4Q , i\i/'/l\ FORE8TRJ ASSOCIATION 



Our national Government has set aside upward of sixty million acres of land as forest 

 reserve Th M itwtdi fr-un Arizona to Alaska and represent a variety of 



cond -Innate, ground and forest. They contain the stately red fir in Wash- 



ington and are covered hv a mere chaparral in Southern California, where the tree 



roeption and the brush cover takes the place of the forest. We owe these 

 reserve to the efforts of the American Forestry Association, one of whose founders, 

 Mr. Wm. Little. ,.f Montreal, we have the pleasure of having with us here to-day. 

 The Forest Reserve policy was opposed at first, the people were being misled by 

 demagogues. Their representatives in Congress thought it a policy of obstruction 

 which would hinder the rapid development of the west. Ten years of - trial have 

 demonstrated that ,the policy is correct and the most ardent friends of the reserves 

 are the people of the districts where the reserves are located. To be sure, we have a 

 champion who is perhaps lesr strongly represented in your land than in ours. It is 

 the irrigator, the conqueror of the arid west. He is an intelligent farmer who, in 



all the sophism of snowdrift theories which have been preached to him by 

 pseudo-scientists and others, knows perfectly well that his case can be summed up 

 in four words: 'No forest, no water.' And this farmer has expressed himself in- 

 telligently and strongly, and to-day there is no better friend of forest reserves than 

 the irrigator of our arid west, from California and Arizona clear to Montana and 

 Washington. On these reserves the Government keeps things in its own hands. The 

 mine owner or lumberman can buy a million or ten million feet of timber, but the 

 trees he cuts are marked for him, he must get through his work in a stipulated time, 

 and he must take care of all debris left in cutting. There was opposition ; we were 

 told, 'We cannot afford to do these things, they are impracticable,' But they were 

 done, and they have proven feasible and the woods and the country have been the 

 better for them. 



The work is progressing in other directions. With Secretary Wilson as its able 

 head, the Department of Agriculture is doing excellent work in forestry. Under 

 Professor Pinchot its Bureau of Forestry is advising and assisting the people to~ a 

 better care of the forests. Farmers and lumbermen alike are availing themselves of 

 its assistance. We have one of its men to-day in Michigan visiting different farmers 

 who have applied for this assistance, and telling them what to do, where and what to 

 cut, what and how to plant. 



Besides the National Government, the States themselves are moving in forestry 

 matters. You all know of the good work in the State of New York, with its fine 

 Adirondack park or reserve. You know of its school, which was closed on account of 

 some personal squabbles, but which is soon to be re-established, for it was a good 

 thing, and a good thing always outlives all kinds of criticism. The State of New 

 York has realized at last one of the greatest principles in human welfare, and that is 

 that it is not a good thing to put a poor man on a poor acre. If you want to put a 

 poor man somewhere, put him on good land. Give away your good land if you want 

 to !>< liberal, but keep poor non-agricultural lands in the hands of the State. The 

 Eastern United States have at last realized that the people of Europe, with two 

 thousand years' experience probably know something, and that if the progressive peo- 

 ple of Europe have come to the conclusion that it is unsafe to place poor lands into 



