AMERICAN FORESTRY ASSOCIATION 109 



thereby aid its educational work. Remarks were made by Joshua L. Baily, of 

 Philadelphia, A. R. Eastman, of Waterville, N. Y., F. W. Kelsey, of Orange, 

 N. J., and others. The president urged the necessity of an active support of 

 the Weeks bill to the end that it might be passed by the Senate unamended 

 so that it w^ould become a law. 



THE ANNUAL DINNER 



The annual dinner Friday evening in the red room of the New Willard 

 was attended by about seventy-five members and guests. The room and the 

 tables were beautifully decorated with palms and cut flowers, especially no- 

 ticeable being a magnificent bank of American Beauty roses on the speaker's 

 table. At that table were President Guild, Senators Lodge of Massachusetts, 

 Fletcher of Florida and Page of Vermont, Representative Mann of Illinois, 

 Commissioner Rudolph of the District of Columbia, Forester Henry S. Graves, 

 Dr. Robert S. Woodward, president of the Carnegie Institution, and Dr. Thom- 

 as Nelson Page, and, upon his arrival at ten thirty o'clock, the President of 

 the United States. The report of the committee on resolutions was presented 

 by Mr. Maxwell before the speaking and was unanimously adopted. The reso- 

 lutions are printed on another page. 



The first speaker was the Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, senior senator from 

 Massachusetts. Senator Lodge spoke earnestly and, in view of the pendency 

 in the body of which he is an influential member, of the Appalachian bill, to 

 which he referred, his words were listened to with peculiar interest. He 

 expressed the opinion that the two public questions of more importance than 

 any others are those of the quality of our citizenship as affected by immigra- 

 tion and the conservation of our national resources. ''In the latter forestry is 

 the largest element." Of the Appalachian bill, he said, ''I feel a very profound 

 interest in that bill, as I am one of the committee which reported it. I hope 

 that we shall pass it at this session on the 15th of February. We shall cer- 

 tainly have a vote on that day because the vote has been fixed. I believe from 

 the vote by which the bill was taken up, as I recall it, forty-eight to sixteen, 

 that we have an ami)le vote to pass the bill, but the great danger of the bill 

 and it is one of which every friend of the legislation should be informed, is an 

 amendment. I do not care what the amendment is. Any amendment which 

 sends that bill back to conference endangers its passage, and if it does not 

 pass at this session having proceeded so far, it is difficult to say when we can 

 pass it. 



"I need not enlarge upon the importance of this measure, of how much it 

 means to the water power and to the welfare of New England and of the Caro- 

 linas and all that tier of southern states. I think we may take that as proved, 

 and I do not think I am advocating it from any merely local interest. I voted, 

 and voted with pleasure, for Avhat was known as the Arid Lands bill, which 

 piit by the sales of those lands, I think, some thirty-five million dollars into the 

 process of their further development. Of course the sale of these lands which 

 belonged to all the people of the country was the money of the people of the 

 country at large. It fell to me last session to report and carry through the 

 Senate the bill which authorized a loan of twenty million dollars for the pur- 

 pose of still further carrying on the work of irrigating the arid lands. I did 

 it with great satisfaction. All this is of no immediate interest to the people 

 whom I represent, but it is of value to the whole country, and I am .sentimental 

 enough to believe that what is of value and what is of profit to these great 

 states in which the arid lands lies is of great value to New England and to 

 Massachusetts, and in the same way I believe that wiiat is of great value to 

 Massachusetts and New England and the Carolinas, and to Virginia, is of 



