56 FOREST LANDS FOR THE PROTECTION OF WATERSHEDS. 



STATEMENT OF MR. McFARLAND, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN 

 CIVIC ASSOCIATION. 



Mr. MCFARLAND. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I have no statistics 

 to present and very little time to take. I speak for the American 

 Civic Association, which has to do with about 100,000 persons inter- 

 ested in making a better and more beautiful America. We want 

 the forests because we need them for their health, their comfort, and 

 the pleasant part of living. We want them because they are good to 

 see and good to be in, as well as good to use. We want forests be- 

 cause they are beautiful as well as useful, because they give us the 

 rest and peace and pleasure that comes to those who go into the 

 forests, at the same time furnishing us with the vast resources in com- 

 mercial life included in the timber industry. We want forests be- 

 cause they are the one element of our national wastefulness which 

 we can both have and use. We are here in the new Office Building. 

 It is made of stone. The stone came from the earth and no more 

 stone is growing. It is lighted by metal fixtures and glass globes, 

 all made from the earth, and no more metal and glass is growing. 

 There is wood in the room and that we ask you to preserve. The 

 building itself is created from the inexhaustible resources of the earth, 

 and we ask that in serving beauty, in serving health, and making 

 pleasant and profitable the lives of citizens, we also conserve these 

 great national resources which we so greatly need. We want, Mr. 

 Chairman, that forests shall be had in the East and in the West, so 

 that the national flag may stay floating on the staff. The flag itself 

 we can make over again, because the wool will continue to grow on 

 the backs of the sheep, at least to a certain degree, but after we have 

 denuded the forests we will have to have in that case iron flag poles. 

 Taking it as a national question, we believe that we can hold up 

 the national honor when the flag is floating from wooden poles. 



Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the attitude of the gentleman 

 from North Carolina who discussed the problem is the right one. 

 You are entering practically upon a national forest policy, of which 

 this Appalachian and White Mountain bill is but an incident. It is, 

 it seems to me, worth while to have instituted a national-forest policy 

 for the national welfare and the national defense, and I submit to 

 you, with some little knowledge of how the country looks upon this 

 thing, that you will be supported in any action you take which looks 

 to the creation of a national-forest policy, as much as to the creation 

 and continuance of a national-irrigation policy. Vast millions are 

 spent for national defense and homes. We have the post-office every- 

 where: we have rural free delivery everywhere: we certainly are not 

 specially provided with national control of forests everywhere. We 

 in the East look with some regret also upon the West with its forests, 

 purely incidental forests, gentlemen, and we hope that there may be 

 forests in the East. Consider, if you please, that the present forest 

 condition is an advantageous condition. The forest reserves owned 

 by the National Government just happened; we never bought that 

 part of the national domain upon which it did happen that trees 

 were growing. In the East there is no such condition. We speak for 

 a wide-spread national-forest policy, of which the present incidental 

 action is but an item, which will round up into the guarding by the 



