Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 109 



IN WISCONSIN. 



The Governor of Wisconsin graphically described the recent history of 

 his own state. 



"Great lumber companies," said Governor Davidson, "inspired only 

 by an enthusiasm and a greed which knew no bounds, attacked our 

 forests, engaging in a mad race each to strip its territory, to market its 

 lumber first, and then to move forward and continue the destruction. 

 No tree was regarded as too small to escape cutting. Trunks six inches 

 in diameter were cut for lumber. Millions of young trees and saplings, 

 which were too small to have any commercial value, were crushed by 

 falling timber, or were cut to make room for logging roads. Those that 

 escaped the axe of the loggers fell victims to forest fires, the destruction 

 by which can only be counted by the millions of dollars a further 

 melancholy evidence of the carelessness with which our forest tracts 

 were guarded. 



" To-day we are beginning to feel the penalty for this indifference. 

 Our proud position as the greatest timber state of the Union has passed 

 to others. Thousands of acres of land of no value for agriculture have 

 been rendered bare and practically worthless; our swamps are drying 

 up, and as a consequence many of our streams have shrunk to but a 

 small proportion of their former size. The destruction of our forests 

 has taken from us that great regulator of the streams, for with no 

 forests to protect the head water of rivers and to detain the water 

 upon the soil, we have frequent freshets and floods, and are confronted 

 with the problem of dealing with rapidly rising and falling stream 

 volume a condition which has already rendered many of our one-time 

 valuable water powers practically worthless." 



A DISSENTING VIEW. 



President James of the University of Illinois dissented from the ideas 

 of the other speakers. 



It was his optimistic opinion, that no such waste as had been alluded 

 to by previous speakers had existed in this country; or, if it did exist, 

 it was not really waste, but the simple methods that, instinctively 

 adopted by the early settlers of the country, had proven themselves in 

 the main correct. He said that the fact that farms of the East have 

 passed out of cultivation is not necessarily an indication that those 

 farms have lost their productive power, but, rather, that they have 

 been abandoned because of the opening up of broader fields of useful- 

 ness in the regions beyond the Mississippi and the Missouri, and he said 

 he believed that, after all is said and done, the greatest natural resources 

 the country possesses is not in its forests, its rivers, its mines, or its soil, 

 but in the brains of it people. 



