Forestry as a Profession 261 



failure. But far severer tests may be in store for 

 us. Within a short time our social organization 

 has become infinitely more complex than formerly, 

 and the dividing lines between the different classes 

 have become more difficult to cross. It is growing 

 harder and harder for the eastern man to under- 

 stand the mental and moral attitude of his western 

 compatriot, and for both to understand the Califor- 

 nian. The multitudes of our citizens whose ances- 

 try is other than British do not think and feel 

 in every way as the British descendant does, and in 

 the sections where they predominate a new type of 

 American is gradually evolving, different in many 

 ways from the type the world used to know. We 

 are no longer a Protestant people ; and who will say 

 that we always comprehend how our Catholic fellow- 

 citizen looks at things. Worse than all, we now 

 have what we used to boast of not having : a pro- 

 letariat, a class of men sunk into a kind of poverty 

 that is not merely a temporary condition from which 

 ability and self-control can raise the poor man or 

 his children, but a poverty which constitutes a 

 hopeless, helpless limbo, a social cesspool of igno- 

 rance, vice, and degeneracy. Surely, here are many 

 causes for social and political struggles that may in 

 the future shake nation and society to their deepest 

 foundations. 



To those who see the hope of mankind in a per- 

 fected and purified Democracy, the right solution, 

 by our democratic society, of such a problem as 

 that of forestry reform would be of particularly 



