nually spent by city seekers for recreation in the open air. 



This reforestration problem, according to State Forester 

 Edward M. Griffith, who is leading the battle for the preser- 

 vation of the forests, is intensely practical in every one of 

 these three phases. 



On the Black Forest Plan. 



The first phase of the problem, the sale of timber, is the 

 same as that which has been successfully demonstrated in 

 the Black Forest of Germany, and is practical, not mere 

 theory. : , 



Wisconsin, though once a great timber state, and now 

 chiefly prominent industrially for the number and variety of 

 its woodworking plants, is already calling on other states and 

 Canada, as well as Mexico and the tropics, for $20,000,000 

 worth of timber a year. Unless the source of supply is kept 

 intact, these industrial plants will inevitably, as fable tells 

 of Mohammed, go to the mountain. Wisconsin's problem, 

 therefore, is to keep the supply existent, forming the double 

 economical gain of the sale of this enormous value of tim- 

 ber by keeping within the state the industries now employ- 

 ing tens of thousands of workingmen, and maintaining whole 

 cities by the wages of these men and their expenditures with 

 the shopkeepers of those cities. 



Not less valuable, however, from a financial value, is the 

 water-power benefit to be derived from the maintenance of 

 the reservoirs in the headwaters of the streams which plunge 

 over great rapids from the lake region of the North to the 

 slower flowing Mississippi. 



Enormous Development Possible. 



Wisconsin's water-power, potential, is about one million 

 horse-power, or more than four times the total power of 

 Niagara, and a large part of this great total is derived di- 

 rectly from the Northern lake region, the district proposed 

 as a forest reserve. The forest reserve is, fortunately for 

 the plans of the state, inclusive of the larger portion of the 

 lake region, which is nearly worthless agriculturally, but the 

 home of the pine tree. It is not necessary to go into the prin- 

 ciples of forestry as related to water flowage, and the feser- 



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