a considerable amount of public money— 
and if there is anything that the average politician likes to do better than 
anything else it is to handle public funds. 
Michigan forest land in which all young growth has been killed. Trees have 
been replaced by asters, fire weed and bracken ferns. 
We are fortunately not in the dark as to the possible success of such a 
program for there have already been planted in Indiana quite a number of 
“forest plantations’. It has been the writer’s good fortune to visit many of 
these plantings and to secure data on the rate of growth, the value of the 
land, the possible return, ete. Without exception not a single plantation of 
