11 



ture, held in Bethlehem in June, 1893. What gives, however, special 

 weight to it now is the fact that the statement above quoted is from 

 a practical man, with large business interests, and is his well 

 weighed, deliberate utterance, after the threatened danger had de- 

 veloped into an accomplished fact. Surely, it may be regarded as 

 beyond the dictation of mere sentiment, and as a timely and needed 

 warning to us. If the condition of things which Mr. Coolidge depicts 

 as existing in New Hampshire calls for State interference there to 

 protect the manufacturing interests, a similar condition here equally 

 demands that our State shall interfere to arrest the calamities which 

 have already threatened to wreck and injure the prosperity of an- 

 other State. 



It may be taken for granted that in the near future Pennsylvania 

 will follow the example already set by the State of New York. 



The question remaining is, how shall the land be acquired? It :s 

 in vain to hope that the Commonwealth will come into possession of 

 any area worthy to be called a state forestry reservation upon which 

 a mature forest now stands, for such no longer exists within our* 

 limits. Every such body of timber is reduced in size, and circum- 

 scribed by clearings. The very utmost that we can do will be ta 

 secure the location and to produce the forest. We will be wise if 

 we obtain the place before we are obliged to produce the soil as well 

 as the trees. Even now it is probable that it will cost the Common- 

 wealth as much to obtain the naked, treeless area as it received for 

 the same ground when it was covered with timber, out of which for- 

 tunes have grown. It is quite clear that as the necessity of these 

 lands to the State become more and more real, they will be held/ 

 higher by the owners, even though each succeeding year has ren j 

 dered the soil more and more impoverished. Neither will there ever 

 be a time when the demand made upon the State Treasury will be so 

 light as to render the acquisition of the needed land easier than now 

 if they are to be acquired by exercise of the right of eminent domain 

 and subsequently paid for. 



The state of New York acquired most of its present reservation) 

 in the Adirondack (I believe), by sale for unpaid taxes. 



This raises the question as to* whether Pennsylvania might not 

 do the same. It is within bounds to say that there is a million of 

 acres within our limits upon which the owners now refuse to pay 

 taxes. Or to speak exactly, we may put it thus, that "in 1894, the 

 amount of land, seated and unseated, advertised to be sold for taxes 

 in the different counties of the (Commonwealth, so far as heard from, 

 was upwards of 1,500,000, or 2,358 square miles." These figures 

 come from lists furnished by county treasurers. This land lies in 

 great part within the limits which the Forestry Commission has 

 suggested as being suitable for State forestry purposes. One may 



