108 The Forest Products Laboratory 



in Wisconsin for our benefit as well as for the benefit of other states, 

 on the part which it has taken in the Avork which our University on its 

 side is trying to do, not only for its own state, but as a part of the 

 national system of education. 



But I can not confine what I have to say to a review of the past 

 ten years. Let us look to tlie future, first looking back to an earlier 

 day. Look back, if you please, to 1876, when the United States cele- 

 brated its first centennial. How did we look at the forest resources 

 of Wisconsin at that tinie:" Xow look forward to the next centennial 

 in 197() and tell me what \vill be the situation then and wliat the neces- 

 sity for institutions like the Forest Products Laboratory '. We need 

 not indeed look backward and forward so far. Look back less than 

 twenty-five years to the state semi-centennial in 1898 and look forward 

 to the centennial of the state. How have our forests disappeared in 

 less than a quarter of a century; what will be their condition less than 

 thirty years from now, in 1948, in a year when the large majority of 

 those who are here this morning will take part in the centennial cele- 

 bration of the state? Upon Mdiat will the prosperity of this state de- 

 pend at a period so short a time ahead of us as thirty years? Will it 

 not be dependent upon the greatly enlarged work and success of insti- 

 tutions — of the Forest Products Laboratory and of other institutions 

 akin to it; and upon the intelligent and vigorous utilization, by the 

 people, of the results that they work out? The scientific knowledge 

 which has accumulated in the past, and which will accumulate with 

 even greater rai3idity during the coming years, must be translated 

 into terms of power by men who make it their profession so to treat 

 knowledge and by institutions which are established for the purpose 

 of setting knowledge to work in affairs. This they must not do in any 

 rule-of-thumb way, not by means of prescriptive rides ; but they must 

 convert knowledge into the living and growing contribution of the 

 human mind to the prosperity of the human race; they must translate 

 the knowledge gained by the explorer of natm-e into the power of 

 applied science. 



Remarlxs hy Mr. Weiss Following President Birge's Speech 



I hope very much that those of you who have come from out of 

 the city may find it possible to stay in IMadison long enough to look 



