Forestry as a Profession 259 



completely that an entirely new type of man was 

 created thereby, things were reversed in the new 

 days. Re-enforced by the railroad and the mani- 

 fold machinery of an industrial civilization, man 

 now conquered the forest. He made it subject to 

 himself and took of its treasures what pleased him. 

 But in the zeal and haste of the victory the Amer- 

 ican people were in danger of destroying that which, 

 lovingly and understandingly cared for, would be- 

 come their best friend. So we approached the sec- 

 ond part of our subject, and began to consider how 

 the interests of the nation could best be served with 

 regard to treating this immense natural source of 

 wealth which had become ours. First we found in 

 our path all manner of misconceptions and erroneous 

 impressions regarding forestry. Having cleared 

 these out of our way, we came to the conclusion 

 that forests are indeed necessary to our country, as 

 great regulators of meteorological processes miti- 

 gating the evil effects of storm and flood, keeping 

 erosion down to a moderate degree, and influencing 

 climatic conditions. For these reasons alone we 

 found that it would be wise to save the remnants of 

 the natural forest from destruction. But we were 

 able to go a step farther and say that it is not nec- 

 essary, in order to so preserve them, to refrain from 

 utilizing the products of the forest for the hundreds 

 of uses to which man's ingenuity has put them. On 

 the contrary, we found that a wise treatment would 

 enable us to gain even more of these products than 

 the natural forest would furnish, and yet not only 



