Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 81 



themselves the massive trunks and limbs are left to rot unseen in 

 the undergrowth or to feed a forest fire. Millions of feet of solid oak 

 timber were thus destroyed every year. The lumber corporations, in 

 buying up timber land, figure the oak trees in cords of tanbark the 

 trees themselves count as nothing. The profit on the bark is not large, 

 as it takes a deal of labor to get it out. [E. H.] 



j* j* * 



THE SLAUGHTER OF THE TREES. 



[Copyright, 1908, by the Ridge way Company.] 



Part of a striking and vivid article by Emerson Hough in the May 

 number of Everybody's Magazine. Its startling statements appear to be 

 substantially correct. Everybody's has kindly given permission to use 

 this article and several of the pictures accompanying it. 



In fifty years we shall have whole states as bare as China. The 

 Appalachians will be stripped to bedrock. The Rockies will send 

 down vast floods, which can not be controlled. The Canadian forests 

 north of the Great Lakes will be swept away. Our Middle West will 

 be bare. The Yazoo Delta will be ripped apart, because no levee will 

 be able to stand the floods of those days. We shall be living in 

 crowded concrete houses, and at double the rent we now pay. We 

 shall make vehicles of steel, use no wood on our farms. We shall 

 pay ten cents for a newspaper, fifty cents for a magazine, as much 

 for a lead pencil. Cotton will be immensely higher. Beef will be 

 the privilege of the few. Clothing will cost twice what it costs 

 to-day. Like Chinamen, our children will rake the soil for fuel or 

 forage or food. We shall shiver in a cold, and burn in a heat, never 

 before felt in this temperate zone, meant by God as a comfortable 

 growing place for splendid human beings UNLESS WE WAKE UP. 



My friend, yesterday a man took the meat from your table. To-day 

 a man burned down your house. Do you care ? 



My friend, yesterday this was America, a rich and beautiful land. 

 To-day much of it is a waste and a wilderness. Is that anything to 

 you and me? 



My brother, in ten years a man is going to force you to rent a house 

 of him, and to pay double what you do now. In twenty years very few 

 of us will be able to afford even rented houses. In thirty years America 

 will no longer be able to build houses of wood unless you shall, mean- 

 time, remember that you own America, you who found it, fought for it, 

 and who ought to have a pride in it, if only for the sake of what it 

 might have been. Does this cause you any personal concern? 



My friend, before a certain great revolution, the peasants who could 

 not own timber of their own, gleaned firewood in the forests of nobles, 



6 c 



