Canadian Forestry Journal, January 1912. 



lands, water-powers and forests, but 

 particularly the latter. The general 

 idea, however, was that the friends 

 of conservation were more wide- 

 awake than ever, and on every hand 

 there were expressions of determin- 

 ation to work, to fight and to make 

 sacrifices to have these resources de- 

 veloped and used for the very best 

 interests of the whole country, and 

 to keep them from falling into the 

 hands of trusts and corporations 

 with no other object than to exploit 

 them for the greatest present profit 

 regardless of the future. 



The sessions were held in one of 

 the halls of the magnificent New 

 Willard Hotel. There was a meet- 

 ing of Directors at 10.30, the general 

 business opened at noon, and at one 

 o'clock the assembly adjourned to 

 an adjoining dining room where 

 lunch was serv-ed to about one hun- 

 dred and twenty five including 

 quite a sprinkling of ladies. It may 

 be remarked in passing that while 

 this luncheon was in every way 

 strictly first class the determination 

 of the American Forestry Associa- 

 tion to keep their organization as 

 democratic as possible was shown in 

 the fact that the charge for tickets 

 for the luncheon was only $2 apiece. 

 This was in all respects a most en- 

 joyable function and at the close 

 there were several significant speeches. 



Hon. W. L. Fisher. 



Hon. Walter L. Fisher, Secretary 

 of the Interior, made a most illum- 

 inative address in which he empha- 

 sized two points. The first was that 

 the cause of forest conservation had 

 lost in the past and would continue 

 to lose in the future if its friends 

 did not kill the old belief, indus- 

 triously propagated by its enemies, 

 that conservation meant negation, 

 stagnation, the locking up of forest 

 resources and the keeping back of 

 devlopment indefinitely. The thing 

 which conservationists must now do 

 was to show the public, what they 

 knew to be the case themselves. 



namely, that conservation was 

 affirmative constructive and progres- 

 sive. And second, he told the great 

 steps forward that had been takien 

 in the past year in the matter of 

 disposal of water-powers on federal 

 lands. Up to 1912 there were only 

 two methods of developing water- 

 powers. The water-powers might be 

 deeded outright to the applicant or 

 they might be leased to the appli- 

 cant on a lease which could be re- 

 voked without five minutes' notice 

 by the Secretary of the Interior. 

 During 1912 the law had been so 

 amended that water-powers could 

 be now leased for a period not to 

 exceed fifty years, the rentals to be 

 reviewed and if necessary readjust- 

 ed every ten years. Where the gov- 

 ernment and the applicant were not 

 able to agree upon the new rent to 

 be charged at the end of any ten 

 years' period the matter was to be 

 settled by arbitration and the onus 

 was on the lessee to show that the 

 rent was too high. While at first 

 some of the organizations claimed 

 that no water-powers would ever be 

 developed under the leasing system, 

 the great majority had admitted 

 that the system was fair. As con- 

 firming this Mr. Fisher pointed to a 

 lease to a powerful corporation of 

 rights which would result in the 

 immediate future in the electrifica- 

 tion of five hundred miles of main 

 line of one of the transcontinental 

 railways. A leading railway man 

 had told him that this was just the 

 beginning and that within a few 

 years under the same system twenty 

 thousand miles of railway lying be- 

 tween the Rocky Mountains and the 

 Pacific Ocean would be electrified. 

 He had drawn attention to the fact 

 that this was a powerful corporation 

 as showing that this was not a case 

 of the government 'squeezing' a 

 small concern that was not able to 

 take care of itself. He predicted 

 that under this new system a very 

 rapid development of water powers 

 on national lands of the United 

 States would take place, and this 



