THE NEW EARTH 



been good for a thousand years. It was a most 

 pitiable exhibition of greed: more than that, 

 it was a distressing commentary on the busi- 

 ness sense of the men who stripped it; for 

 the region could have been made a source of 

 perpetual profit instead of an utter loss, by 

 simply following the lead of ordinary com- 

 mon sense. 



At a meeting of the American Forest Con- 

 gress which convened in the city of Washing- 

 ton in January, 190.5, President Roosevelt, in 

 addressing the congress, spoke these words, — 

 at an earlier date, before the beginnings of the 

 generation of the New Earth, they would have 

 been fit words for laughter or ill-concealed 

 anger on the part of the men who in that day 

 were ravaging the forests: 



"You have made, by your coming to this 

 congress, a meeting which is without parallel 

 in the history of forestry. For the first time 

 the great business and the forest interest of the 

 nation have joined together, through delegates 

 altogether worthy of the organizations they 

 represent, to consider their individual and their 

 common interests in the forest. . . . You all 

 know, and especially those of you from the 



148 



