THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



11 



him, the Forest Service is to be the savior of the country 

 in this respect. The truth is that the rains which pro- 

 duce the greatest floods do not fall in the mountains, as' 

 the heavy rains there are usually short; the rivers in the 

 mountains are not generally high at the times when the 

 greatest flood destmction is wrought. These storms are 

 almost wholly in the plains country, the result of long 

 and incessant rains, and these floods can only be pre- 

 vented by the construction of reservoirs of sufficient 

 capacity to retain the surplus water, and that must be 

 the final remedy against enormous rains which forests 

 cannot entirely restrain. 



The greatest floods that Iowa ever had were in 1851, 

 when the country was but sparsely settled, and no timber 

 of any consequence had been cut. 



Mr. Pinchot will have to invent some means to stop 

 the rain when it is not needed, before his plan of salva- 

 tion in this respect will be water proof. 



As to the use of timber in the earlier days, Mr. 

 Pinchot complains that the tops of the trees were left 

 unused in most cases, and this he calls a waste of re- 

 sources. All this, he says, the Forest Service has 

 changed, cutting only mature, dead or dying trees, and 

 utilizing every part of the trees for cord wood, etc. 



It has been generally believed that the early settler 

 did not cut trees for sport, but, on the contrary, used 

 every part of every tree which his conditions required. 

 He had no market for cord wood, hence he left the tops, 

 using only that part of the tree which he needed for his 

 cabin and fences. It will now surprise him to learn that 

 he cut and wasted vast quantities of timber for fun, 

 when he really supposed he was in earnest, and trying to 

 make for himself a farm and home. 



I have quite recently spent some time in the Un- 

 compahgre forest. It is yellow pine, averaging not more 

 than ten trees to the acre, where timbered at all, with 

 thousands of acres not having thereon a tree of any kind. 

 It is sparsely inhabited, and not a tree should ever be 

 cut in it if snow and water conservation is to be chiefly 

 considered. Notwithstanding this, the sawmill is doing 

 its work, and about one-third of the yellow pines is be- 

 ing made into lumber. The tops are not "utilized," 

 and this for the very same reason that the early settler 

 did not do so there is no market where a price can be 

 obtained equal to the cost of cutting and hauling cord- 

 wood. 



I do not criticize the non-utilization of the tops. 

 What I do say, however, is that the Forest Service is in 

 this respect, as usual, preaching one thing and practicing 

 another. 



In fact, nothing is wasted in the true sense, if it 

 cannot at the time and place in question be economically 

 utilized. 



In all other forests the sawmill is active, and in 

 most of them scattering trees are left for reseeding. 

 These unprotected seeders have nearly all been blown 

 down by violent storms, frequent in the mountains, while 

 in the adjacent untouched forests, but few are prostrated, 

 as the solid forest can resist these winds more success- 

 fully. Where the cutting has thus been done under so- 

 called "scientific forestry," the forest in many places is 

 practically annihilated. 



But perhaps his greatest complaint is over the cut- 

 ting of timber near mining camps where there is no 

 question that great areas were cut over and little timber 

 left. 



At Leadville, Colorado, during the last thirty years, 

 approximately 100,000 acres of timber were cut for use 

 in building, developing the mines and making charcoal 

 for the smelters. Such things are now declared to have 

 been wasteful and wrong, this timber should have been 

 "conserved for posterity." 



What has been the result to us and our day and 

 generation? From this wasteful destruction has come 

 a city of 30,000 industrious thriving people, who have 

 produced nearly $500,000,000 of precious and other 

 metals, the value of which has gone into the commercial 

 world. 



We ourselves and as these values are practically 

 indestructible, our posterity, have thus obtained for each 

 1,000 acres of trees, 300 men and $5,000,000 in treasure. 

 Compare this with the value of these trees, and how 

 much will there be to the credit of the "conservation" 

 idea? 



This condition has come about in hundreds of cases 

 throughout the Rock mountain mining regions. 



Senator Teller never made a more important or 

 truthful statement than that he made at the Public 

 Lands Convention in Denver last year, to the effect that 

 "men are worth more than trees." 



Mr. Pinchot at first charged the early settlers with 

 the fires that also destroyed large forest areas. Since 

 then he has become better informed, and in his 1904 

 report, he states in relation to the Pikes Peak reserve : 



"That the most serious fires took place at least fifty 

 years ago." 



There were Indian and lightning fires before the 

 settlement of the country, as were most of the serious 

 fires in the Rocky mountains, as every old settler well 

 knows. 



If fifty years ago our coal, iron and timber had 

 been looked up, as Mr. Pinchot and some others higher 

 up now claim should have been done, we would have had 

 no "great West." No more can such a policy be pur- 

 sued now, save at the sacrifice of the development and 

 progress of the nation. 



It has been repeatedly and publicly charged by 

 myself and others that personal observation, as well as 

 the reports of the Forester, show that more timber has 

 been sold and cut under the Forest Service than ever 

 before in the Rocky mountains ; for instance, in Colorado 

 in 1907, over 70,000,000 board feet, and in other states 

 even greater amounts, and that the main object of the 

 Forest Service was to make the revenue from the forests 

 equal the expense of administration. 



I have been recently informed by a forest supervisor 

 that the policy of the service as to allowing the cutting 

 of so much timber has been radically changed, so that 

 much less is now offered for sale and will be hereafter 

 cut than formerly, the sales being limited to local needs, 

 and mostly confined to dead timber. Is it possible that 

 the charges above referred to have been taken notice of 

 by higher authorities in Washington, and Mr. Pinchot 

 called down ? If so, much has been accomplished. 



Whether this is so or not, the change is a confes- 

 sion that the former policy was wrong, and a condemna- 

 tion of it. 



To me the logic seems unanswerable that every 

 living tree cut necessarily lessens the conservation ca- 

 pacity of the forest. 



Over and over again we have been informed by the 

 Forest Service bulletins of the great work mapped out 



