TKESENT FORESTRY ISSUES 77 



is today a barren wilderness, withont a tree, without a farm, tenanted 

 by a few roving Tartars and Turkomans, living largely by robbei^, driving 

 tiieir sheep about to snatch a scattered meal on such weeds of tlie desert as 

 can find some little sustenance in the crevices between the rocks. That is 

 the condition of the cradle of the human race today. Let it not become the 

 condition of the United States of America, where by the destruction of the 

 trees, then the destruction of the soils, these mountain farms which have pro- 

 duced the finest, strongest citizens among us are deprived of their people as 

 well as of their soil on which they live. 



We have, it is needless for me to say, one hundred and ninety-two millions 

 of acres in national forests of the Ignited States. Except Florida, all the states 

 now possessing these forests, supported by taxes taken from all the people of 

 the country, are in the favored western states. The whole Atlantic slope, 

 every state of the old thirteen, is taxed every year to pay its proportion for 

 the support of these national forest reserves. The nation pays four million 

 dollars a year in round numbers for the maintenance of these existing national 

 forest reserves. 



We only ask for justice. We are glad and happy, we of the east, to pay 

 for California's national forests, for those in Colorado and Montana and 

 Oregon and Washington, and all the rest; we are glad to pay our part of the 

 four million dollars which the national government pays for the maintenance 

 of those western national reserves. More than that, my own state does not 

 need, and cannot use, one dollar for purposes of irrigation. We are glad and 

 happy not only to assist in maintaining the national policy of irrigation in 

 other parts of the United States where irrigation is needed, but the Common- 

 wealth of Massachusetts, without one square inch of soil where she needs any 

 national help for irrigation, sends delegates to the National Irrigation Con- 

 gress to support the needs of Colorado and of California and of the great 

 states in the west where dry alkali plains are by irrigation to be converted into 

 fields of verdue that blossom like the rose. We ask, in common justice, that 

 if the Rocky Mountain plateau and the Pacific slope receive from the national 

 government four million dollars a year for the maintenance of forest reserves, 

 that the east in turn should be given at least as much out of the national 

 revenue for the acquisition of national forests. If it is right and just to tax 

 the east for national forest reserves in the west, it is right and just to tax the 

 west for forest reserves in the east. 



The statement is made, and it is of course true, that the existing forest 

 reserves, though supported by the national government, were not actually 

 bought as forest reserves by the national government, but constructed out of 

 the national domain. Well, how did we get the national domain? Did the 

 state of Colorado participate in the Louisiana Purchase? Did Oregon buy the 

 Gadsden Purchase, or pay the bills of the .Mexican war? Did any of those 

 states which were created out of the national domain pay for the land which 

 they now occupy as states and for the land reserved for forests? Who paid 

 for the F'lorida Purchase? The states now without national forests. Who 

 paid for the Louisiana I'urchase? The states now without national forests. 

 Who paid for the Gadsden Purchase? The states now without national forests. 

 Who paid the bill of the Mexican war? The states now without national for- 

 ests. Why are Oregon and Washington in the United States at all? Because 

 a Yankee ship captain sailing forth from Scituate where his ship was builded, 

 the good ship Columbia, rounded Cape Horn, first carried the American flag 

 around the world, sailed up that western coast, fortunately landed there a year 

 ahead of Vancouver, the English adventurer, and buried in the soil of what is 

 now Oregon and Washington tokens and medals from the old Commonwealth 



