744 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



developed, at various times. About the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century, for example, a dearth or near dearth of wood supplies seems 

 to have been experienced in many communities. 



Until the railroads had spread over the country and had pushed 

 their ramifying lines into the smaller towns and rural localities, the 

 question of wood supplies was likely to turn on the amount available 

 by team haul, over poor roads. Wood cannot stand costly transpor- 

 tation without formidable enhancement of its price. Until coal came 

 into general use, for both industrial and domestic purposes, the re- 

 quirements for fuel alone were enormous. Even in the very early 

 days of colonial settlement local inconveniences from the depletion of 

 supplies near at hand were sometimes felt. Throughout the nine- 

 teenth century the expressions of concern and alarm over the rate at 

 which the forests were being cut, the havoc that was being wrought 

 by forest fires, and the wastefulness with which timber was utilized 

 were recurrent and insistent. Relatively few people seem to have 

 disputed the popularly accepted belief that failure of timber supplies 

 was approaching rather rapidly. 



It is often said that frontier life bred hostility to the forest and that 

 this soon became the dominating American attitude. It may never- 

 theless be questioned whether there was ever a time when many 

 people did not regret seeing the forests wiped out or devastated, on 

 grounds other than utilitarian. Certainly in the decade of the 

 seventies one of the motive forces behind the forestry movement was 

 the belief that a well-wooded country is more habitable and more 

 attractive than one without forests. Another and more powerful 

 impulse behind the forestry movement was the conviction that 

 forests not only made stream flow more equable and prevented erosion 

 and floods but also exercised a very important influence upon the 

 climate, ameliorating its extremes, increasing its salubriousness, and 

 adding to the rainfall. That forest denudation brought marked 

 changes in the behavior of springs and streams had long been a 

 popular belief based on common observation. Shortly after the 

 middle of the nineteenth century public solicitude for forest preser- 

 vation and forest extension as a means of controlling floods and 

 beneficially affecting climatic conditions was greatly increased by 

 influences from abroad. 



In Europe the consequences of the destruction of forests following 

 the French Revolution were awakening alarm; and Americans who 

 had been brought into contact with foreign observations and con- 

 clusions on the subject began to make them known in this country. 

 Outstanding in its influence upon American thought in this field was 

 the publication in 1864 of George P. Marsh's "Man and Nature", 

 revised and republished 10 years later under its better-known title, 

 The Earth as Modified by Human Action. The agitation that was 

 going on in France and Italy over the serious effects of deforestation 

 upon stream flow in the Alps and Pyrenees and the conclusions of 

 contemporary European scientists and geographers on radical climatic 

 changes as a result of the destruction of tree growth in countries 

 bordering the Mediterranean became a powerful influence upon 

 American thought. 



The westward march of the frontier across the prairies brought 

 another influence to bear. The settlers in the treeless country missed 



